Designing annual reports that people read

Annual reports have become one of the most expensive—and least read—projects nonprofits produce.They’re often treated like a compliance task: dense, polite, exhaustive, and forgettable.

In this episode we ask a different question: What if your annual report actually added value to your audience’s life?

Drawing on principles of journalism, Hillary explores how nonprofit leaders can shift from acting like summarizers to thinking like magazine editors. She breaks down why so many reports feel like catalogs of activity instead of narratives of learning, and offers a practical playbook for building a cohesive theme, a compelling arc, and content that teaches rather than just documents.

You’ll also hear from the leadership team at Moncus Park Conservancy in Lafayette, Louisiana—Executive Director JP MacFayden, Development Director Victoria Alleman, and Marketing & Communications Director Mary Allie McGoffin—as they share how redesigning their annual report changed the way their audience interacts with their work.

Guests: 

JP MacFadyen is the Executive Director of Moncus Park in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he has led the organization since 2021. Before stepping into the role of Executive Director, JP served as Operations Director, where he helped oversee construction and built the foundation for day-to-day operations.

A native of Pittsburgh, JP holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA in Operations from the University of Houston. Earlier in his career, he served as a space shuttle flight operations specialist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, specializing in propulsion and de-orbit systems.

Victoria Alleman is the Development Director at Moncus Park. In her role, Victoria leads fundraising and partnership development, securing more than $2 million annually from community leaders and repeat supporters. Before joining Moncus Park, Victoria worked across fast-paced industries and in investor relations at One Acadiana, where she developed a systems-level view of economic development and leadership. In 2023, she was recognized as one of Acadiana's Top 20 Under 40. Victoria earned her B.S.B.A. in Marketing in 2014 and her MBA in 2024. 

Mary Allie McGoffin is the Marketing and Communications Director at Moncus Park, where she leads the storytelling, brand strategy, and public-facing communications. With a background spanning graphic design, branding, digital marketing, and public-sector communications, Mary Allie brings both creative fluency and strategic discipline to her work. Before joining Moncus Park, she spent nearly a decade as a freelance graphic designer and media consultant, working with local governments, nonprofits, and political campaigns across Louisiana to design campaigns that informed, mobilized, and connected communities. She holds a degree in Organizational Communication from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and is known for her ability to translate complex ideas into clear, compelling stories that invite people into shared civic life.

Transcript

My name is Hillary Frances, and one of the things I've been thinking about is that the collateral we create should add value to our audience's life. I think we've coasted on the assumption that people read what we produce in the social sector because they're altruistic and they have been our donors and partners patiently weighed through our reports, our website, our brochures, flipping the pages, regardless of how little. They gain from the task. But what would happen if we created collateral that met a need for our audience, if we thought of it as a resource in the same way we think of our favorite news outlets or podcasts, and the best place to start the most expensive project we take on every year are annual reports. Today's episode, how to design annual reports that people read. 

You're listening to tailwinds ideas, fueling nonprofit innovators and social entrepreneurs. Tailwinds is a project that brings momentum to the leaders tackling the world's most impossible problems. Today's episode has two parts. Part one, I will show you how to shift your thinking from a summarizer to a magazine editor. In order to design an annual report that adds value. Part two, you'll hear pieces of my conversation with the leadership team at Moncus Park in Lafayette, Louisiana, who have a new approach to how they design their report and how it's changing the way their audience interacts with it. By the end of this episode, you'll have notes that take you through the full outline for your next report. 

So part one, I see a few common problems in the way we approach our nonprofit reporting cycles. First, these reports often lack a cohesive theme. We have a tendency to churn out annual reports that read less like a narrative and more like a miscellaneous collection of photos and facts. We also describe our programming in a way that makes it seem like we've been collecting our programs rather than designing them. Each program or project is described with lovely photos and data, but without a connection to why these programs exist, why these programs exist, the report can feel more like a catalog than a narrative journey. We also list our accomplishments without explaining how these accomplishments fit into our plan. In short, we're great at making our organization look busy and popular and generous and well-funded, but we are not great at demonstrating our expertise and that expertise can bring value to our audience when we reflect on what we're learning. 

