Charities have been urged to shorten their annual reports, and include a two-page summary to make them more accessible.
Speaking at Icaew’s Charity Conference 2017 in London last Friday, research company nfpSynergy founder Joe Saxton said so few people currently read audited accounts that it was unnecessary for charities to go into as much depth as many did.
He said: “More people proof read the annual report than read the actual thing.”
Saxton said he had advocated at a recent Sorp committee meeting for a two-page executive summary section at the beginning of all charities’ annual accounts and the committee had planned to start work on simplifying the reports.
“Yesterday we agreed to have a working group on how best to make charity accounts more transparent and more accessible for the modern world in which concentrating for a minute is difficult let alone for two hours, for many readers,” he said.
He gave Haven House Children’s Hospice’s four-page emoji version of its annual report as an example of how charities could present their results attractively and briefly. However, it was argued by some in the audience that the document missed some essential information. The charity’s full report is actually 51 pages long.
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Saxton said his organisation’s research had concluded that summary information was popular with members of the public who had been asked to read the reports.
Pie charts and other simple ways of presenting statistics were also popular, while few looked for or read all the detail in the report.
He said that many members of public were unaware that charities produced annual reports but were pleased to hear they did so.
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