Sway potential donors with a compelling annual report that demonstrates how funding helps your ministry make a greater long-term community impact.
The Value of Completing Annual Program Reports
Sitting down and considering program details can be challenging when you’re right in the middle of tackling a grant application. This task, however, is made easy with the practice of writing annual reports.
Annual reports are a powerful tool for grant seekers.
If completed consistently, these reports offer ministry leaders the tool to accurately track program details. These details are compelling evidence to demonstrate how funding helps a church impact its community in a greater measure.
When your hands are actively involved in ministry, it’s easy to forget all the details of what your program has completed, goals achieved and accomplishments attained over time. Run the program for multiple years, and these critical details become a blur.
Take the time to track key metrics and program details consistently throughout the year, and then summarize all the information in a concise annual report. This practice will equip your grant writer to write about the program’s current efforts and its history.
The purpose of an annual report
The annual report offers you an opportunity to brag about your successes, plus strategically ensure that a program’s history is recorded yearly. These annual reports are a grant writer’s best friend, as they provide immediate access to the “evidence” needed to persuade grantors on the long- and short-term impact a program has on its community.
The following components should be included in your program’s annual report.
Photographs
Photographer Destin Sparks is quoted as saying “Photography is the story I fail to put into words.” Photos will tell the story of what your program is doing and its impact on individual lives. So, be sure to take pictures throughout the year and use them to substantiate the impact your program has on the community. Strategically place actual program photographs throughout the annual report. There is also merit to mentioning that your website and social media posts should be a running record of your program.
Cover letter
Write a cover letter from the pastor and/or program leader. This letter should include a welcome section, and then provide a brief history of the program, its primary activities, main objectives, mission and vision.
Secondly, this letter should summarize the program’s financial picture from the past year, identifying its income and expenses. You may also elect to compare the current year’s financial performance to preceding years.
Third, this letter should highlight key achievements attained during the year and factors that contributed to the program’s success. And, it should summarize critical conditions that affected the program’s operation, and the steps taken to adapt to these challenges and/or changes.
Additionally, this letter should share the upcoming plans and goals for the program. Will you increase the number of individuals served, change program elements, or focus on meeting new goals?
Finally, this letter should acknowledge and voice appreciation for all the employees, volunteers, supporters and partners that make this program successful.
Mission and Vision
Your program’s mission and vision statements need to be clearly stated. As you want to keep your annual report readable, this is a great page to add in photos that portray your mission and vision in action.
Impact
A program or project’s impact refers to the effect or result it has on individuals’ lives. The impact may be either a quantitative or qualitative result. As implied by its definition, quantitative measures a quantity, amount, or number, whereas qualitative measures its quality or benefit.
To better understand these concepts in grant writing language, a quantitative result may measure:
How many people were affected? Influenced? served?
How many different events occurred?
How many lessons were taught?
How many meals were served? And so forth.
A qualitative result may track the change, benefit or improvement that occurred because of your program activities. In other words, what happened as a result of your program?
Was knowledge gained?
Were skills increased or broadened?
Were behaviors or attitudes changed or improved?
Were resources saved?
Did any social improvements occur?
To report on your program’s impact, it will be essential to track key metrics and data. By consistently tracking critical data, you will be able to pull meaningful information for an annual report, and subsequently a grant narrative.
Let’s start with your program’s participants. By tracking participant names, sex, age, and racial/ethnicity data, you’ll be able to track:
Participant age range, average age, median age
Percentages of male: female
Percentages of racial/ethnic groups served
This data validates your program’s non-discrimination and equal opportunity policies.
Next, you’ll want to accurately maintain attendance or participation records. By tracking attendance, you’ll be able to speak to:
Percentage increase or decrease in participation
Attendance can also be identified by age, sex, racial/ethnicity demographics
Total unique number of individuals served over the year
Average attendance per event or activity
Average number of times each participant attends (return visits)
By recording this information year over year, you’ll be able to historically compare this data and demonstrate the growth and sustainability of your program with factual evidence.
Consider this example:
You can report: Our program has grown incrementally over the past three years.
Or: Our program grew by a staggering 150% over the past three years, with participants attending an average of 5 out of 8 monthly events.
Numbers powerfully and concisely convey impact.
It’s also critical to remember that each grantor funds initiatives that align with their mission and vision. While some grantors seek to positively impact the socially disadvantaged, other grantors focus on either children, youth, mothers, fathers or elders. Then, some grantors target social issues, such as poverty, homelessness, hunger, addictions, single parenting, education, physical and mental health, and so forth.
