Last week, I received this note from Nicole Daspit Sarkar, the director of development and outreach for AGE (Austin Groups for the Elderly), about what happened when they decided to reduce their long annual report to a postcard, and she agreed to let me share it with you. I love how these examples are flowing in . . . send me yours so I can highlight it too!
Here’s Nicole . . .
“We were inspired by your blog about rethinking annual reports. We don’t mail a lot to our constituents because of money and staff time. And although we email once a month, I know there are many people on our mailing list not on our email list.
So we decided to follow your recommendation.
We have traditionally done an annual report that was several pages long, full color, and only distributed to probably less than 200 people per year. We loved the suggestion and examples of the postcard because we could get it in the hands of several thousand people at about the same cost.
We finally got to working on it and it just went in the mail late last week.
In the last two days we have had several calls and emails from people telling us how much they like it (including funders). What is amazing about that is we are in the midst of fires surrounding Austin. So for people to take time out right now during a week with so much going on, really shows the power of the postcard.
We designed it in-house and mailed bulk, so our costs were minimal. I know this will have a positive long-term effect on our contact with our supporters. Probably the best marketing decision we made this year!”
Nicole also sent me the longer 2009 Annual Report for comparison.
Thanks for sharing your story, Nicole!
Remember, you can add examples you find or create yourself of “new and improved” annual reports to our free Nonprofit Annual Reports Wiki!