So imagine if your report carried your audience through a series of articles, interviews, editorials, call out boxes and lists of curated favorites, all centering a cohesive theme. In order to pull this off, we must start thinking like a magazine editor who's designing a compelling narrative arc across the issue. Or a journalist who's bringing us something they've researched all year. When piecing together an addition of a magazine, editors rely on big picture thinking to identify the theme or focus of the issue. They might ask questions like, what's relevant right now? What story do we want to tell? Or What does our audience care about? Then they design a compelling narrative arc across the issue. They use journalistic techniques to educate, inform, and inspire. Rather than drive sales or donations, journalistic techniques also include new style writing, investigative storytelling, thought leadership. 

So here's my playbook for applying journalism to the design of an annual report. Start by identifying the story you want to tell. Consider what defined the past year for your organization. Whether it was a major challenge, a significant achievement, or a common thread in your work. This becomes a theme that will be a North Star throughout the entire report. As readers, we connect with a piece of writing when we understand the theme. So if we want readers to understand our impact from the year, we should convey it cohesively and repetitively throughout the piece. The unique problem we're solving as an organization makes a great theme. How we're breaking the mold could be another theme. Another theme, voices from the front lines. Instead of writing in your brand's typical voice, create content from the perspectives of program participants, staff, volunteers. Another theme, the power of partnerships. Describe how strategic collaborations have helped you move your mission forward. After you have your theme, you can start curating the pieces of the report. Typically we begin a report with a letter from the organization's leader. Raise your hand if you read those. I don't. They're typically less informative than the organization's contact information on the back. 

Here are my top 10 most commonly observed phrases in the intro letter That would make a fun Bingo card. We face unprecedented times. We are proud to report every day. I am inspired. We are excited to share. We are on a journey. We are at a crossroads. We still have a long way to go. Our work is more important than ever as we look forward, but the future is bright. A letter from your organization's leader can be the first introduction to the narrative, to the theme If you do it well. It can be the first piece of journalism in the report. Consider using it as an editorial on something the leader is learning related to the theme. The next section of your port should set up the problem you're solving as an organization and your unique solution. This is also the section where you can restate your mission and vision. Think of this section as the foundation of your story that clarifies your unique strategic edge. You could even say things like, while most organizations approach the problem this way. We are learning that our best approach is this. In the following pages, you'll see the progress we're making with this new approach. 

So the beginning of your report includes the letter from your leader and an overview of who you are and how you're unique. As we move into the middle section of your annual report, this is where the heart of your narrative unfolds. This is the space to demonstrate how your organization has tackled the challenge you introduced in the beginning. Through program highlights, impact, stories, and key achievements, you'll illustrate the progress made and bring the core story to life. The middle of your report should focus on the milestones, turning points and the day-to-day work that moved your mission forward over the past year. So let's talk about reporting metrics in your report. When writing the metrics numbers section for a narrative driven annual report, we often make a massive list of metrics that have no connection to why those numbers are important or what they mean. You've seen these pages. We don't want to solely show how busy we've been. We also want to show the quality of the work or the way lives or places or things were changed. So consider including only a handful of outputs and then your core outcomes. And for each metric, include a sentence or two describing why your organization measures that. What you're learning from the number, the middle section of our report also includes pages of program highlights, success stories, or event recaps. Often these pieces read like standalone achievements or disconnected updates. Instead, these pages can be used to build on the central narrative you've introduced. 

Here's some ideas for the middle section of your report inspired by organizations I've worked with recently, interviews with participants, served with questions that align with the theme of the report. Editorials about a topic that surrounds your work, like building a post pandemic economy, shifting trends in community mental health. What we're learning from college students about the recent election, you could also do behind the scenes, showcases what it looks like to see your team at work. One organization I know did a feature of an apprentice and highlighted how she spends her day off as a way to get to know her. You could do a narrative walking tour of the community in which you are located that features how you interact with partners or neighbors along the way. You could offer how-tos, like call out boxes that offer something you have expertise in to your readers. This could be a recipe you've created as an organization, a meeting agenda outline, a guided meditation. Steps for deescalating a conflict, a list of favorite soil amendments. Offer your expertise and remember to curate how-tos that align with the theme of the narrative. 

