Doing the Most Good, Digitally

"We believe that video is the form that is most moving to the general public today and that if we could have these actual people telling their story and you hear it coming straight from them as opposed to looking at a picture on a printed page, it's far more effective," he adds. "And yet we recognize that there are those who want to have that hard copy in their hand. So each page can be printed out, and local [chapters] will be able to use that effectively in their local communities when they're talking to funding opportunities and foundations and corporations. They can either link people up to the virtual report or they can print out a hard copy and take it and sit at a table and talk about it."

The organization has notified donors of the digital annual report via an e-mail campaign and also is running what it hopes will be a viral campaign on social-networking sites where it has a presence. One key benefit to the annual report site is that its trackable. Hood says initial tracking shows visitors to the annual report page are spending from five to six minutes on it.

"[With a paper annual report] you put it in the mail, you don't know if it's hitting anyone's desk or if it's going into the trashcan," Hood says. "But in this case we can determine what the traffic is and ... for someone to stay on a site for six minutes is pretty phenomenal — and yet that's the early indicator, that we're getting anywhere from five and a half to six minutes of review time."

The annual report site also features a "Donate Now" button to encourage those moved by the emotional stories of the organization's work to support it.