Grant Makers Receive Honors for Creative Communications Efforts

The Council on Foundations at its annual conference in San Diego this week honored 83 foundations for outstanding

annual and biennial reports, newsletters, public-information campaigns, special reports, and Web sites.

Given every year since 1984, the Wilmer Shields Rich Awards for Excellence in Communications, named after the council’s first executive director, honor foundations that have struck upon creative or clever ways to communicate information about their missions and programs. The entries were judged by 54 experts on communications and were rated on their design, effectiveness, and distribution methods.

The council received more entries this year — 247 in all — than in the past, and said it saw a substantial increase in submissions from small foundations and first-time entrants.

Several of the winners took unusual approaches to getting their message out.

The Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice, in Florida, sought to remind people to support charitable causes throughout the year by sending 1,500 calendars to financial advisers, donors, and volunteers. The calendars come in a modified jewel case, the type used to hold music CDs, with cards that have the calendar for each month. Along with the days of the month, the front of each card has an eye-catching photograph showing the work done by a local nonprofit group the foundation supports. The back of each card has information about the organization and its Web address. The cards are designed to stand up in the jewel case for display on a table or desk.

The Kansas Health Foundation, in Wichita, turned its annual report into a book format that resembled “Little Golden Books,” the popular children’s books published by Random House. The foundation’s report, called “Read & Reap,” is presented in story form, a tale of a farmer planting his yearly crops. The story’s farmer plants books instead of seeds, and from those books sprout ideas and knowledge. The story shows why it is important for parents to read to their children, and how improving literacy can lead to improved health.

At the end of the story, a letter from Kansas Health’s president appears, outlining the foundation’s statewide literacy and health projects. And without breaking from the look of the story, a list of additional grants the foundation has awarded, and the foundation’s financial data, finish out the pages.

Although most people know it’s important to read to young children, said Janet Miller, director of communications at Kansas Health, many parents think they don’t have time to read to their youngsters. “In the time it takes a person to read this report, especially the story at the beginning, they could read a story to a young child. The point being that it’s fast, it’s easy, it’s short,” said Ms. Miller.

While foundation officials usually decide which message is most important to convey in an annual report, the Columbus Foundation deferred to donors who had requested that it focus on how families can start foundations, teach their children about philanthropy, or collaborate on their giving.

The report, called “A Family Tradition,” included page-length profiles of families that have created foundations, and advice on how families can best identify what they want their philanthropy to achieve. The foundation, with help from The Philanthropic Initiative, a Boston nonprofit group that advises donors, developed a series of brochures and a workbook for families included with the report. In each phase of designing the report, a draft was shown to people with family foundations housed at the Columbus Foundation to make sure that information was presented in a way that would be meaningful to donors.