 Welcome, thank you for being here with us today and joining us for another episode of the nonprofit show, and we are thrilled to have Josh Kligman with us co founder we're going to hear about your partner here with yearly and to talk to us about the future of nonprofit organizations annual reports. Before we dive into this conversation with Josh we of course want to make sure that you know who our faces and voices are. Patrick is here CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I'm Jared ransom, hopefully your only nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group and we are so honored to have the continued support of our amazing presenting sponsors that have allowed us to continue growing and we have over 500 episodes if you miss any of them, you can find them on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, as well as Vimeo. And we are on podcast so if you are a podcast listener like I am. I was listening to one this morning as I was walking my dog. So you can now queue up the nonprofit show on your podcast. Again, thanks to our sponsors that have really invested in us in these conversations and our team. So, bloom ring has been with us from the beginning American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy nonprofit nerd your part time controller the nonprofit Atlas nonprofit thought leader and staffing boutique. Josh, we are so glad that you're here and we'd love to know a little bit about you, your co founder, as well as yearly so welcome. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. This is really exciting. I'm not to get fired because she's got, she's got happy fingers over there and she's going really fast but tell us about yearly what is it that that you guys do. Well, yearly is a platform for nonprofits to make digital annual and impact reports, and a whole lot more, you know, we were really noticing this need for nonprofits to find out if people are even reading and reports there's so there's a lot of time and energy and money that's put into creating reports. And we just want to make sure that our nonprofit partners are successful when they're, they're getting them out there to stakeholders. Yeah, absolutely. You know, at the same time my, my co founder Jeff from had an advertising agency focus on nonprofits, and he had organizations coming to him wanting to build a custom pieces of their website where they build up the code to be able to have an annual report that they can change year over year and that's really expensive to do for it but it's not the case for for everyone and we just saw the saw the need there. You know, I, I can't imagine a nonprofit who embraces the process of their annual report. It just seems like everybody looks at it is just like this major major, you know, burden. And when you go into a project with that mindset. It's just disastrous you know and it just is not a good way to be thinking about this, this whole process so you really have entered the space in, in the digital world. Talk about that. And what you're seeing for that whole process, because this is pretty innovative for a lot of organizations and a lot of donors. Yeah, I think that the process is kind of broken into what you what you may see now and where it could be and that's what we talk about with the, you know, the future of where I think digital reports could take nonprofits and associations and foundation so today, you know, we create these reports, and we don't necessarily know if they're being read and what those other metrics are, such as who's reading them how much time people are spending on the report. And the content that you're producing to make the report I think is, is the biggest asset, you know, your own time so what's the what's the return on that at the end of the day, and it's really different I think for every organization someone donations coming back in more volunteers whatever it might be. So, I ask, you know, in this digital format because I, you know, used to have I call it a swipe file of so many annual reports right from from different organizations and as a professional fundraiser. Yes, they post their donors and I want to know who the heck is in my community that is so very generous. And now that we've gone, you know, from having stacks and stacks and stacks to so many organizations now having this digital platform. And maybe you, you know the statistics but like if you could just kind of spitball like how many organizations actually utilize annual reports now in a digital format. Well, I know that we have 2000 organizations using the yearly platform to make reports, most of them are annual reports then come impact reports, and after that we see event recaps board board reports individual donor reports and then different types of digital brochures to so it's pretty amazing the trends that we're seeing I think, I think that's really the beginning, you know, I see a future where in 12 to 18 months from now. There will be many, many thousands more nonprofits doing that, but we actually surveyed our users to see how much time and money they spend creating digital reports. And they say they can create the reports three times faster and save four times the amount of money over whatever method they were using the prior year and I thought that was fascinating I didn't think it would be that high. That is fascinating and you're speaking my love language Josh because this is totally like super nerdy and I love it. So one of these marketing tools that you and yearly really, you know, have advanced and encourage our, our nonprofit leaders to utilize can you talk to us about some of the marketing tools. I think that there's ways to make reports. You know, more accessible so that your stakeholders have a chance to really look at them when a piece of paper or a PDF that's a slide show might not be as easy so I think one of those. One of those marketing tools is you know just utilizing the channels that you already go through through email and social media so if you have a CRM use for your email or you're just sending it out from your, your inbox that's fine and promoting the reports on Facebook. It's really easy to promote a link, a URL is all you need and with a web based report people can look through it really simply. So using it in a way that tells a story is really important I'm sure on the show, you know