Transcripts are autogenerated:
Jennifer Mayville:we were really looking to do something different for our annual report
Patrick Villemaire: It’s like The Powder Room of the house, right? You can kind of go a little bit more out there and it’s a little bit more isolated, you can do something crazy on the walls and the tile
Jennifer Mayville: how many people are A visiting the our annual report and B how long they are spending on their reading the information
Patrick Villemaire: I’m basically sending in chat GPT some prompts to ask a question
Jennifer Mayville: we want Good side of it. You’re not disturb all my team. So no one will bother me.
Patrick Villemaire: Thank you for joining me. So you’re the first guests. I’m calling the videos series how to avoid the anal crisis and the annual crisis obviously is the annual report and the fun the excitement in the pain and everything that goes along with it. So, obviously you’re here to join me. Maybe you want to give me a quick, one to two minute kind of background on who you are, your background experience and we can go there.
Jennifer Mayville: Hi everyone, my name is Jen Mayville, and I’m the senior Communications manager at Wood Green Community Services in Toronto wood green is one of the largest Social Services agencies in the city. And we support over 37,000. Toronto residents every year with a variety of different programs and services including affordable housing childcare seniors programs youth programs and mental health and wellness programs.
Jennifer Mayville: why we reached out to Patrick last year or two years ago, I guess for our annual report was that we were really looking to do something different for our annual report. We felt like our annual report was kind of stale in terms of look and feel. And we have such amazing stories at woodgreen about the work that we do. We really want to showcase that and they’re really interactive and visual way.
Jennifer Mayville: So that is one of the reasons that we reached out to Patrick and then also in this new age of Technology, we felt like we didn’t need a hard copy version of our annual report. We really felt like we could do a hundred percent digital. in order as a charity to save some money on printing costs and be kind of to the environment but also We just felt like it would be more impactful to do it in a Web format.
Patrick Villemaire: And what about your background in terms of obviously you’re at Woodgreen. But where does Jen kind of come in, through the nonprofit communication side like how that evolve.
Jennifer Mayville: yes, so I’ve been working in the meeting and communications field for really long time. So my background is journalism. So I started my career as a journalist. And then I moved over into the nonprofit sector so during my course of my career. I’ve held roles at the Canadian Red Cross and I worked many years environmental defense Canada. And now I’m working at Woodgreen.
Patrick Villemaire: So you really should be interviewing me then. If that is what you’re saying if you’re a journalist by trade.
Jennifer Mayville: Yes, I see.
Patrick Villemaire: so when it comes to annual reports, What was that the big Catalyst other than going digital? Was it the pandemic kind of how do you thinking differently about how you were going to make the shift from PDF to digital or was always kind of the plan and then, someday you just woke up and someone decided, this year. We’re going to digital like how did that come about?
Jennifer Mayville: I would say we revamped our website and I think we were looking for something that also was new and exciting in terms of our annual report on our website as well. I wouldn’t say the pandemic was spark to have a digital version, but I think We had really worked hard.
Jennifer Mayville: Before we reached out to you Patrick on doing a lot of digital content in terms of capturing stories about the great work. We’re doing the impact for having our clients and we really wanted, to reuse this great content. That was all online and we just saw a great way to do that would be through a digital report. And then we felt that not everyone, would want to read the full report or just want to read parts. It as well and relate the kind of idea with the support. You can easily scroll through or jump to different sections as well. So people could find the areas that they were most interested in.
Patrick Villemaire: And how about the content creation and the process of going digital versus pdf. Did you find that the process was the same did it change and obviously, we’ve worked with you for two. So, the first year versus the second year, how did things kind of evolved from communication standpoint in terms of your processes and how you thought about things?
Jennifer Mayville: I would say that. It saved us time in the sense that we were reusing a lot of content that we already had. so some of it was new content that we had to draft but some of it we were reusing. So for example blogs that we’ve written on our website. So in that sense, it did save us some time. and I would say that because we worked with you now for two years on our annual report for the second year right in some ways was faster because We already had a template for the annual report that we were using and we understood the format and the process but better so it was I would say in that way faster.
Patrick Villemaire: And in terms of when you go to start writing who’s writing it within the organization and do you have a process, throughout the year where you’re collecting the information and keep track of it, or is it basically like a blank piece of paper and you’re trying to figure out what happened over the last year and pulled together all the data.?