As we approach the final section of your annual report, it's time to bring the narrative to a meaningful close. This section should not only summarize your achievements, but also show how the lessons and experiences of the past year will shape the direction of your organization moving forward. By tying everything back to the core story, you'll leave readers with a clear sense of progress and what comes next. A few common sections that appear toward the end of your report, so we have your financials in a narrative driven annual report like the one we're talking about, the financial section should go beyond just listing numbers and charts. It should tell a story about how your organization's resources were used to advance your mission. Highlight how the funding was allocated to key programs and initiatives, so instead of presenting the numbers in isolation, you could explain what they mean for the organization's work. For example, if a large portion of funding went to a new initiative, explain how that investment helped tackle the problem you introduced earlier in the report. We also have a thank you section for a narrative driven annual report. The thank you page should do more than list names. It should express gratitude in a way that ties back to your organization's story. Begin by briefly acknowledging the vital role supporters, donors and community partners played in advancing your mission. And instead of simply listing names, consider including a few lines about how their contributions directly impacted the work highlighted in the report. Not for each person, but for the list collectively. There's also a section about your team. You can introduce key team members by explaining their roles and how their efforts contributed to the impact described throughout the report. For example, ask each team member to answer a question related to your theme. So if the theme was on innovation, you could ask each team member. If you could invent a robot to do anything, what would it do? You can list your board members' names, but you could also write a how to here in this section, like our board members' recipe for the best board meeting of the year. And then include an agenda or questions to answer that they found resulted in their best board meeting of the year. This has the bonus of giving a little insight into what your board is working on, which also showcases your expertise. 

So in summary, consider how each page of your report can add value. To your readers. We do this by thinking like a magazine editor or journalist. I've even collected my favorite magazines and newspapers, physical copies, and had them open on my desk while working on an annual report. Identify the articles, pieces. Call out boxes that you love in your favorite magazines, and then replicate them in your report. But don't just do this to be clever. Do this because your team is a brain trust, a valuable insight that you can offer the world. This is the content that we need from the social sector. Everything else will feel like a compliance project that's vacant of the organization's life force. 

Now we're going to hear from a team that is working on applying the principles of journalism and value add content to their annual report projects. Moncus Park Conservancy is a nonprofit that stewards the care of an urban park in Lafayette, Louisiana. I first met the team at Moncus Park in 2023 and have worked with them on a number of different projects, one of which was a process for redesigning their annual report. You're going to hear from their executive director, JP MacFadyen, their development director, Victoria Alleman, and their marketing and communications director, Mary Allie McGoffin. All three of them played a strong part in the design of this report, and they've all benefited from it in different ways. Now, I want you to know a few things about this team. This is a highly professional team. They are three of the leaders on a team of 34 staff. They oversee a hundred acres and about a $3 million budget every year. And one thing that stands out to me about the three of them. Is that they're both deeply grounded in practicality, but never run out of creative energy. You'll hear it in our conversation, but please know that this conversation is not a performance. This is what it's like to be in a team meeting with the three of them on any given Thursday day.


So we'll start with Mary Allie. How did you design your annual reports in the past and tell us a little bit about your process in the past.


So, Moncus Park has only been open for four years. was actually our first true annual report, which. Made the process feel really significant and it definitely felt like, you know, a lot of pressure.

It's hard to develop annual reports for parks. What did you experience with this project that was hard in particular, because you all are a park, you don't have the same kind of impact that like an organization serving the unhoused. They would have an easier time talking about impact. They would've an easier time telling emotional stories. So why is it hard

I think for me the, the hardest thing, of course was the content and, and how do we share all of the things that we do in a cohesive way, right? Because of course we are a park, and of course we care about nature, but we also are such an active park and there's so many community events and we're constantly just bringing people together. So how do we share all of these things in one document that's not overwhelming. That was by far my original challenge and the hardest challenge was how to organize it and how to really showcase that we're not just a green space that's caring for nature. We're, we're doing that of course, but we're also doing much more in terms of wellness and community and belonging.

Yeah, one of the hardest things that we wrestled with is how to convey the difference between how busy you all are and how effective you are. And that concept of effective for a park organization is particularly puzzling. So maybe Victoria or jp, do you wanna chime in on what part of this was hard for you?

