Nonprofit Annual Report Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

Nonprofit Annual Report Content

We believe there are five features that every nonprofit annual report should include:

1. Accomplishments as opposed to activities
2. Stories from real people you serve
3. The financials explained in plain language
4. Ample thanks to your supporters
5. A call to action

What about the Donor List?

You may be wondering about the donor list. Welp, we think the annual report donor list is a stupid waste of time. 

If you are going to do it, at least stop using Mr. and Mrs. in your annual report donor lists. Here’s why continuing to use Mr. and Mrs. is a terrible idea.

What about the Letter from the Executive Director?

You can probably drop it, but here’s what to do if you need to keep it. 

Nonprofit Annual Report Design

We always recommend a short annual report compared to the 30-50 page behemoths. And plenty of nonprofits ditched print entirely and went digital a long time ago, so that is also a potential option.

Here are several stories behind the creation of short nonprofit annual reports:

• A Pocket-Sized Annual Report
• Postcard Annual Report — Great Example of How It Can Work
• Grantmakers Love Annual Report Postcards Too
• Another Postcard Annual Report Success Story
• Creating a Two-Page Nonprofit Annual Report
• Another 4-Page Annual Report Success Story

We also love nonprofit annual reports as infographics.  Here’s an example of a nonprofit infographic annual report that I still use in some training.

Here are even more examples for you:

How This Nonprofit Created a Game-Changing Annual Report Infographic

Nonprofit Annual Report in an Infographic (Real World Example)

You can also take a look at how two different presidential foundations approached their annual reports.

More Nonprofit Annual Report Examples

We have an informal collection of short nonprofit annual reports on Dropbox organized into several categories:

• 1-2 Pages
• 3-4 Pages
• Infographics
• Odd Sized or Postcards

Access our library of nonprofit annual reports here.  Want us to add yours? Just email it to us with Annual Report Example in the subject line

We also have lots of nonprofit video annual reports saved on our YouTube playlists. Just look for the lists that start with AR. (If you are curious the playlists that start with TY are thank you videos.)

We hope this gets you headed in the right direction!