Over the course of nineteen years, I produced eleven annual reports for the Cincinnati Community Kollel – annual in the sense that each covered a year’s activities. Over time, they evolved and grew, reflecting different periods in the Kollel’s development. I’ll include all of the reports here, for the amusement of any Kollel alumni and friends who happen to find this page.
The first three reports were very similar, and relatively simple. They were produced in-house (printed and saddle-stitched), on letter-sized paper. Although some of the photos in the PDF’s are in color, these reports were actually printed in black and white. The Kollel made a point of including financial information, provided by a volunteer bookkeeper. (Donors immediately appreciated the organization’s transparency, even if they didn’t know how to interpret financial statements, and they still do.) For these first three reports I didn’t bother prettying the financials up; I just scanned them and pasted the images into the reports. We also included a comprehensive list of everyone who had ever made a contribution; the Kollel made a point of recognizing even relatively small donations, in contrast with the norm among big-city and East Coast organizations – an attitude of which I’m still proud.
Click on an image to view that annual report as a PDF.
After a year’s hiatus, we did two more reports. I refreshed the visuals, and typeset the financials to match the reports’ look and feel. There were also produced in-house.
Click on an image to view that annual report as a PDF.
In 2007, the Kollel expanded into a second building and opened up a satellite location in the northern exurbs. We didn’t put out an annual report until the following spring, but when we did it reflected that expansion, moving from letter-sized (11″) paper to legal (14″). The layout was completely revamped, there were more photos (including some taken by me). We printed the cover, the centerfold, and the financials in color – on the Kollel’s first color laser printer. The following year’s report was done the same way, with the addition of a simulated group photo, featuring then-current staff and local alumni and their families.
A few years went by before we did another report. By then, the Kollel’s northern outpost had closed, but the Kollel had started a community-building project, hiring a part-time community evangelist of sorts. The 2014 report was totally redesigned and much more colorful, although it was still printed and bound in-house. A lot of emphasis was placed on people the Kollel had brought to Cincinnati; that included hiring a photographer to take portraits of the staff and their families. The content was organized into distinctive sections, each with its own visual cues. This was such a large undertaking that the following year we followed it up with a simpler, trifold brochure – printed in color on 14″ paper, with a front panel that bore a strong similarity to the 2014 report.
In 2016, the Kollel practically doubled in size. This was partly funded by a 24-hour online fundraising campaign, and the list of donors grew so long that for the first time we had to limit it to the current year’s honor roll – which still included anyone who had contributed at least $25 over the course of the year. The format of the report borrowed heavily from the materials I’d produced for that years’s annual event. This report was printed at a traditional print house (Springdot) and it featured a full bleed – what a luxury! The centerfold featured a composite photo of the enlarged Kollel “family.”
The next year, we weren’t able to produce an annual report until the final week of the calendar year, when printers were closed for the holidays – so we had to print and bind it in-house once more. No bleeds. The visuals from the most recent fundraising materials didn’t lend themselves well to an annual report, so instead I borrowed a bit from the Kollel’s parasha sheet – including the head shots for the staff lineup, which moved to the inside back cover.