August 21, 2025
Let’s be honest: your beautifully designed annual report PDF is probably sabotaging your organization’s digital presence. While you’re spending thousands on glossy layouts, hours of design time and maybe professional photography costs, you’re simultaneously burying your content where Google can barely find it and users struggle to access it.
It’s time for some tough love about annual reports in this century.
That 34-page PDF sitting on your website? It’s bad for accessibility, usability, engagement, search and more. Over 75% of screenreader users say PDF documents are likely to pose significant accessibility issues, according to WebAIM research.
But the problems go far beyond accessibility. Your PDF annual report is:
Meanwhile, organizations creating web-based annual reports are seeing dramatically better results across every metric that matters.
Here’s the painful truth: HTML pages often provide a better user experience and can be more SEO-friendly than PDFs. When you publish your annual report as web pages, every section becomes discoverable content. Your impact stories, financial highlights, and leadership messages become individual opportunities to rank for relevant searches.
Consider this: someone searching for “nonprofit mental health programs San Antonio” could discover your organization through a specific program highlight buried on page 9 of your old PDF. With a web-based report, that program gets its own discoverable webpage with a link.
Your web team has more control of your content when you display it in HTML (rather than via PDF). It will be easier for them to tweak that content as necessary for higher SEO value to improve Google rankings. Web-based annual reports reports allow you to:
The online annual report is also accessible and readable on mobile phones, especially when compared to PDFs. It’s still very difficult to provide a responsive design for a PDF document opened using a mobile device.
Your stakeholders aren’t reading annual reports at their desks anymore. They’re reviewing your impact on their phones during commutes, on tablets during coffee breaks, and on various devices throughout their day. Web-based reports adapt seamlessly to any screen size.
Let’s compare two approaches to annual reporting:
The Traditional PDF Approach: A comprehensive PDF with beautiful design, detailed financials, and compelling stories—all locked away in a format that search engines struggle with and mobile users hate.
The Web-Based Approach: Individual pages for each program (with the same compelling stories), searchable financial data, embedded videos, interactive charts (using the same graphics as a PDF), and content that can be shared, linked to, and discovered organically.
The difference in discoverability and engagement is dramatic.
Webpages that follow HTML standards have the highest accessibility rating. Sure PDFs can be created and retrofitted as accessible documents, but the reality is that most aren’t. HTML is always the most accessible, mobile-friendly, easy-to-update, and user-friendly format.
This isn’t just about compliance—it’s about inclusion. Every inaccessible PDF excludes potential supporters, donors, partners, and community members who could be advocating for your cause.
Yes, there are still valid reasons to create PDFs. Annual or Industry Reports are highly detailed, data-rich documents intended for download and offline use. The key is making PDF reports a “secondary option,” not your primary digital strategy.
The winning approach:
Forward-thinking organizations are realizing that annual reports aren’t just accountability documents—they are marketing assets, SEO opportunities, and engagement platforms. You can recycle digital graphics and content for marketing emails that link back to the online report, harness webpage data to improve your future reports and tailor them to your target audience(s) when you publish content that can actually be measured and optimized.
We worked with the nonprofit healthcare organization Children’s Health Council to transform their annual reporting strategy, creating three templated web-based annual reports that showcase the power of this web-based approach:
Ready to transform your annual reporting strategy? Here’s how:
Web-based reports can be updated throughout the year, turning your annual report into a living document that stays current and relevant. Some organizations utilize this approach in an “annual report newsletter” format, often publishing quarterly to keep readers engaged year-round.
Forcing users to browse PDF files causes frustration and slow task completion, compared to standard webpages. In 2025, there’s simply no excuse for making PDFs your primary way of sharing important organizational content.
Your annual report should be working harder for your organization. It should be driving traffic, improving your search rankings, engaging stakeholders on their preferred devices, and serving all users regardless of their abilities.
The nonprofit organizations that figure this out first will have a significant advantage in visibility, engagement, and impact. The question is: will yours be one of them?
Stop letting the myth of “beautiful PDF design” mask poor digital strategy. Your stakeholders—and your search rankings—deserve better than another buried PDF.
At Dooley Design Group, we help organizations create web-based annual reports that actually work in the digital age. From SEO-optimized content structures to mobile-first design and accessibility compliance, we ensure your impact stories reach the audiences that matter most.
Contact us today to discuss transforming your annual report from a static document into a dynamic, discoverable, and accessible digital experience.
Because your impact deserves to be found.
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