One Family Annual Report 2025

One Family is an organisation working to create a society that values and supports one-parent families. Its work combines specialist family support services, research and policy work. Its services include the AskOneFamily national helpline, parenting courses and mentoring, counselling, the Separating Well for Children Service, the New Futures Employability Programme and professional training.

That creates a particularly broad annual reporting requirement.

The organisation isn't simply reporting financial performance or listing a series of corporate achievements. Its annual report needs to communicate the human impact of its work alongside the systems, policies, partnerships and funding that make that work possible.

The 2025 report therefore covers a remarkably broad range of subjects.

It begins with funding and organisational information before moving through messages from the Chair and CEO, systemic drivers of inequality, the housing crisis, the New Futures Employability Programme, strategic priorities and service achievements.

It then covers adult education, the AskOneFamily Helpline, counselling, policy and advocacy, the Advocacy Project, communications, committees and memberships, organisational futureproofing, governance, the Board of Directors, financial information and detailed grant reporting.

That is the type of content architecture that can easily result in a report that feels like a collection of unrelated documents.

The role of design is to make it feel like one publication.

A good annual report shouldn't require the reader to work out how it is organised.

This is particularly important when designing a digital annual report, where readers are often viewing individual pages on a laptop, tablet or phone rather than physically turning pages.

For the One Family report, a clear editorial hierarchy helps establish a consistent reading experience.

Section headings are prominent and distinctive. Supporting information is separated into manageable blocks. Statistics are given visual prominence. Photography provides breathing space between text-heavy sections. Tables are structured carefully for governance and financial information.

The result is a publication that can accommodate very different types of content without requiring a completely different design language for every section.

This is one of the most important considerations when commissioning an annual report designer.

The design needs to be flexible enough to handle your content, rather than forcing your content into a rigid template.

For many charities, the most important section of the annual report is the impact story.

The reader needs to understand quickly:

Annual reports often contain difficult subjects.

For One Family, the 2025 report addresses poverty, housing insecurity, homelessness, domestic violence, childcare, family law, social protection and inequality.

The report's section on The Housing Crisis and One-Parent Families is an example of where editorial design becomes particularly important.

The content describes the impact of housing insecurity across One Family's services, including parents facing eviction, families remaining in the same home following separation because they cannot afford separate housing, and families living in emergency or precarious accommodation.

Rather than trying to reduce this subject to a few statistics, the report allows the narrative to develop across several pages.

Photography is used selectively, while typography and generous areas of background colour create separation between the different parts of the story.

That balance is important.

A charity annual report should not look like an advertisement when the content concerns serious social issues. Equally, it shouldn't become visually oppressive simply because the subject matter is serious.

Good annual report design needs to find the balance between professional, credible, human and appropriate.

An annual report is most effective when it tells the story of where an organisation is going, rather than simply documenting where it has been.

For 2025, One Family was beginning its new Forging Ahead 2025–2027 strategy.

The strategy is built around three central goals:

Another challenge in annual report design is avoiding vague descriptions of activity.

Words such as support, engagement, impact and partnership can become meaningless if they aren't supported by evidence.

The One Family report counters this by combining narrative with specific results.

For example, its 2025 Service Achievements section explains that the Parenting Service supported 735 one-parent families, including 314 new referrals, while Separating Well for Children supported 242 families affected by high levels of parental conflict or domestic violence.

The same section records 34 parents attending Positive Parenting courses, 40 attending Parenting Under Pressure, 84 participating in online group courses and 917 enrolling in one of five e-courses.

The Adult Education section adds another important dimension.

The New Futures Employability Programme engaged 99 lone parents, delivered 435 individual support sessions and achieved a 66% progression rate into education or employment among participating parents.

These are exactly the kinds of figures that should be surfaced visually in an annual report.

They provide evidence.

And evidence is what turns an annual report from a corporate formality into a useful communications document.

Charity annual reports can easily become dominated by statistics, institutional language and formal reporting requirements.

But impact is ultimately about people.

The One Family report uses photography and highlighted testimonials to give the publication a more personal dimension.

A participant's experience of New Futures, for example, is presented as a series of prominent quotations rather than being buried inside a long paragraph. This creates a visual pause within the report while allowing the reader to understand the experience behind the programme. The report also includes testimonials relating to One Family's parenting services.

For charities considering their own annual report, this is an important consideration.

If you have stories, testimonials or case studies that demonstrate the difference your organisation makes, they should be considered part of the report's core content — not simply something added at the end.

A digital annual report should not simply be thought of as a printed report saved as a PDF.

The fundamental content may be similar, but the way people interact with it is different.

Digital readers scan. They jump between sections. They look for statistics. They search for particular terms. They may arrive at an individual page without seeing the cover. They may read the report on a laptop one day and a tablet the next.

That means digital annual report design needs to consider screen-based hierarchy, navigation, readability, file performance and accessibility from the beginning.

The One Family report is particularly suited to digital presentation because its information has been broken into clearly defined editorial sections, with prominent headings, short content blocks, statistics, photography, pull quotes and structured tables.

Its contents page also provides a useful overview of the report architecture, taking the reader from Funding and About Us through Strategy, Services, Advocacy, Communications, Governance and Financial Overview.

When commissioning a digital annual report, these structural decisions should be discussed at the beginning of the project, not after the design has been completed.