Jennifer Mayville: Like I mentioned earlier we’ve been working really hard to be capturing the stories of our impact during the whole entire year. So when it comes time to start working on our annual report which we’re already starting to do now actually starts with the communications team and us coming together and thinking about do we want a certain sort of look and feel for the aerial port or theme and then we also reach out to the teams all the programs and services and ask them what were some of your that you think we’re the biggest
Jennifer Mayville: biggest wins for you from the past year because we might not have known of something. So
Patrick Villemaire: Where does the CEO come into play? do they kind of give you a mandate for what they want to see or does your team kind of come up with it? And then you just send it up for review?
Jennifer Mayville: I would say it’s a collaboration between us and our CEO and president so. All the communications team does create an outline of what we think should be included in the annual report and then we do share it. with our CEO for feedback and then also ask if there’s anything she would like to see and in particular in her opening message if there’s anything that truly wants us to include in there.
Patrick Villemaire: In terms of the opening message. Do you tell her you can only say so much in there or are you just kind of like you how do you guide that because from my experience we tend to really link the text especially throughout the whole report. Sometimes it’s very wordy. So how do you kind of manage that?
Jennifer Mayville: Yeah, so in creating the annual report overall, we do have word counts for each section and we do tell.
Jennifer Mayville: A senior leadership. We only have a certain amount of word count for each area including the message from the president CEO. so in doing so it is challenging to try to find a way to write something. In a shorter word count, but I think that’s really important because online you need to catch people’s attention really quickly and people aren’t spending a lot of time reading long text. So I think it’s really important to have either a shorter message from the CEO or something that we might even test doing this year is maybe even a video message from Our CEO and president and board president that could be a different way to also have an opening message in your report a digital version.
Patrick Villemaire: I like that and in terms of obviously you’re sending the annual report to the stakeholder. But how are you actually like using it and from the analytics of going digital where you seeing in terms of usage certain sections being viewed the most they kind of like where’s the interest and all so in terms of the marketing Comm strategy do you actually have a plan for how you’re using the annual report or is it more just for the stakeholders?
Jennifer Mayville: So we use our annual report for many different. Reasons so we use it to report back to our donors and funders but our work. We also use it in funding applications to try to get new funding. We share it with external Partners as well corporate other donors as well. In terms of marketing and columns. We do share in your pieces on the inner report on social media. As well, we write a blog kind of summarizing some of the key interesting Parts about the annual report as well. So it’s a nice kind of executive summary in a way so much doesn’t want to read the whole thing. But we do use it a lot during the whole entire year to. Share with various different stakeholders about the incredible impact of our work.
Jennifer Mayville: And it’s a very important.
Jennifer Mayville: It’s not a document because it’s online. It’s a very important. marketing Communications piece resource for a whole entire organization
Patrick Villemaire: Right and since we’ve got digital, have you been tracking in looking at the outlets of use or how does that come into play? obviously, I’d imagine that the next thing is you actually know, if you brought me looking. Because you have the analytics right where PDF you don’t necessarily know when someone downloads it and start sharing it you kind of lose track of that, right?
Jennifer Mayville: Yeah, I think that’s a really nice thing as well that we can see how many people are A visiting the our annual report and B how long they are spending on their reading the information. with hard copies you can send them out into the ether and you have no idea or even reading them or not. So it’s nice to have actually this data that we can use to. Showcase how much people are actually interacting with our annual report.
Patrick Villemaire: And that makes sense and in terms of that your usage. Do I imagine once you release that you probably send it out quite often. I’m imagining that throughout the year kind of like if you’re saying it to Partners, are you using it kind of in terms of lead gen in terms of soliciting donations. Is it kind of like that? here’s what we did last year and then positioning as if you help us, this year, this is where the impact will go. Is that kind of how you’re leveraging it with your partners.
Jennifer Mayville: Yeah, I don’t work on the fundraising team. But I do know that our fundraising team does share it to try to? build relationships with new donors But I would also mention that I didn’t mention this before but also something that’s really nice is that with this digital version? You can just send a link but you don’t need to actually physically mail something to someone or also, sometimes with attachments some email Platforms don’t like attachments or things like that from external organizations. So this is a way to ensure that people are actually getting the annual report and then yeah with the data we can see how many people are actually reading it as well.
Patrick Villemaire: Cool, and what do you feel is the biggest challenge in terms of your annual report process?
