- Goals
- Highlight our mission and impact, through key statistics and personal stories
- Thank our supporters, partners, and staff
- Make a case for future donations
- Differentiate AARP Foundation from AARP
- Strategy
- Offer our audiences an engaging interactive online experience as well as a downloadable PDF version of the report that will also be professionally printed and bound to share with donors and key stakeholders.
- Lean into the brand style for visual expression, using a mix of illustration and bold, full-page photography of the people we're working for and with to achieve our mission, conveying joy and celebrating shared wins.
- Produce and release the AARP Foundation 2023 highlights reel as a teaser to the annual report, and include as a part of the report.
- Execution
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- The digital report (https://annualreport.aarpfoundation.org/) is seamlessly integrated into our website, with a simple vanity URL (aarpfoundation.org/annualreport). It opens with a bold, brief title to set the theme (For & With). The 2023 highlights reel acts as an active introduction that grabs people, with the option to view and listen to the whole reel or continue moving through the report to get more details on our work and impact. The report includes a personal note from our President to set up the content and convey sincere thanks to our supporters, partners, and staff; followed by key, contextualized statistics that showcase the theme of the report. A user can scroll to find some meatier content broken into sections according to our most relevant, highlight-worthy work and impact. And finally, the report closes with an overt thank-you for support, along with key information that stakeholders look for like donor names, executive leadership, and financials – all in a streamlined format that allows the user to select what they want to view at one time, instead of all at once. Throughout the report there is ample white space both for visual appeal and digestibility, and design elements lead the eye through content and avoid barraging the user with too much text. While there is a substantial amount of valuable information in this report, it’s never overwhelming. We offer a mix of stats, descriptive context, and individual stories with imagery to share the Foundation’s impact in 2023.
- The print report is eye-catching and tactile. A striking cover with a bold, emotional photography perfectly represents our brand identity, and the velvety feel of thick paper combined with sturdy, smooth binding make it something you don’t want to put down – and something you want to save.
The 2023 annual report is a beautiful, functional, high-quality product that showcases our brand, our mission, and our impact, and is unique from AARP's annual report approach. We produced both an engaging digital report that we could share widely and easily across the organization and beyond, as well as a crisp, digestible printed version that received high praise from hundreds of colleagues and other supporters and stakeholders.
The report shows the essence of our organization by being grounded in a central theme that is at the very heart of our mission – that we not only work for older adults, but with older adults. That is what sets us apart and makes us so effective, and all the important information that stakeholders want is delivered to them through this lens, so that it’s not just a long, dry report, it’s a genuine thank-you to all those we are working for and with.
The key numbers are strategically woven throughout and presented with proper context so that they support this central idea behind our success in 2023. For example, when talking about the millions of dollars we helped secure in total for vulnerable older adults, we also contextualized the data to explain what that meant for an individual – a month’s worth of groceries or a year’s worth of gas and utilities. And we paired that information with the stories and images of real people to bring the message home that we truly are changing lives, for and with older adults.