One of the hardest annual report design problems is that there isn't one reader.

A charity's annual report may need to work for:

Governance sections are rarely the most visually exciting part of an annual report.

They are, however, among the most important.

The One Family report contains detailed information about its Board of Directors, board succession, board transitions, conflicts of interest, board meetings and committee structures, alongside financial reporting and detailed grant disclosures.

This is where structured typography, considered table design and consistent spacing matter. Governance information should be easy to check, not difficult to read.

It should help readers understand why it mattered.

Financial reporting is often one of the areas that clients are most concerned about when commissioning an annual report.

The information needs to remain accurate while being presented in a way that readers can understand.

One Family's 2025 financial overview reports total income of €1.91 million, an increase of 12.1% on 2024, and total expenditure of €1.88 million, an increase of 11.9%. The organisation recorded a surplus of €32,925.

The report also records general reserves of €497,685, equivalent to approximately 3.3 months of operating costs.

One Family's work also extends beyond direct service provision into policy and advocacy.

The 2025 report documents submissions to government departments, appearances before Joint Oireachtas Committees, research partnerships and the development of the One Family Advocacy Project.

The Advocacy Project had 123 lone parents signed up, with members participating in lobbying events and contributing to policy and media activity.

A dedicated section then explores the project's 2025 impact, including advocacy workshops, information sessions, one-to-one sessions and webinars.

It also describes how parents' lived experiences were brought into national discussions including the Social Inclusion Forum and Child Poverty Summit.

This is another reason why a one-size-fits-all annual report template rarely works for complex organisations.

Different forms of impact require different forms of communication.

Service statistics may need large numbers. Policy work may need timelines. Research may need quotations and references. Governance may need tables. Financial reporting may need charts.

The design system needs to accommodate all of them.

The One Family annual report is a good example of why annual report design is fundamentally an information-design project.

There are 35 pages. There are numerous service areas. There are statistics, testimonials, strategy statements, policy submissions, governance information, board tables, committee attendance, risk information, remuneration information, financial figures and detailed grant disclosures.

The funding section alone includes detailed information about individual grants, their purposes, terms, amounts recognised and deferred balances.

That level of complexity cannot be solved simply by choosing attractive fonts and photographs.

It requires editorial thinking. It requires understanding the hierarchy of the information. It requires knowing what deserves emphasis and what needs to remain detailed. And it requires a design system capable of maintaining consistency across dozens of different content scenarios.

If you're responsible for commissioning your organisation's next annual report, you may be wondering what you need to prepare before contacting a designer.

The good news is that you don't need to have everything worked out.

A good annual report designer should be able to help you establish the structure.

Typically, we would recommend gathering:

The timescale depends on the number of pages, the complexity of the content, how complete the copy is and how many people need to review and approve the report.

A straightforward 20–30 page report can be considerably quicker to design than a 60–100 page report containing extensive governance tables, financial information, infographics and multiple rounds of stakeholder review.

The important thing is to involve the designer early.

If the deadline is close, the designer needs to know immediately.

This allows the project to be structured around content delivery, first concepts, page production, amendments, proofing and final artwork.

For a digital annual report, additional consideration should be given to final PDF preparation, links, accessibility and screen optimisation.

There isn't a meaningful single price for annual report design because the amount of work can vary enormously.

A 20-page report with supplied copy and straightforward layouts is a very different project from an 80-page publication requiring information design, charts, infographics, tables, image sourcing, extensive amendments and accessibility preparation.

When comparing annual report design quotes, don't just compare the number at the bottom of the proposal.

Ask what is included.

Does the quote include:

For many organisations, the answer is both.

A digital annual report offers significant advantages. It can be distributed immediately. It can be emailed to funders and stakeholders. It can sit on your website. It can be shared through social media. It doesn't require printing or postage. It can potentially include clickable navigation and links. And it provides an accessible format for audiences who prefer reading on screen.

A printed annual report can still have an important role for AGMs, stakeholder meetings, board meetings, funders, government representatives and other key audiences.

The decision should therefore be based on how your organisation actually communicates.

For a digital-first report, however, the design should be created with the screen in mind from the outset rather than simply treating digital output as an afterthought.

A strong digital annual report should answer five questions quickly.

At Pixelo, we don't see an annual report as simply a document that needs to be formatted.

We see it as a communication tool.

The objective is to take everything your organisation needs to report and turn it into something your stakeholders can actually understand.

That means asking questions before opening InDesign.

For many organisations, the annual report is one of the few publications that brings everything together.

It tells your stakeholders what you achieved. It demonstrates responsible stewardship of funding. It communicates your strategy. It records your governance. It provides evidence of impact. It gives your team something to be proud of. And it creates a permanent record of the organisation's work during the year.

So it deserves more consideration than simply putting the supplied text into a template.

The One Family 2025 Annual Report demonstrates how a complex mix of human stories, service statistics, strategic priorities, advocacy activity, communications results, governance information and financial reporting can be brought together into one coherent publication.

The organisation reported 26 pieces of earned media coverage during 2025, 23 of them in national media, alongside significant growth across Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Its website also underwent a major update focused on navigation, appearance and accessibility.

The annual report therefore sits within a much wider communications ecosystem.

It isn't an isolated document.

It is another opportunity to explain who you are, what you achieved and why your work matters.