Jennifer Mayville: I would say the biggest challenge is that have so when we do so many great things are ordering Community Services. It’s really hard to sort of narrow down. What? can fit in the annual reports So I would say that’s the biggest challenge is that we have so many great stories to choose from so trying to figure out what’s the best fit for the annual report is the biggest challenge.
Patrick Villemaire: And how do you decide what gets in what get that?
Jennifer Mayville: yeah, I think it’s speaking with the leadership team and Figuring out. What are the biggest wins you want to share in the annual report? And as well, what? Are some of the best stories that we had captured in the past year that we really want to share again and really showcase the incredible work that our staff are doing every day in the community.
Patrick Villemaire: I’d imagine that it’s probably a lot of work to pull out the stats and the quotes from all this content you guys have right so in terms of that I’m assuming you can let me know if I’m wrong. But basically you would go through you kind of shortlist the stories are going in there then pull out stats and quotes from those from, the different programs and then you kind of, do a mix of to get the flow and imagine you kind of just do a lot of rearranging it to kind of get that flow as you’re going down, everything kind of makes sense, right?
Jennifer Mayville: Yeah, I mean we’re fortunately to have an incredible project management team that actually works to collect data from all the different programs and services so we actually can just reach out to them for impact stash which is really really great. But I would say in terms of the process. We do look at the data and what are the impacts which are the most?
Jennifer Mayville: would be I think most meaningful for our audience is that we’re trying to reach or just showcase the most of the incredible work that we’ve done
Patrick Villemaire: Yeah, and okay, so we were talking about the challenges but what’s the most exciting thing when it comes to creating annual report? what gets you guys excited over there?
Jennifer Mayville: yeah, I think what really gets us excited about the annual report is that this is truly a Showcase of all the incredible work that we’ve done this past year. and I’d say it’s also an opportunity especially doing it in this digital format opportunity to be in it from a cost perspective really creative and Innovative and try new things. So, I think that’s what kind of makes this process of creating the annual report this way really fun.
Patrick Villemaire: So from my perspective working with you guys for the last couple years, what gets me excited about, doing the first one was kind of, the blue theme and then the second year was The unmet Campaign which is very campaign specific and we’re integrating the yellows. So I like from a marketing standpoint. what gets me excited is the ability to kind of push the boundaries and go a little bit more like, campaign-based or a little bit off like you’re traditional brand and being able to then push the boundaries whether it’s through, images interactivity. So I think it’s a nice kind of to me. It’s like The Powder Room of the house, right? You can kind of go a little bit more out there and
Patrick Villemaire: it’s a little bit more isolated, you can do something crazy on the walls and the tile, and generate some interest and some conversation pieces without worrying too much about okay, what’s going on in the rest of the house.
Jennifer Mayville: Yeah, I agree totally that it really is an opportunity to kind of. test so many things and we Innovative creative. And I really like for everyone out there. If you haven’t seen our annual report that they’re really kind of like the magazine looking feel that was created with the annual report. we really liked that. So I’m looking forward to seeing what we come up with this year.
Patrick Villemaire: you can use that by the way, the inner annual report is The Powder Room about and so what I’m doing at the end of every chat is I’m basically sending in chat GPT some prompts to ask a question and then I’m gonna ask the question, because chat GPT are Overlord cannot obviously, speak to us and then we’ll see what you can come out with so I gave us some prompts about you and wood green and the first question was super boring. So I said, let’s try again with something else. So chat Gpt is asking how do you keep your annual report engaging and informative for both investors and the general public?
Jennifer Mayville: thank you chat gpt I as already mentioned I think. We really try to have a variety of information on our annual report. We try to have impact size and testimonials as well as Updates from the different program areas and then also impact stories as well and video. So we try to have different kinds of content in the annual report and as already mentioned earlier with a really nice things about having a digital annual report is that we do have a menu at tops people can go through to areas that are of interest to them. So for example, if potential funder was interested in our financials, they could just go straight down to that section or if
Jennifer Mayville: someone in the community was really interested in what we’re doing and housing they can all just go down to that section as well.
Patrick Villemaire: THanks Jen it was Great having you and once we, go through another, iteration or two. Maybe we’ll have you back and we can talk more about the process and how things change and involve and I look forward to seeing the next version.
Jennifer Mayville: Yeah, thanks so much for having me and anyone out. There is interested in seeing our annual report. You can just visit our website at woodgreen.org