in the past you've covered nonprofit storytelling, you know, a lot a lot, right. So I think that one of the greatest marketing tools you have is your own team's ability to tell stories within the report, and let the community that you're impacting be the lead characters in those stories, and showcase them, you know, and then people will really think that their money went from the donations. Let that shine through the reports. You know we are in this time of tremendous change for many reasons and one of the things that I think is a comfortable way to push back on anything digital is for development teams or, or nonprofit leadership to say, Yeah, but our donors are older and they're heavy and so we need to do a hybrid or we're not ready yet. And I'm wondering, I think that's wrong by the way, I think that's wrong, but how do you counter that commentary or that argument for not embracing a digital piece. Well, sometimes it's true, and I saw an organization in New Orleans and in Las Vegas, speaking of Las Vegas, try to ease into digital reports by sending out a jumbo postcard that went to all their donors that said we've gone digital and had the URL and a QR code on there to drive people to the website and I think it's a way over time of training your donors and all your stakeholders really that you're now on the web with a digital report. And that lets them know what you're up to now I think that's a nice transition, right, that is a great transition I love that it seems so simple, you know I mean it cuts the cost down so much. You know to send a postcard instead of, I don't know 1218 24 page, you know and a report and and how that looks. How do you speak to the you know the digital space when we have, you know readers of different language or maybe they need larger font or you know like, how does the online the digital platform allow for those conveniences. Well, I am not the most tech savvy person and I'm not a graphic designer so when we created yearly as an option. We wanted our platform to be so simple to use that anyone can use it without having any of those experiences so it's a no code, no graphic designer background needed to be able to do things just like you do an email or Microsoft Word and make fonts larger. You know, have a report that's really letting graphics lead the way to so if you have existing info graphics are great photography. I think those are things you can implement into your report to make it a little more user friendly. And I think testing your reports with your colleagues on your computer on a mobile device are great ways for you to see what your stakeholders are going to see before they get it and share that around rather than just launch it out there especially that's your first time. Right, right. You know, I'm fascinated by this because I'm wondering in terms of making these investments are changing. Are you having. Are you seeing organizations that have maybe a group really pushing it that's saying yeah we want to go digital and then you might have another side within that same organization being a little hesitant or where do you see the window of this being half open fully open. I see the window being mostly open because those conversations have been happening for several years I mean I started to have them with colleagues five or six years ago, and we knew we wanted to go go digital with reports but we never really knew what that meant. Yeah, options what are you supposed to do. I think once people learn what the options are, it's a good time to test and that's where I'm seeing a lot of nonprofits go and say, let's try this for a year, and then we'll see what the response is like so tracking that response I think is a big, a big and smart part of it. How do we sell it to the naysayers right how do we sell it to the people that say, I know our constituents, I know that they like to have it like a coffee table book and they pick it up and they do that whole like, you know, thing, and they just sit there and read it you know like how do we make that transition from having that experience to a postcard that says we've gone digital for for so many because I can only right now think about the pushback we've had in fundraising when online auctions took place. So we're talking about an online annual report so what do we say to this I love the data that you were like try it analyze it measure the success. What are some other, I don't know key topics that we should be sharing. I think it's that old 8020 rule and I think the majority of your audience is going to be really interested in a digital report. Let me try it now for the ones that you know need to hold it for that one board member that small segment of your, your donor list. If you printed 1000 total reports last year. And this year you're going digital, go print 100 save 90% of your printing cost. If that's something that you have to do for your organization, and get it in their hands but also let that audience know that it's online as well, and take a look at their, their usages like that if you take a yearly report for instance, and sync it up to your Google Analytics, you could see where people are coming from how much time they're spending that reading the reports. You'll have your answers to that you'll know you'll say last year. Well yeah we printed it but we don't know if I'm reading it. Now we know the average person spent 18 minutes and 30 seconds reading it. You'll have your answers really quickly. So how long they stayed here's their click throughs here's what they were really interested in. Oh you just got super juicy because now we can take that into our database, and really start to categorize and segment based off of motivation and interest. I feel that we could, you know I learned from someone on the show. I won't name names but it's not you Josh that that taught us you taught me, you don't do anything with one cell purpose right so I'm assuming you can use these client stories, success stories, perhaps in blogs or articles and and again there's so many ways to repackage and repurpose the content of this so what you just said was golden. I'm questioning to when you say about, you know, getting 100 or even 50 whatever copies off. Does yearly allow you to use the files that you're creating on the digital side to do a print option. You know it's funny yes that Julia because I