The Town Hall Meeting series provides a platform for Board and Senior Management of charities to discuss and explore practical solutions to address common challenges faced by the sector.
Following the well-received Town Hall Meeting I (17 Mar 2015) and Town Hall Meeting II (28 Oct 2015), the Charity Council and the Centre for Social Development Asia (CSDA) once again collaborated for a third Town Hall Meeting that was held at SGX Auditorium on 24 Feb 2016.
The Town Hall Meeting III continued the conversation on best practices for charities in Singapore. It focused on best practices in disclosure and accountability and reporting for charities’ annual reports. The event was oversubscribed and had an eventual turnout of 130 participants from the charity sector and 50 invited guests.
The programme included a sharing by an overseas speaker, Mr Venkkat Ramanan who gave an engaging and insightful presentation on Integrated Reporting . Mr Ramanan shared that it is necessary to start with an integrated thinking approach and see it as an opportunity to communicate with stakeholders through annual reports.
We were also very honoured to have Dr K Thomas Abraham, CEO, SATA CommHealth, to share his charity’s experience in producing their annual reports. He emphasised that “annual reports are among the most valuable documents in understanding the history of a company – its financial situation, its organizational structure, and perhaps, most importantly, how the company chooses to present itself to stakeholders.”
The Town Hall meeting will not be complete without a panel conversation segment. The session was moderated by Mr Mark Laudi, Managing Director, Hong Bao Media. The panellists were:
- Mr Ang Hao Yao, Chairman, SATA CommHealth
- Mr Edmund Song, Executive Director, RSVP Singapore
- Mr John Lim, Immediate Past Chairman, Singapore Institute of Directors
- Ms Esther An, Chief Sustainability Officer, City Developments Limited
- Ms Quek Boon Kien, Director of Funding and Corporate Functions Group, NCSS
The panel had a robust discussion which revolved around some key topics of discussion. Below are some key takeaways from the panel session:
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See annual reports as an important communications tool: Use it to tell your story to your stakeholders.
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Understand your audience: It is important to understand who you are writing for, and why they are reading your annual report. It was shared that corporate donors would also compare annual reports from past years and would take into consideration the future plans or strategic thrusts that the board of the charity has, as the donors would want to have a longer term relationship with the charity.
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Plan ahead: A charity should plan ahead, set a direction and decide on the key information and statistics the charity would want to present in the annual report. It is always good idea to work backwards and manage the timeline leading up to the production of annual reports.
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Keep the report simple, but informative: The panel highlighted that actual content of the annual report is more important than how the annual report looks. Some pictures and infographics could be inserted where relevant but the report need not be glossy and colourful.
To learn more about what was covered during the Town Hall meeting, please see below for the materials that were presented:
A video recording of the Town Hall Meeting III is uploaded as below. For more videos from Charity Council events and initiatives, please subscribe to the
Charity Council Youtube Channel.
This Town Hall Meeting III was made possible with the support from partners such as Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA) and National Council of Social Services (NCSS).
