Popular Annual Financial Reporting Award Program

Awards

Popular Annual Financial Reporting Award Program

The GFOA established the Popular Annual Financial Reporting Awards Program (PAFR Program) in 1991 to encourage and assist state and local governments to extract information from their annual comprehensive financial report to produce high quality popular annual financial reports specifically designed to be readily accessible and easily understandable to the general public and other interested parties without a background in public finance and then to recognize individual governments that are successful in achieving that goal.

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Judging Process

Eligible reports are reviewed by three judges, who complete an evaluation form specifically designed for this purpose. The judge’s evaluation form is comprised of five categories that are given varying weights of importance toward the overall evaluation:

  • Reader appeal (25%),
  • Understandability (40%),
  • Distribution methods (5%),
  • And other (e.g., creativity, notable achievement) (10%).
  • The remaining 20% of the score is based upon overall quality and usefulness of the report, taking into consideration the four previous categories.

Judges are never selected from the same state as the PAFR being reviewed or from the same firm that performed the independent audit of the annual comprehensive financial report.

Staff tabulates the results of the reviews of the judges. Any PAFR with at least 2 of the 3 judges rating the report as Partially satisfy (3), Good (4) or Excellent (5) in all categories weighted at 20% or higher (i.e., in the reader appeal, understandability, and overall impression categories) is granted the award.

View Judges Checklist

Volunteer Judges

Completing Reviews Using GFOA’s Awards Management System

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List of Winners

GFOA congratulates the PAFR award winners for preparing a high quality popular annual financial report that meets the requirements of the Popular Annual Financial Report program.

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Related GFOA Award Programs

If you have questions about the PAFR Program or about the AMS, please contact GFOA.

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