think I was dead set against it for the last 18 months because I said, no the future is digital. It needs to be a website. Okay, somebody has asked me that question. We launched that feature because there's there's a need for it I think because of the transition that we're talking about here over to digital that takes a little time and even first movers in the nonprofit space want to have that option to convert a web based into a PDF. And it works. And the interesting thing is, you may not want to have some of the more engaging or interactive elements in your PDF and you just strip those out it's a few clicks of a button. Well your quota is filled for the day so nobody else can ask you that question today, Julia, Julia is one a day I don't want more than one we built it it's out there. If you're into interactive interactivity you just mentioned that although it was easier for you to say than me but let's. These annual report a little more interactive. What does this even look like what are our possibilities. I mean, you're competing for your, your donor and your volunteer and your board members time when they're reading their report with their phone dinging their doorbell ringing like minded their dog barking. That's happening right so you only have a small window of time to really capture their attention engage them more with your with your brand and the last touch point. So I think there's things you could do within the storytelling to help complement the writing and the photos that you'd have in there that would make a nonprofit and report more engaging and more interactive. The engaging side I think it's social media. You could be talking about a program that you created that puts a playground in your community and the store maybe about the kids that you're affecting on that playground. Well, what if there was a social media posts that you had four months ago about that playground that your organization installed that's starring one of the kids that's using it and benefiting benefiting from it. If you can go to Facebook, if that's where your post was, and just click the embed button which is hidden in these little three dots on the top right of all the posts and copy that and paste it right into your report so it lives with the photo and the text that you're writing about your report. So I think it makes the report come alive a little bit. And that's on the engaging side interactive I think is more about is more about video because I think that becomes more of a two way communication within the report you can click play and watch videos along the same lines. You know it's fine we even saw a video from a school in the northeast that was welcoming people to the report instead of an introductory letter from the president or executive director. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, great idea. I mean if you're going to embrace it go ahead and you know really drink the Kool-Aid and demonstrate and you could even talk in that welcome idea, like how you use it. Right, I'm just, you know, you know this is this is the process. You mentioned something and I, and I, when we first got going and I'm really intrigued by this. Are you seeing folks that use this tool just for the annual report, then saying holy moly we could do a stakeholder report or we could do other reports or Yeah, yeah, I mean are you seeing them like use the technology to then act as one of their main communication voices. I am and they're coming up with use cases I couldn't dream of which is really nice. I think it was the Catholic Community Foundation of New Orleans created an annual report, and then they said wait a second we have this digital brochure we need to make to highlight one of our programs that sells wills and trusts. So they won't use that or the Montgomery County Family Services Office in Maryland outside DC is doing a monthly newsletter to, you know, employees so I think there's all types of all types of reports like that that are getting created, which are nice to see because there's a lot of use for year round I mean if you can click the duplicate button and take your template that you're going to be made and make all these other reports. I think you'll just have a really easy communication channel that reaches out to certain stakeholders in a way that you're probably doing already through other, you know, other means. Yeah. Go ahead, Julia. Well, I have one more tech question. So, you started off by saying, you know, nonprofits would have to basically use consultants and off board this so that they could get the technological, you know, interest in savvy for somebody to produce this, but you're maintaining that a normal team could do this themselves or are you advocating that they're still going to have to find that service provider that can interface with with your technology. And if I can do it, you know, you can do it, trust me so anybody can anybody can do it. You know, because I think what we've seen with these kind of self serve platforms over the years, you know, even outside of the nonprofit world is just these easy ways to create, you know, really nice looking polished creative pieces right all by ourselves and that's, that's really where yearly is at because we want to be able to save nonprofits time I mean we actually have a mission to help put that time and focus and energy, you know, a little less often reports because it's such a burden and we've personally been there back into back into the community impacts, best we can. So I think that's, you know, I think that's something that's helpful. And that's actually my question was, what does it look like to work with yearly and kind of that ramp up time from we say okay Josh, we're sold we're drinking the Kool-Aid we're all in man how do we do this. What does that time look like. I mean what we typically see is nonprofits trying it and seeing what it looks like they go to the website yearly dot report and they play around and see the vision of what their report could look like and then they get going from there with with our services. So, I'm going to interrupt you and I apologize. Are you saying we can try that out for free. We can try it for free, and then when you're ready to put when you're ready to actually publish it, you know that's that's when we charge me. It's like, you know, purchasing some paint swatches