To be prepared to report your program’s impact on social issues, your program’s participant records should track the following data:
Household income levels (poverty, low, medium, upper)
Household composition (single parent, two-parent, blended family, adoption/foster)
Veteran status
Social vulnerabilities (smoking, drug usage, alcohol consumption, homeless, incarceration, gang activity, teen pregnancy/sexual activity, domestic violence)
Disabilities
Serious illnesses
Maintaining up-to-date records on this information enables your program to record exactly who and how your program positively improves these social vulnerabilities.
The Work
This section will concentrate on describing what your program offers, its primary activities or events and its core objectives. Start with a 1 - 2 sentence executive summary of your program’s work. An example would be: Empowered Youth works year-round to help 200 youth become competent, caring and confident citizens, with the aim to be the next generation of leaders.
You’ll want to share details about your program activities and events. When writing this description, consider the program elements that make your program special, unique and high-quality, and how these activities help the participants. After the description, add some key statistics that highlight your efforts. These statistics might identify:
The number of recurring events held each week, month, even totals for the year,
The duration of each event, and total time serving individuals for the year
The number of different activities offered and completed
The number of lessons taught and the number of students that completed lessons
The number of subjects or topics covered
The number of meals served and/or the number of people served
The number of materials handed out
Then, consider the core objectives of your program. What did you set out to accomplish and did you reach your intended goals. In other words, if your goal was to serve 200 youth, did you? If your goal was to operate your program year-round, were you able? If your goal was to affect positive change, such as competency, caring and confidence in participants, did you accomplish this end?
If your program faced any challenges during the year, then this is a great place to expound on any obstacles faced. Topic discussion points might include: what the challenges were, why they became challenges, how you overcame or responded to them, plus what you learned as a result of these challenges. Did these challenges cause you to change your program focus, adjust any program elements, or gain new operational insights?
Stories of Us
This is the section where you’ll share information about your staff, volunteers and participants. Take the time to share stories of the real people involved in changing their community. Some questions that this section may answer include:
Why does this program matter to them? How has volunteering affected them personally?
How many volunteers serve in your program?
What are your volunteer demographics?
How many hours of service has been donated?
What is the dollar value of those donated hours?
What responsibilities do the volunteers have?
What skills do they bring to the table?
Next, share real stories of the individuals positively impacted by your program. Personal testimonies bring home the WHY behind your program.
Finally, this is a great section to incorporate photos taken throughout the year!
Financials
While a summary statement may have been included in the introduction letter, this section will want to share the actual financial reports. One critical financial report to include is a 3- or 5-year financial analysis, including income, expense and net assets. Additional financial reports to include are an income and expense report for the current year, along with an operational budget.
As a key point, you may highlight a statement that discloses what percentage of income goes directly to supporting that program.
What’s Ahead
Every high-quality program endeavors to set 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year goals. What do you seek to accomplish? Take the time to share what your program will endeavor to do over a set time period.
Thank You to all Supporters
Take the time to write a statement of gratitude to every sponsor. These sponsors may include volunteers, in-kind donors, cash donars, and grant funders. It is an exceptional opportunity to list every sponsor by name, whether it's an individual, business or organization, organizing this list under categories.
Awards and Endorsements
Use this section to identify any awards, endorsements, accreditations, and recognitions that your church and/or program has received.
If your program conducts a satisfaction survey, then this is an excellent section to reference the results.
Leadership Team
Every successful high-quality program rests on its leadership. This is the time to identify the key leaders for the church and its programs. Include a photo, plus brief bio of each individual.
Get Involved
This last section is a call to action. Tell readers how they can help support the programs and projects that your church operates.
There are four ways that you may request people get involved with the success of your program: visit, volunteer, sponsor or partner. Identify when individuals may freely visit your program to see it in action. You may also promote the need for additional volunteers. Explain the types of volunteer service that is available. Finally, your program may need sponsors and partners. Sponsors and partners may help support your program through funding, in-kind donation of items, equipment and supplies, providing technical expertise, marketing efforts, or writing letters of support.
Dcoble. (n.d.). ENGL 1010 Electronic Version: Successful Writing Section 10.9: Persuasion. Lumen. Retrieved January 3, 2023, from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sunycorning1010elec201718/chapter/the-persuasive-essay/
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