Guidelines for Reports to Annual Session

(updated for 2020 Annual Session)

Friends, we ask for your support in using these guidelines to prepare your report to Annual Session 2020. We are working to make reports more readable for Friends to increase the number of people reading reports in advance.

Note that where these guidelines refer to “committees,” the intention is that the guidance applies equally to PYM officers and to representatives/delegates from PYM to other organizations. Subcommittees may also submit their own reports in consultation with their Committee.

All committees should submit a report, even if it is brief. We want to create more awareness among the whole community and to continue to find ways to better support one another.

Reports should be emailed to the Assistant to the Clerk (PYMAssistanttotheClerk@gmail.com) by June 12, 2020.  Reports received by the deadline will be assembled into an “Advance Packet” available electronically to all participants.  Reports received late will be more difficult for participants to find and may be overlooked.

Reports should provide an overview and highlights of the committee’s work, specifically work done since the previous Annual Session. Reports do not need to list all of the things the committee and its sub-committees or working groups have done during the year. Rather, reports should communicate how Spirit has moved through the committee since the last Annual Session.

Broader “news,” that is, more detailed and extensive information, should not be included in the report but may be posted separately in the committee’s section of the Annual Session web page and/or the committee’s page on the PYM website (by emailing to PYMAssistanttotheClerk@gmail.com).

Reports from committees, if submitted in time, will be included in the Advance Packet for the Annual Session.  In any case, they will be posted on the PYM website (on the Annual Session web page and on your committee page if you have one).  Afterwards they will be included in the final minutes document as attachments.

News documents will generally not be included in the Advance Packet or the final session minutes, but they will be posted on the website along with the reports.

To encourage broad readership, reports should be brief—most should be 1-2 pages long. If your committee’s draft report is 3 or more pages, talk to the Assistant to the Clerk at least 2 weeks before the reports deadline (i.e. aim for June 1, 2020).

Because consistent formatting across reports make them easier to read, please use the following formatting:

  1. 1” margins
  2. 11 point Calibri font
  3. Section headings in bold
  4. Header (all pages, centered, two lines, 14 point Ariel font):
    1. Line 1: Pacific Yearly Meeting
    2. Line 2: [Committee Name]
    3. Line 3: “Report to Annual Session 2020”
  5. Footer (centered, all pages, 11 point Ariel font):  Page X of Y
  6. Do not include photos, as these make creation of the minutes document more difficult.
  7. A summary section at the top listing any action items and any specific requests (for example, key items for Meeting Representatives to convey). If there are no action items or requests, write “None” in this section.
  8. Highlight any action items and/or draft minutes in bold
  9. The last paragraph of the report should list the members of the committee, with the clerk’s name last followed by the word “Clerk” in parentheses.

You may use Template_Committee_Report_to_AS_2020 or you can set up the formatting yourself in your Word document.  Please keep any formatting simple (avoid using custom Word “Styles”), and note that Secretariat editors may need to do some reformatting to fit with other reports in the Advance Packet and the final minutes packet.

Submit the report in Word format (.doc or .docx) with the filename following the model

  • Model
    • CommitteeName_Report_to_AS_2020.docx (or .doc)
  • For example:
    • Ministry_and_Oversight_Report_to_AS_2020.doc,
    • Latin_American_Concerns_Report_to_AS_2020.docx
  • Note that the names are quite long enough without adding the word “Committee”.

Do not submit the report in PDF format unless it has tricky formatting (such as the budget). This is to facilitate creation of the advance reports packet and of the Annual Session minutes.

Thank you for your support in these changes to the way we communicate from committees back to the Yearly Meeting. We hope that using these guidelines will increase the number of people reading the reports about your important work.

Sharon Gates, Assistant to the Clerk