Popular Annual Financial Reports--30 Years and Counting: A look back at GFR in February 1993.

• Position: Government Finance Review

GFOA's first Popular Annual Financial Reporting [PAFR] Awards competition got started in 1991, recognizing the importance of providing information from the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report in a format that could be easily understood by a community's residents--and anyone else who doesn't speak "finance."

GFOA didn't specify a format for PAFRs. Instead, we encouraged ingenuity and a focus on making the reports best fit the needs of the reporting entity's constituency. That first year, 38 governments submitted reports, and they were quite varied: "At the extremes of technology were a folded sheet of paper filled with facts and figures, and a video tape that the entity broadcast over its cable television channel," according to the February 1993 issue of GFR, which discussed the winners of that first competition. Winners received their awards at the 1992 annual conference.

Most of the reports were "a letter-size booklet containing financial data, figures, narratives, and charts. Some, on plain white paper, were printed only on one side and bound with plastic fasteners, while others were professional jobs on glossy paper. Some had no illustrations, but most contained photographs." The award criteria included: reader appeal; understandability; reliability; distribution; and other details including innovative form/content, providing a good model for other governments, and being useful to stakeholders.

Most of the winners were booklets printed on letter-size paper. One "relatively unstructured" report included letters from the mayor and the city manager, an essay discussing the achievements of the city government and its departments, graphic elements to hold the reader's interest, the auditor's report, and the financial statements. There were line graphs and pie charts explaining key points and photos highlighting community projects. According to the GFR article, "This PAFR has a buoyancy about it, a quality generally lacking in publications of a financial nature." Also, "the lack of jargon is exemplary. Even such words as revenues and expenditures are replaced with "where the money came from" and "to provide the following services."

Another winner wowed the judges with its "spacious charts." This report contained an introduction with "a...