before you paint your whole damn house it's really like, is this the paint that I want is this what it's going to look like so I love that yearly offers that to say, Hey, try it out see what you think see how how easy it is. I'm brilliant. What were you going to say because I wanted to make sure that that we understood that properly. No you're absolutely right I mean when I was a nonprofit marketing I think there were a lot of services that I explored but I didn't necessarily have a chance to try them are really fully understood what they are so I think that's important. I think that the content writing of a report. So those watching and listening that have done this before know what that timeframe is like and that, you know you really need, you know, at least four weeks I mean I worked on it for months at the organization I was with to really hone hone a comprehensive report but if you're just getting going for the first time I'd say find the stories of impact that you already have out there, and then incorporate those into the report and you can really do it throughout the year and then you don't have to cram everything into the last month before you want to go and push a report out there and hit the publish button. It's been fascinating. I know I am going to visit the website. Let's pull up Josh's information so that if anyone also wants to take this site for a test drive I think that's really important to do. So if you want to go to yearly dot report co founder Josh Kligman, you know, tell us, what do you see the future because because you maybe having a crystal ball. Where do you see these yearly and Anna reports going now in this digital space and even as you said earlier like the next 12 to 18 months. What are some of the new trends that we're going to see. We're just going to bring the crystal ball here to show but I left it at home so unfortunately, but you are at home. Well it's in the other room we'll say that I think that I think that, like you said, in 12 to 18 months, we're going to see a big lift in terms of the number of nonprofits of all sizes. We see none, you know, we see small nonprofits with budgets, you know, under under a half million dollars to, you know, World Wildlife Fund and Harvard University creating digital reports. So we'll see more annual reports but we'll see more everyday reports as well. I mean, what Harvard did was they did a report on from the center of African studies on their campus report on where alumni were landing throughout Harvard and the impact they were doing, right, so that's not that's a story of impact but it's not for the whole school it's getting really specific and targeting a certain audience I'm sure I think Cornell University did something similar on food and agriculture just in the state of New York. And I think we're going to see more reports looking like websites, because it's easier to do but it looks much better, because nonprofits are going to get a better reaction from their stakeholders so that's where I see the future going and further away from print where you can get away from where you can get away with it. Right, right, I love it. Well, this has been really interesting and it just deftails don't you think Jared to all the other digital things we've been talking about like, working with your donors digitally, you know, embracing the story of impact and digital component. And I'm understanding that you can have a digital footprint and relationship that grows and not like so many nonprofits thought oh the pandemic we can't be out so we have to hit the pause button and that pause button grew bigger and bigger and bigger until it's like a pause paddle, you know. It's really an interesting thing to have you on Josh to talk about this I would say in 500 episodes, you know we've had people talk about their annual reports and just a very cursory manner and generally it's not very flattering. It's like one of those things that they're like, ah, you know we hate doing it right. Such a bad attitude for something that can be such a huge marketing tool, I think. That's true. And what you just said is going to be my next commercial so I'm glad this is being recorded. Well, you know, yeah I didn't mean it to sound that way but it's, you know, no, no, I think it. No, no, you're right because it is a huge pain point and something that I always tried to put offers long as I could so that's why we started it so we can try to ease that pain and we've been there we've created them it's hard. It's overwhelming it's a project it's it's quite an undertaking so kudos to you for you know co founding yearly providing the solution offering a test drive so that we can say, Hey yeah let's do try this out and see if this is going to work for us, and then how else might we use this platform right because it's endless. Yeah, absolutely well Josh thank you so much for being with us today you know we warned you before we came on live it would go by fast and it has gone by fast. For those of you who might be new to the nonprofit show I'm Julia Patrick I've been joined today. Every day with the nonprofit nerd herself Jared ransom CEO of the Raven group, we want to make sure that we thank and honor the people that make this show possible bloom around American nonprofit Academy, your part time controller the nonprofit fund raising Academy, the nonprofit out atlas nonprofit that leader and staffing boutique we're really, really fortunate that we have had these folks stand by and support us now going into year three. What was really a two week project at the start of the pandemic has blossomed into something that is continued on and so we want to make sure that we thank all of those people, and we want to make sure that when Steven shadow get bloomering was like happy March 279. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did Steven Shattuck. Oh my gosh, one of the champions of our sector, and I was thinking about Steven Shattuck yesterday because where we live in Arizona it was Arizona gives day, and Steven has a fabulous fabulous routine that he goes through every year with giving Tuesday and so which we get him to report on every year he comes back and does a special episode. But hey, as we end this episode and we thank our guests today. We want to remind everyone to stay well. So you can do well we'll see you back here tomorrow.