Sure. I think, as a public private partnership with the city, a nonprofit, a conservancy, running this space for the public. That's just a new concept. I mean, people's idea of how a park operates is like, well, there are some tax dollars, and, lo and behold things happen and it obviously, it's a lot more complicated when it's a nonprofit. But I do think, you know, what really unlocked it for us to work with you around this idea of like, start with impact, think about outcomes, and create a narrative. So people wanna pick it up. And browse through it versus like, oh yeah, it's another one of those things, you know, into the corner

Piggybacking both on Mary Allie and JP. I think to your point of the busyness versus effectiveness and how we actually make an impact out of that. Knowing that we do so much and instead of just listing it out in a bulleted fashion for people to just run through that was not the intention. And again, echoing JP of the work that we did with you, creating a narrative to tie each metric, each data point into a story, and as the development side, that in turn helps. Tell that story to donors to see their impact I think it is tricky because we do so many different things here within the park and there's such a variety of things it presented problems, but beautiful problems in the sense of, it allowed us to really nail down what we can improve on just in the fact of our active programs. We're now able to really implement a strategic tracking system for those, for our. Free yoga on Wednesday nights. We have now processes and systems in place to track that to make this annual reporting easier for our team year after year Now.

So impressive. I wanna tell folks a little bit about your process of choosing outcomes because for anyone working in the environmental or conservation sector, this is hard. And, urban parks also have a, uniquely difficult challenge with outcomes and just like what are the categories of work that you do? The obvious answer would be, we do environmental work and we do community work. But you all have slightly different categories than that, and we've been through several rounds of wrestling with those categories. I'm actually looking at one of our old. Documents where we were working on your case for support, and at that time we had health and wellness, community and belonging, nature and sustainability. And then this one called Legacy and stewardship. So let me ask JP about. The categories of work and the pillars that organize your outcomes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, we're in our fifth year, so prior to opening to the public from a park standpoint or a landscape architecture standpoint, we had a. A, a vision document that in the landscape world is called a master plan typically, we didn't really have any organizing principles about how we're gonna run this place. So we did some early work, of really thinking about impact, mission, vision, impact, where are we gonna land on all that? And people that were part of the organization at that time are like, how do we start to, how do we start to categorize this? So the categories are really our pillars, and it does tie nicely to our idea of outcomes in that the external pillars really focus on that nature. Sustainability, which, that makes sense from a, a urban park perspective, and wellness. It's not just physical wellness, it's emotional wellness. It's spiritual wellness. It's, mental wellness. It's all of those pieces together. And then finally, community and belonging that really helps us it just organizes for, for other people. Like, okay, what do y'all do? Oh, I get it. Okay. These are the three, 'cause we're trying to tell a different story than. A typical parks and rec kind of environment, it leans into this whole other idea that comes outta really, an urban planning concept of you gotta be safe, clean, and welcoming first. Then you you know, gotta make sure all the trash is picked up. Then you gotta make sure that the grass is cut and then you gotta have working restrooms. So you, you layer all these things up to where you finally are able to do a Christmas event and people will come to it. But, that's internal, that's not, that doesn't get people excite. That's the blocking and tackling that we do behind the scenes to ensure that we can successfully run a park.

I kind of see you all growing along this, Maslow's hierarchy of needs for park conservancies. Like the very, the, yeah, the very basic bottom of the pyramid is your clean, safe, and what was the third thing?

Welcoming.

Clean, safe, and welcoming. You all are working at the top levels already in your short history, you're already creating these transformational goals for yourselves that are about how people's lives are changed, how the ecosystem is changed versus just let's keep the grass green. Has someone already created a Maslow for Parks?

I mean, it really is that theory you know, if you aren't safe, clean, and welcome that, that's right's a hierarchy, right? You're not gonna have people show up if you don't have a clean restroom. Right.

