Case Study: CAMBA’s 2017 Annual Report

Role: In-house Graphic Designer

Team: Senior Management, Program Staff, Grants, and Communications and Marketing Department

Organization: CAMBA

Goal: The main goal of each annual report is to communicate annual initiatives to funders, policy-stakeholders, and individual donors, and to encourage donations. In addition, the communication manager and I wanted to have photos empowering clients, instead of victimizing their situations.

Result: By using empowering photos and narratives with impactful infographics, the Annual Report effectively communicates CAMBA’s achievements to individual donors, funders, and public stakeholders. In addition, the photos are fresh, bright, engaging, and light-hearted.

Details: The Communication Manager and I discussed how previous annual reports used a ‘savior’ photo narrative (read more here), which is a method of demonstrating a nonprofit organization’s initiatives while attracting funders. For this annual report, my coworker and I showed a diversity of social service/program managers assisting people who are actively improving their lives. The photo style changed from portrait to engaged subjects actively moving. In addition, the photographer was provided a narrative of each client’s story and was told to avoid the ‘save the poor victim’ approach.

Work Sample:

  • CAMBA’s 2017 Annual Report
  • CAMBA’s 2016 Annual Report:
    Please note: An external design firm was hired to do the artwork and layout, but the Communication Manager wrote the narrative, while I art directed and scheduled the photo shoots. The external design firm, communication manager and I collaborated to create an annual report empowering clients and showed diverse images of program managers/staff.
    Download a PDF of CAMBA’s 2016 Annual Report here.