Annual reports: Making an impact with your year-in-review

An annual report is more than just a checkbox on your yearly to-do list: it’s a chance to call attention to your organization’s biggest accomplishments, inspire confidence in stakeholders and reinforce your long-term vision. But writing one is complex and time consuming. It requires input from across your leadership team, strong messaging and a compelling theme to tie it all together.

So, what’s the secret to writing a winning annual report?

• Strategic concept development: Your annual report should have a creative theme that reflects the character of your year and aligns with your organization’s strategic communications objectives.
• Great storytelling: A well-conceived narrative transforms operational data and activity summaries into a captivating story that will resonate and stay with readers. A journalistic approach helps here, as does having a deep understanding of the company and its goals so you can reinforce them throughout the report.
• Purposeful design: By selecting the right layout of text and visuals, your annual report will not only be visually engaging but also look professional and be more accessible to those with visual impairments.

The Ascribe advantage

Our team has led the development of and authored hundreds of annual reports over the years, turning a corporate obligation into a compelling story of an organization’s year. We make it happen through:

• Efficient project management: Our dedicated production and project management team plans and tracks your annual report’s development to ensure every milestone and deadline is met.
• Sharp interviewing: We lead facilitated discussions and interviews with leadership teams to gather perspective, learn about your activities, and identify key messages and themes.
• End-to-end support: As well as writing the annual report, we can partner with a design agency to take you through to layout, then proofread to ensure an error-free final product.

We can also help you transition your annual reports to a digital format, simplifying access and distribution while unlocking dynamic features like video case studies, animations and interactive data visualizations.

Leave it to Ascribe to tell the story of your year — and guide the process from start to finish. Our team has completed annual reports, sustainability reports, corporate social responsibility reports, corporate plans and similar strategic documents for many public and private sector clients, including the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, the National Research Council of Canada and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Green Municipal Fund.