Our 2025 Impact Report
From winning global awards to helping a client secure a donation from Metallica
When I reflect on the past year, it’s easy to first see only the negative in the world around us — there is much division, fear, and uncertainty. And yet, while 2025 presented many of our incredible clients with hurdles, it also presented them with opportunities to take bold action. And, I’m immensely proud of the great strides our team made to support them.
A bold new strategy receives international recognition — and attention
For most of 2024, we worked behind the scenes to support our client, Nellie’s, in making a monumental change in honour of their 50th anniversary. Nellie’s empowers women and their children fleeing gender-based violence to find a new path in life, and we worked alongside them to bring their revised mission and vision to life with a new logo and tagline and then rolled it out across all of their marketing and with a new website.
The effort was rewarded in 2025.
Luminate won a Silver TITAN Brand Award for Best Non-Profit Rebrand. This global competition honours excellence in branding and advertising across various industries and markets whose work reflects the power of strategic thinking and long-term impact.
And the powerful new brand attracted international attention for Nellie’s as well. Nellie’s received an unexpected one-time donation from the band, Metallica, and their All Within My Hands Foundation. The band’s foundation donates to several local charities in every concert city, and they chose Nellie’s based on the strength of the website we wrote and designed.
Our signature product also gains international recognition
Five years ago, we saw a need to support our current roster of clients in transforming their annual reports into compelling, donor-focused reports that truly showcased the impact of their work. Since then, we’ve planned, written, and designed dozens of annual reports for a growing number of non-profit organizations. In fact, in 2025 we had a 100% client retention rate for annual reports; a powerful vote of confidence from our amazing clients.
Each report we produce strategically tells a story — a story that shows the real work an organization does to make a difference in the lives of real people. This approach also attracted accolades, and in 2025, we won two prestigious Communicator Awards Award of Distinction. One was for the report we did for Esquimalt Nation, a small First Nation community in B.C., that told the story of the positive impact their Comprehensive Community Plan was having on community members. The other was for the report we did for John Howard Society of Peel-Halton Dufferin (JHS PHD) that emphasized the message that everyone belongs here. JHS PHD supports people who have been involved with the criminal justice system, and our strategic storytelling helped them express the importance and impact of their work.
We levelled up and expanded our reach
To kick off the year, we became a Trusted Hive Partner at the Nonprofit Hive and a vetted consultant at the Nonprofit Cooperative. These titles are important for two reasons: they allow us to strengthen our professional network and build deeper connections with other vetted consultants, and they allow us to reach, support, and guide even more non-profits with impactful, connection-driven communication.
It's through these memberships, and more, that we expanded our commitment to education through speaking events and webinars. And what we’ve heard at these events is that non-profits are finding more purpose and value in strategy. And so…
We’re heading into 2026 even more focused on expanding our annual report approach
Starting in 2026, our services for creating impactful annual reports will be available in three tiers:
Impact Messaging Framework: Get a detailed, step-by-step framework using our proven strategic storytelling approach. It’s everything you need to do your annual impact report yourself.
The Signature Annual Report: Sign on for our tried-and-true process which covers all phases — strategic framework planning, professional copywriting, and stunning design. It’s everything you need to produce an annual report that drives trust and engagement.
The Total Impact Package: Invest in our comprehensive end-to-end solution to drive maximum impact. It combines the full execution of our Signature Annual Report package, plus exclusive high-value strategic add-ons.
Stay tuned for more information on all our packages coming soon…
To all of our clients, thank you for trusting us and giving us the opportunity to do what we love: create content that connects.