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Are you struggling with your organization’s annual report? Or maybe you want to create an annual report template to make the process go smoother? Looking at strong annual report examples from other companies will help you understand how to write a report people will want to read.
A legal entity such as an S corporation must create an annual report. The report gives an overview of the organization’s mission, year-end highlights, financial information, and industry or project highlights. It must be filed with the business’s state government, usually via the secretary of state’s office.
In addition to compliance, annual reports play an important role in connecting with shareholders, investors, and the public. Moreover, a well-crafted annual report can serve as key reference material, a flagship content piece, and a source of inspiration for current and potential business partners.
What is an Annual Report?
An annual report is an official and comprehensive communication of a company’s activities, financial performance, achievements, and future projections over the previous year. It spells out the financial condition and operations for the year ended for shareholders and other stakeholders. It should be prepared so the general community can understand it and see if collaboration would be feasible.
Today, annual board reports have evolved to also become marketing tools, especially for nonprofit organizations, who use them to impress donors, attract new ones, and showcase their brand to employees, clients, and the public.
For publicly traded companies like a limited liability company (LLC), producing an annual report and having a registered agent are required by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).
While it is entirely up to an organization to decide the amount of information to include in its annual report, some information must be included:
- General corporate information
- Operations and financial board reporting
- A letter from the CEO to the shareholders
- Financial statements including balance sheets, income, and cash flow statements
- Management discussion and analysis of business performance over the years
- Key business changes, such as any acquisitions, adjustments to the operating agreement, etc.
- Notes to the financial statements
- Auditor’s report
- Performance and outlook for the future
As the annual report examples below show, you have a wealth of options for how to present this information. Data visualizations, for instance, can summarize pages of complex financial information in easy-to-understand charts and graphs.
Keep that work inside your governance record, not a public chatbot.
Annual Report Examples
The following nonprofit annual report examples can act as a guide to creating your own. In addition to showing what information you can include, they also show different ways to make your annual report appealing, such as graphics, concise messaging, content titles, and narrative structure.
1. Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity’s FY2025 annual report breaks the mold by ditching the traditional PDF format entirely. Instead, it’s a fully interactive web experience built around the theme: “Home is the foundation.”
The report uses scroll-driven storytelling to walk reader’s through the organization’s impact: 3 million people helped, 827,607 volunteers mobilized, and $54.5 million in loans provided to affiliates across 23 states. Key statistics are woven into the visual narrative rather than dumped into tables, making the data feeling highly personal.
For organizations interested in modernizing their annual report, Habitat’s approach is a strong case study. An interactive web report is more shareable, more accessible on mobile, and more engaging than a static document. The best part is that it doesn’t require a massive budget to pull off with today’s web tools.
2. Charity Water
Charity Water’s FY2024 annual report is a masterclass in doing more with less.
The report communicates $92 million raised, 30,m400 water projects funded, and 1.5 million people reached – all through minimal copy, people-centered photography, and clean data visualizations.
What makes Charity Water’s report stand out is its restraint. Rather than overwhelming readers with dense paragraphs, the design lets key numbers and images carry the story. Charts and graphs present financial data in a way that’s easy to scan, and clear headings make it simple to jump to the sections that matter most to the reader.
3. World Vision
World Vision’s 2025 annual report tackles one of the hardest challenges in nonprofit reporting: how to present the work of a massive, multi-country, multi-program organization in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the reader.
Their solution is structure. The report covers October 2025 through September 2025 and is organized by program area, with each section including progress updates, key learnings, and challenges faced. It also offers customized donor impact reports and campaign summaries, making the content feel relevant to different audiences rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
For larger organizations that operate across multiple geographies or program areas, World Vision’s report is a blueprint for clarity at scale. The lesson: structure your report around outcomes, not org charts.
4. Alzheimer’s Association
The Alzheimer’s Association’s FY2025 annual report is one of the strongest examples of financial transparency in nonprofit reporting. The report leads with a clear fund allocation breakdown, giving donors immediate confidence in how their money is being used.
Beyond the financials, the report highlights concrete impact metrics: 22.9 million people influences through awareness and advocacy, alongside record-breaking achievements in research funding and community engagement. Each section ties spending back to outcomes, reinforcing the connection between donor dollars and real-world results.
If your organization faces skepticism about overhead costs or wants to build greater trust with financially-minded stakeholders, this report shows how to lead with transparency without sacrificing storytelling.
5. Malala Fund
The Malala Fund’s 2024-2025 annual report does something most annual reports don’t: it tells a multi-year story. This report marks the conclusion of the organization’s first five-year strategy, and rather than focusing solely on the past 12 months, it tracks cumulative progress – 26 million students reached, $66.4 million in grants awarded, and $7 bullion in donor commitments unlocked.
The report included detailed investment tables that show how grant funding grew year over year, alongside specific examples of policy wins in focus countries across the globe. The combination of long-arc metrics and concrete, country-level stories make the case that the strategy worked.
For organizations at the end of a strategic planning cycle, this report is an excellent model. It shows how to frame an annual report as the capstone of a larger narrative, not just a yearly check-in.
How to Put These Annual Reports into Practice
Every example above has one thing in common: the organization’s behind them didn’t start from scratch each year. Instead, they had systems and process in place to collect financial data, track board decisions, and organize the documents that make up the backbone of the annual report.
That’s where the process usually breaks down.
For most nonprofits, the annual report becomes a scramble to gather financial statements from one system, board meeting minutes from another system, and strategic plans from someone’s email inbox. The report itself suffers not because the organization lacks impact, but because the underlying data is scattered and disorganized.
OnBoard’s board management platform solves this by keeping everything in one place year-round. Financial documents, meeting minutes, committee reports, strategic plans, and board resolutions are stored, organized, and searchable. Nonprofits using OnBoard can also pull from built-in meeting analytics and board assessment data to add the kind of governance metrics make annual reports more credible to donors and regulators.
Ready to make your next annual report easier to produce? Start a free trial or download our free board meeting minutes template to start building your governance record today.
Keep that work inside your governance record, not a public chatbot.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are nonprofits required to publish annual reports?
Nonprofits are not legally required to publish a public-facing annual report. However, most tax exempt organizations must file Form 990 with the IRS annually, which is a public document. Many states also require separate corporate filings. A published annual report goes beyond these compliance requirements – it’s a voluntary transparency tool that helps build donor confidence and attract new supporters. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see our guide on how to prepare a nonprofit annual report.
What should be included in an annual report?
At minimum, an annual report should include: a letter from the CEO or executive director, a financial summary (revenue, expenses, and fund allocation), key program achievements with measurable outcomes, recognition of donors and supports, and forward-looking projections. For larger organizations, you’ll also want audited financial statements, a governance overview, and risk management disclosures. Our annual report template includes all of these section in a ready-to-use format.
What's the difference between an annual report and a board report?
An annual report is a comprehensive document shared with external stakeholders, including donors, shareholders, regulators, and the broader public.
A board report is an internal document that summarizes what the board of directors accomplished during the fiscal year, including governance decisions, committee activities, and strategic priorities. In practice, the board report is often one section within a larger annual report. For a deeper look at what goes into each, see our guide on how to write an annual board report.
About The Author
- Gina Guy is an implementation consultant who specializes in working with nonprofit organizations get the most from their board meetings. She loves helping customers ease their workloads through their use of OnBoard. A Purdue University graduate, Gina enjoys refinishing furniture, running, kayaking, and traveling in her spare time. She lives in Monticello, Indiana, with her husband.
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