Philanthropy faces an awareness deficit, according to a survey of engaged Americans. Our question: Are annual reports part of the problem or a solution? Our research examines the perspectives and practices of private foundations and looks at the annual report as a communication vehicle. The insights from the research produced the following ten findings: #1 LIMITED [...]
Posts under ‘Findings from “Talking to Ourselves?”’
Finding #1: Limited Reach with Engaged Americans
A survey commissioned by the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative posed questions to individuals who have held a leadership, committee or board-level role in an organization working on community or social issues. These “engaged Americans” are not the general public but a far narrower slice of the American adult population—making up just 12 percent. Important constituents for foundations [...]
Finding #2: Limited Reach with Grantees
Engaged Americans are not the only ones that annual reports aren’t reaching. Compared to other information sources, foundation annual reports have limited reach with their own grantees. In fact, “grantees perceive annual reports to be much less helpful in learning about foundations than published funding guidelines, foundation websites, and individual communications and group meetings with [...]
Finding #3: Little Evaluation
Of the private foundations surveyed with assets of $500 million and above—those with the greatest resources to invest in communications —just 15% had conducted reader surveys to assess the effectiveness of their annual reports. The rest relied on anecdotal feedback and comments and/or website traffic, or they made “no attempt to assess effectiveness.” Source: Williams [...]
Finding #5: Practitioner Criticisms
Interviews with foundation communicators revealed some critical perspectives of annual reports. At the time of the interviews, 99% of foundation annual reports were still delivered as print publications, so most responses focused on printed reports. Some practitioners said they found the annual lens of yearly reports limiting since, in their opinion, social change does not [...]
Finding #6: Power of Inertia
Communication directors were asked how their foundation determines if it will develop an annual report each year. Of the 20 directors representing private foundations with assets of $500 million and above, 17 said “we always produce an annual report.” In other words, producing an annual report is taken as a given, never questioned as part [...]
Finding #8: Strengthens Transparency
Communication practitioners indicated that annual reporting continues to be a critical component of maintaining transparency and accountability to external and internal stakeholders. “A big part of transparency is simplifying and communicating grantmaking guidelines.” “Putting all of our grants on paper like this is a statement of transparency and accountability… it’s making it visible, on paper, [...]
Finding #9: Budget Drain
Much of the debate about annual reporting focuses on the extent of their benefits. But there’s also the big issue of cost. While we weren’t able to get reliable survey data on how much foundations invested in annual report development and production—most chose not to share that information—many questioned the cost-effectiveness of what can be [...]
Finding #10: Corporate Sector Spending Less
Foundations can take a cue from the corporate sector, which is significantly decreasing its investment in annual reports. More and more companies are downsizing from glossy annual reports to 10-K wraps (their 10-K reports plus a few pages of content). According to the National Investor Relations Institute, by 2002, 16% of companies had switched to [...]
