Celebrating 25 Years With the Tracy Family Foundation
One of the best parts of our job is helping clients celebrate their accomplishments. We got the opportunity to do that recently with the Tracy Family Foundation (TFF).
Based in Mt. Sterling, Illinois, the Tracy Family Foundation supports and develops nonprofit organizations across the country—advancing innovative and sustainable change in the communities it serves.
The children of Robert and Dorothy Tracy created the Foundation in 1997 to honor their parents, the founders of Dot Foods, and the values they instilled in their children: faith, family, community, education and leadership. Since then, the family’s goal for the Foundation has remained constant: to help communities thrive and families to flourish.
Now carried forward by the family’s 3rd and 4th generations, they’ve generated over $60 million and awarded more than 7,000 grants.
As they approached their 25th anniversary, the TFF team’s attention turned to the annual report. They wanted to create a piece that celebrated over two decades of impact through meaningful design, copy and visuals.
So they came to us to take their vision and turn it into a reality.
Annual reports seem pretty straightforward, right? Usually they’re an overview of programs, achievements, finances and other pertinent info from the previous year.
But that’s also what can make them challenging: taking all the copy, charts, graphs and data and making it not only readable and digestible, but enjoyable and compelling for readers.
We developed a theme, reflection, to serve as inspiration for both the design and the piece at large. It only seemed fitting: the Foundation was started by a family reflecting on the values their parents taught them. And now, they were reflecting on the impact their organization has had on others.
A black and white photo of Robert and Dorothy paired with a color photo of a young child on the cover sets the tone for the rest of the report—with warm, smiling faces greeting the reader. Page by page, a visual variety of colors and graphics bring enthusiasm and energy.
Throughout the report, two right-facing triangles bring visual intrigue and nod to TFF’s rapid and continual progress.
The Tracy Family Foundation serves a variety of focus areas, so we color-coded each impact area, but kept the overall design universal—serving as a common thread throughout the piece. Simplified charts, graphs and maps ensure important statistics and numbers are visually dynamic, readable and ultimately compelling.
The final page of the report features photos of original Tracy couple and a quote from Dorothy that reads: “I hope that our legacy will be that we have improved the welfare of Mt. Sterling, a little town that welcomed us with open arms in 1952, and that we have improved the lives of many other people.”
Not only has TFF carried out this legacy, but it’s now forever captured in this report—allowing the community to celebrate alongside the Foundation. We are so glad we could play a role in this project.
