Printed booklet still tells strong story to members, outsiders, other association executives

What's glossy, colorful and filled with smiling CEOs?

Little

Jackson

Not just Fortune magazine, but the association annual report, too.

Even as distribution moves more to online and mobile formats, the printed annual report is still a key way for many associations to put their best feet forward for members, the board, other association executives and even outsiders and the media.

"It definitely serves as a cornerstone of member communications," Margaret Little, senior director of strategic initiatives at the National Retail Federation, told CEO Update. "It's like the Reader's Digest of our member value for the year."

Reports showcase advocacy work, association events throughout the year, media mentions and industry statistics. They typically have a strong feel-good element, as when the American Beverage Association plays up its lower-calorie initiatives or when the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers devotes pages to clean energy.

Most annual reports read like advertisements—where data cited (and there can be reams of it) is self-serving—but at least one association, the Financial Accounting Foundation, still provides pages and pages of audited financial statements and management's discussion and analysis of financial health.

"It's much more thorough and understandably arranged than the [IRS Form] 990 that we also file publicly," said John Pappas, FAF senior manager of media relations.

An award-winning effort

NRF's report comes out in January, with thousands of copies made available to 27,000 attendees of Retail's BIG Show, held annually in New York City. Copies are also mailed to all the association's 9,200 member companies.

Its latest report, for 2012, is designed like a small gift bag but some pages fold out to four times that size.

NRF, like other organizations, also puts the report online as a PDF, as it has for the past five years. But for the 2012 report, NRF added an interactive component, which earned a Gold Stevie Award in June from The American Business Awards. (The American Institute of CPAs won a Bronze Stevie for its online 2011-12 report.)

But Little said she doesn't see many organizations abandoning print.

"The trend is to produce a print piece and supplement it with something on the Web," she said.

A printed report also is more appropriate to share with other association CEOs. NRF mails copies to many association executives, including CEO Matthew Shay's fellow members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Association Committee of 100, Little said. Shay's peers also send their reports to each other. NRF gets valuable feedback from members and other CEOs, she said.

The association declined to estimate the cost of producing and printing the report other than to say it pays close attention to expenses. "It's an incredibly important investment in our storytelling," Little added.

CEO Update asked a Washington, D.C.-area printer who prints annual reports for associations to quote a price for 1,000 copies of a 20-page full color document. The printer, who asked not to be identified, said the cost would be about $4,200 but added that most jobs are a maximum of a few hundred copies. Mailing cost is additional.

Key for NRF in designing its communications is assessing its audience—who is visiting its website, where they click, and who is opening its emails.

"You should always analyze how your audience responds to messages and create a great project based on those findings," Little said.

‘I didn't know this'

One annual report that is not glossy but printed on heavy stock paper, with a muted beige cover and embossed letters, is the 2011 report of the Society for Human Resource Management. The report recapping 2012 is about to be published.

"We are a membership organization, and our members are very interested in what we do," Hank Jackson, SHRM CEO, told CEO Update. "It's to keep them informed as to how we're doing it, and what we're doing. Because we need feedback from our members, and quite often when they read the annual report, they say, ‘I didn't know that, I didn't know this.' And we will get feedback from them. ‘How does this work? How can I get involved?'"

Frank Scanlan, SHRM's director of organizational communication, said the annual report costs about $8,000 to $10,000 to produce and print. Content is produced in-house. "The big cost is printing," he said. But costs are declining as more reports are accessed online.

SHRM used to print 5,000 annual reports but in the past several years has printed just 2,000, he said.

"It's a leave-behind to show where we're investing our time and effort for the profession and individual members and as an introduction to the society," he said.

Many years ago the report was mailed to all members, which would be a tall order today given SHRM's membership of more than 250,000.