Annual Reports for Nonprofits Editing and Proofreading Services

A charity's annual report is read by almost nobody in full and cited by everyone. Funders check it before a grant decision, journalists open it when something goes wrong, regulators sample it, prospective trustees read it before joining, and a handful of donors genuinely read it cover to cover. It is also, for most organisations, the only document that records what a year actually cost and produced — which makes it the reference point for every subsequent argument about whether the organisation is well run.

We edit what charities and their advisers produce — trustees' annual reports and directors' reports, narrative accompanying the financial statements, chair and chief executive statements, structure, governance and management sections, objectives and activities sections, achievements and performance reporting, financial review and reserves policy narrative, risk statements and their mitigations, going concern disclosure, remuneration and related party disclosures, public benefit statements, fundraising standards and complaints reporting, plans for the coming year, and the summarised or supporter-facing version of the report. Our editors check that the narrative and the numbers describe the same organisation.

The financial narrative is where a report is trusted or quietly disbelieved, and the failure is almost always in what goes unexplained. A reader sees reserves rise while an appeal described the situation as critical; sees a large restricted balance and concludes money is being hoarded; sees fundraising costs and has no basis to judge whether they are reasonable. We rewrite these sections so the reserves policy states the target range, why that figure, where the organisation sits against it and what will happen if it drifts; so restricted and unrestricted funds are explained in plain terms, because the distinction is invisible to most readers and explains most of the apparent contradictions; so any significant movement — a deficit, a large legacy, a disposal, a redundancy programme — is named and accounted for rather than left in the numbers; and so the cost of raising funds is presented with the return alongside it. Reports that do this survive being read by a critic, which is the only readership that matters when it happens.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including draft accounts and material before approval. We are editors rather than accountants, auditors or charity law advisers, and we offer no view on accounting treatment, regulatory requirements or the adequacy of any disclosure — your independent examiner or auditor and your advisers must confirm those. What we can do is make the narrative clear, consistent with the figures and readable.