So why you don't wanna be talking about yoga until the But in this day and age in 2026, you can't just a clean space. In for urban spaces what are you competing with for kids? You're competing with the screen. We like to be either on the top of the list or the bottom of the list in Louisiana, like childhood diabetes. Why are we number one in childhood diabetes? cause we eat a lot of fried food and we sit in front of screens and it's too hot in the and play. It's like, how do we flip that? So, I mean, we're working with our, one of the hospital systems to, to figure out how to help with that, wanting to prescribe Moncus Park to the kids, so,

Yeah. It's a really neat concept, that we're working on together, creating a whole website for it. They have an app, the hospital system has an app, and the parents almost get some type of. Voucher if they check in a certain amount of time. So in between, appointments and it's being led by the head of childhood obesity for the system. But the doctor that's the head of it she's like, I have a dream that all the pediatric physicians within our practice and within the hospital system help prescribe the park. And parents have to check in so that at each appointment they're like, okay, you went three times over the past month. Let's up it to five next time before the next appointment. So. Could be a really neat thing that we work on together. Hillary, just so you know, there's some really fun like interactive elements to where the family would receive maybe some like color wheel. They could go to the farmer's market and buy something red, like a tomato, or buy something green like a zucchini. So it's gonna be interactive for both. Mm-hmm. Kids, for the whole family, they can do it together.

Wow. And just so folks know, this relates to the goal you all set. By 2028, 85% of wellness program participants will report improved physical, emotional, or mental wellbeing as a result of their engagement with Moncus Park. So.

Was, that's reached out to the hospital system and said, look, we're not in the space to collect. data on this, how are there any initiatives that you're working on that we could tie in? And that's what it's called. The, grow healthy Initiative, G-R-E-A-U-X, because we're Cajun and we like to do things a little different, but, that's really what's sprouted out of that conversation. So it's, it it stay tuned.

Mm-hmm. That's fascinating. Um, well, maybe our next interview we'll do is about how you measure outcomes for a park, because this is hard and you're, you're creative.

Yep.

In this episode, I'm encouraging people to not have. A catalog of different stories that are exciting, but don't connect instead that the, the stories should all somehow relate to an overarching theme in order for us to feel like we're reading a narrative rather than glancing through a catalog. As you think about putting together a cohesive set of stories for a report, what will be your process in the future? How, how will you decide on a theme or decide on a, a common thread that will thread all of your stories together?

I think the, the number one starting point for that is actual. Story collection, right?

Okay.

Is getting the stories whether that's our program partners or our staff or our farmer's market vendors. I think the first step is really talking to these people and getting those stories, reporting them, and then looking at what you have and then determining a theme. So that will be my process for this year. It does sort of feel like last year that I had to find these stories and put these things together, whereas looking ahead to this year, you know, with starting with collection of data and collection of stories, it's almost feels easier that way. And that the story presents itself. The narrative presents itself. And then we're able to categorize those stories and that data into those pillars. I think to Mary Ali's point of collecting those stories if you present and you go into opportunities with a, I don't know how to say it, but a storytelling goggle lens of life, what magic that can create and how easy that is to then narrate an annual report to share those stories with the. Wider audience.

I can picture you all having your stories up on the wall and look standing back and looking at them and saying, what is this telling us? Yes.

Yeah.

In what pillar is this aligned with? Yes. Yeah. Well then let's talk about the final product of your last report, what are you most proud of from it?

It's funny 'cause I, I wanted it to feel like a magazine, right? Like something that you, that is really beautiful that people actually wanna flip through. my first few thoughts were like I wanted it colorful like a park. I wanted the photos to, to be truly representative of the park. Now when I look at it, almost a year later, it feels like the park, it feels simple to read and transparent and open and beautiful and colorful. It feels to me like a, a visual representation of the actual park.

You should be proud of that.

Mm-hmm. Thanks. Well, okay, first I'll go geeky um, pie charts. Oh, here we go. So, so, you know, as a public private entity and the fact that we do get some money from the state, but you know, you have to be an accountant or a finance major. I mean, it's a lot of numbers and it's just a lot of garbling go for most people. this was really our first, opportunity to how can we tell this story in a way that. transparent and true and correct, but lets people understand that when we charge $2 for parking, it's really important, uh, to collect that money. Or why would I wanna become a member of the park for, $12 a month or whatever. So this is just like a really good benchmark baseline of this is the facts and it ties to those legislative, audits. That's my little, that's my little geeky one, but when I zoom out, the thing that I'm really most proud of is the fact that when people saw this for the first time, their first question was, oh, what agency did you use?

no This was our team. of pulling this all together. I mean we created this thing, which is pretty special. And I think. Thanks to the work with you, Hillary, what that's allowed us to do is also feel confident that we own our own stories, we own our own outcomes, we deliver on those, and then we get to report on it and feel really proud when we show that to the community versus oh, we'll just ask somebody else. Mm-hmm. To put, put this together. Is it a lot of work? Does it take up a, a lot of time during first quarter? Um, is it, is it worth it?

