Organisations put huge amounts of time and effort into reports. Annual reports, impact reports, strategy documents. They contain important stories, real achievements, and work that affects people’s lives. And yet, once published, they often end up as long, text-heavy PDFs that very few people read properly.
That’s not because the work isn’t valuable. It’s because these documents are doing several difficult jobs at once.
- They need to satisfy governance and compliance requirements.
- They need to speak to multiple audiences with different levels of interest and expertise.
- They need to reflect the organisation accurately and responsibly.
- And they need to communicate clearly, not just exist.
For charities and non-profits in particular, these documents often carry additional scrutiny and responsibility.
That combination of requirements makes reports hard to organise, plan and complete. This applies whether you’re commissioning an annual report, impact report, or multi-year strategy document.
And it’s not just the jobs the document needs to do that make things complex. At the heart of most report projects are a series of tensions:
There is too often much content, and not everything can be treated as equally important. Deciding what to leave out, what to prioritise and where to place information can feel impossible.
Different stakeholders care about different things. Finance teams, leadership, programme leads, funders, and communications teams all bring different priorities and concerns. Agreeing on what matters most and whose input carries weight at different stages can be difficult.
The report is usually trying to speak to multiple external audiences. Supporters, partners, funders, regulators, and the general public may all encounter it in different ways. Trying to satisfy every audience equally often leads to documents that are cautious, dense, and hard to read.
Stories, data, and messaging all compete for space. Without clear priorities, planning and design have very little flexibility. Important stories are diluted by the need to say everything, and structure becomes a compromise rather than a choice.
By the time design starts, the document is often already very full. None of this means anyone has done anything wrong. It’s the reality of working on high-stakes documents with multiple stakeholders and audiences who all care deeply about the outcome.
What makes a report effective, not just compliant
Good reports are not defined by how much they include. They’re defined by how clearly they communicate. That usually means:
- Being clear about who the report is actually for. Proritising audiences can feel difficult and risky but it makes the communication more focused and effective. Are your readers time-poor? Are they data-literate? Do they want numerical evidence, or do they want to understand the impact through stories and voices?
- Deciding what really matters, and what supports it. A clear narrative or theme that runs through the report is a great tool for deciding what belongs, what can be reduced, and what can be left out. Stories and data then support that core message, rather than compete with it.
- Helping readers find their way through complex information. Lean on designers and copywriters to help pace and plan the information. Treat the document as a journey rather than a container. Balance dense information with ligher sections.
- Using strong hierarchy, so people can skim without missing the point. If someone only reads headings, pull quotes, and data visualisations, do they still get the gist of what you want to say?
- Giving important stories room to land. This can mean adding more pages to give important information space, it can mean reducing word counts, or finding alternative ways to tell these stories.
- Creating assets that can be reused beyond the PDF. There are heaps of people who won’t read the full document. Designing charts, illustrations, or summaries that can be reused on websites, presentations, or social channels helps your stories reach further.
Design can’t fix unclear thinking, but it can support good decisions and make them visible. The earlier you bring your designer in on these conversations the more you can lean on their expertise about how to manage tensions and create an effective report.
How to kick-start a report project
Before getting into formats or page counts, a few questions tend to make everything easier later
Who really needs to read this, and what do they need to take away? If you had to narrow the purpose of the report down to a single paragraph, what would it be? What do your key audience need to hear?
What would success look like for this document? Are you counting downloads, responses, fundraising, column inches? Or is it more about creating something the team can align around and feel proud of?
Who needs to be involved, and in what way? Who contributes content, who gives feedback, and who signs things off? The more people that you ask, the more opinions you’ll get, so being clear about roles and timing can help prevent design and planning by committee. Key people, such as Marketing Directors, Financial Directors or CEOs should be on board early and understand their role in the process.
How might this content live beyond the final report? What other channels do you have to deliver this information? How can you leverage them? Does the report need to be a document in the traditional sense? Could it be a graphic novel, a movie, a deck of cards, a microsite?
What assets do we need to tell these stories properly? Maybe you need to commission some photography, maybe a suite of illustrations. Maybe the document is part of a much larger push and needs a stronger identity of its own, turning it into a small branding project rather than a one-off layout. Do you need copywriting support? Data visualisation?
Thinking about these questions early doesn’t make the work smaller, but it often makes it clearer and more effective. It creates shared understanding across all parties before the detail sets in.
If you’re planning a report and it already feels complex or difficult to untangle, that’s normal. These documents benefit from early conversations, shared priorities, and clear decisions. Sometimes it’s useful just to talk through the thinking before committing to formats or timelines.
If you’d like to discuss how I can help with your next report design project, get in touch. I’d love to help you share your message with clarity, confidence, and impact
