Subject: Inspiring annual reports

I don't have loads of answers to your questions WEditor but would love to hear other people's thoughts. I work with a number of charities on their online comms and I'm particularly interested in people's opinions about using their website as the main publishing channel for the annual report and trying to use this opportunity to make it interactive.

The British Heart Foundation's Annual Report from 2010 is nice. Great interactivity and inclusion of video.  Would be interesting to know how this complemented any paper version they produced.

For the past two years Quarriers have produced their Annual Review online. Not sure it's completely there yet but it is evolving in the right direction.

http://www.quarriersannualreview.org.uk/index.html

What do you think?

Great article - thanks! A BBC department (sorry! I can't remember which. World Service??) apparently decided not to print as usual, and only to have online version.

We're a tiny charity and last year, in addition to the usual dull dull version for Charity Commission & Companies House, I used Photobox to design an Annual Review. We printed a few copies for our funders, trustees & main supporters, and it's accessible via our website or Photobox:

http://bit.ly/brightar2009

So people can look at it online or buy individual copies. We've found this great in terms of time and costs.

Another useful article about Annual Reports in Guardian's Voluntary Sector Network - How to make your annual report a success by Lasa's Zoe Amar.

We'll be launching the KnowHow Impact Report in a couple of weeks - watch this space!

If you are looking for more detailed advice, the Guardian's Voluntary Sector Network are having a live Q&A on Tuesday 26 July between 1-3 discussing annual reports. Add your questions for the expert panel now!

They have now published the best bits from the discussion which contains lots of great examples and suggestions.

And our Impact Report is now ready to share with you.

Hi

I think it is so important to have an interesting annual report, this is a charity's (espcially a small one) chance to shout about its achievements. As we all know there are over 160,000 registered charities out there, it would be very boring if they were all in black and white.

At Dave Squared volunteering we did our normal annual report - see here.

Then we also created this video to show what we've been upto. Its only a short overview but it gives people a taste. It is also a fantastic promotional tool for us.

Let me know your thoughts.

I've also been impressed with some of the other annual reports on this thread, very inspiring!

Dave

Here's another neat way of sharing your annual report highlights. Knowledge, support and resources charity Lasa have produced an infographic to support their 2011 Annual Review.

I've just come across Welsh homeless charity The Wallich's amazing annual report done like a graphic novel. Inspiring stuff.