Victoria, how it's helpful for fundraising in a new way.

I love about this job is I get to have meetings outside and not in a boardroom, which is just a luxury, right? You get to walk or go swing or climb a tree house with a donor. And one thing that is really neat and that I found the annual report extremely helpful was during these walks around the park, I would have the annual report to be able to reference. When a donor leaves the park they're not leaving empty handed. They have this beautiful magazine type of annual report to bring back and I would always joke with donors of, look, this is your next coffee or wine glass read, flip through it and enjoy.

The last part here is about introducing this concept of thinking like journalists and compile pieces of content that are helpful to our audience. Journalists create content that is a value add. It's not meant to entertain. It's meant to educate, inform, or inspire and so we use different techniques than typically we see in the nonprofit sector. Investigative storytelling, thought leadership. I even am in this episode, I'm even giving the example of like having call out boxes where we teach our audience how to do something. In your case, how to divide iris clumps. So that your irises don't die, or, or, our favorite fertilizer brands, top 10 fertilizers for your lawn, or even like how to do yoga. When it's windy. Um, but so my question for Mary Ali is if you were to assume the role of magazine editor for next year's report project, how would you direct the project and what elements are you excited to include?

Hillary, it's actually just, just kind of pointed to a line that was, I think it's all in our brains right now. And the line was what the park taught us. Um, and I think that, as the park grows, it's not just about what's new. It's sort of about how we are learning to grow with this community, we are learning here, and how can we teach and share that, are we able to accommodate 15,000 visitors a week? What does that look like? How are we able to restore native habitats and trails and sharing with the community what we learned the data and stories that support that.

Yeah, that's a form of journalism, right? Editorials where someone's reflecting on the state of the world and what they're learning from it, and we don't often see that in annual reports, so I love that. If we look back on, the last project, what are some pieces that if you had had more time, you would've included in that addition?

More stories from people like volunteer, Mr. Clint, who comes here every single morning at 7:00 AM who is 85 years old, who picks up trash, what is his perspective, or, um, someone like Ms. Francis who sells homemade pies every Saturday morning and this is her only source of income. diving deeper and going in another level of users and who use this space, in different ways, I was thinking about living with water, um, that's a big theme in South Louisiana. Drainage and flooding and, um. I wouldn't say I'm the thought leader on this, but there are people that work at the park that are thought leaders on this. How you live with water in South Louisiana. The view 30, 50 years ago was you build a, you build a levee or you put up a concrete wall. You, you try to get it away from you. And the reality that we're learning in the park is are nature-based solutions allow homeowners businesses. Governments, to lean into, solutions that come from nature than, and I'm an engineer, so rather than an engineering sort of mind engineering first mindset, if you will. So I think we could lean into a lot more, not only in the annual report, but also, we are doing that already in the park, but we'll continue to do even more.

Yeah. I'm so in awe of you all.

We're thankful for you. Yes. We could not without you Seriously. Mm-hmm. Like,

yes, you could. Yeah.

could have, but not not Mm-hmm. And this is a standard we strive for and you helped us get there.

The social sector needs us to generate ideas, to teach us things, to shape our perspectives, to give us new things to practice at home. We're getting that content from our news sources. From social media, from our kids' schools, but not from the social sector. That's because as nonprofit leaders, we've been operating as if we need to stay in some sort of lane as if we don't have meaningful insight to share with the world from what we're learning in our organizations. Let your annual report be a channel for communicating your learning, your expertise, and your perspective. More so than filling in the blanks that we have filled in for the past several decades. Tailwinds is a production of Flying Whale Strategies, a consulting firm that is equipping teams to solve impossible problems. A special thank you to the Moncus Park team for sharing your annual report experience with us. Everyone, please do yourselves a favor and visit their website to experience the report, including bird sounds that accompany it at moncuspark.org. That's M-O-N-C-U-S-P-A-R k.org. If you'd like to learn more about Flying Whale Strategies, please visit our website at flyingwhalestrategies.com. Thanks for listening.