The NonProfit Times | May, 15, 2003
The Leading Business Publication For Nonprofit Management

Disc Continued?
Annual report foregoes paper for CDs

The annual report paper ream is often so bulky that you would have to be Turkish strongman Naim “Pocket Hercules” Suleymanoglu to lift it. That says nothing of the task of filtering through page after page of words and numbers that the eyes eventually meld into forms that may as well be Sanskrit.

Taking these hazards into consideration, Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis (CCSM) released its 2002 annual report on CD and it has been success as both a reporting and developmental tool, officials said. The organization originally ordered 3,000 CDs and added an additional 1,000 when the response was overwhelmingly positive.

CCSM produced casing for the disc in the form of a 6” x 9” folder that housed a printed letter from leadership and the archbishop, all the donors names (gifts of $1,000 and higher) and the financials, explained Leslie Johnson, communications director at CCSM. The folder was included in recognition that not all of its donors may be computer literate. By printing out the most important information, the organization covered all its essentials should a person not pop in the CD. But, the disc was more than just a sidebar.

“I wouldn’t call the CD ‘a little something extra,’” Johnson clarified. “The information contained in the packaging was the ‘little something extra.’ If we could’ve gotten away with just sending out CD-ROM”s in jewel cases we definitely would’ve gone that route. There was an added expense in putting together these folders. But it wasn’t anything like if we would have done a full-blown paper version of the annual report. We realized that it’s such a new concept that not everyone would adopt it right away.”

Media specialists Linking Solutions handled the technical work. While the company offers three price points ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 and more, Johnson would only reveal that the CD was completed at “a greatly discounted rate for us.” A rate, she added, that was less than CCSM’s normal paper annual report production costs. The CCSM disc was elaborate by Johnson’s admission. But, she said that a much simpler, more straightforward format at a full fee would still be less costly than paper reports.

“People don’t want to read,” said Jayna Arveson, director of sales & marketing and official “Maven of Inspiration” at Linking Solutions. “They don’t want to read facts and figures as much. We’ve found that we ha a lot of narrative that people would rather listen to. It has a lot more to do on it then just ‘here’s the numbers.’ It ended up being a really great fundraising piece for them that had a lot more impact than just the numbers.”

Production of the annual report on CD was a first for both organizations, but Arveson extolled its benefits and the ease of providing content. Video clips provide an emotional connection and should be as close to the original footage as possible due to deterioration of quality, she said. About 70 minutes of video can fit on a CD.

Text can be manipulated into different fonts if it is provided in Rich Text Format. Images can be transferred though .jpg files and sound and music with basic .wav files. Both can be combined into a slideshow with voiceover work if an organization does not have video on hand or the budget to acquire it. If an organization does not have music, original material can be created, as it was for CCSM.

Among the other paper-saving qualities provided by a CD is that multi-lingual translations can be loaded on one disc, eliminating the need to make copies for various audiences.

During the planning stages, Johnson considered all the options. “I did a little outline of how I would like the CD to be structured, with all the menus and what would be contained in each menu,” she explained. “Then I rounded up all the news stories. I’m sure it was a much bigger job then they (the vendor) had originally anticipated. I just went to the Nth degree. I came up with a wish list and they got very excited and what it could be. They donated, I’d say, two-thirds of the fee.”

The only material that CCSM created specifically for the CD was its interviews with officials from senior management. It simply involved hiring a videographer and sitting down to talk about the previous fiscal year and how it related to each division. The interviews were not expensive to produce, Johnson added.

The entire annual report can be uploaded to the nonprofit’s Web site, although CCSM has yet to complete that process. Once up on the Web, visitors will be able to download, as well as view, the report.

When it comes to the selection of bells and whistles, Arveson advised placing a “What’s New” button on the disc. “Nonprofits want the life span of a CD to last a while – preferably more than a year when possible. If they have that Web site that they’re really keeping up to speed like they should be, they can have the CD link to that specific page with that really meaty, juicy information. So if someone uses the CD six months fro now they can click on that ‘what’s new’ button and it will tell them what’s going on now.”

If an organization decides to go with the CD annual report on a regular basis the framework of the disc stays the same, making it easier to produce while keeping a familiar feel to the report, Arveson said.

CCSM’s initial CD endeavor was a test worth taking, according to Johnson. “It was important because of our positioning in the Twin Cities community. We are the largest private social service provider. When people received it, there was a lot of credibility factor that went with that. Whereas if we were just a little charity working out of a church or something, I think that it might look like overkill,” Johnson said. “But the fact that we’re pretty much the leader of nonprofits here, it worked. It attracted a lot of attention. We never had so many people respond to our annual report. We’re having people calling and asking for copies.”