You need DD Form 804-5, and this page gives you the blank plus the steps for handling it. Start with what the form does: Officer Recruiting Advertising Resources. Its official title is DD Form 804-5, Officer Recruiting Advertising Resources, June 2000.
Then look at the edition date: not stated, publisher status not stated. After that, ask whether the form covers your situation. It almost certainly does regardless of your branch — DD forms run Department-wide rather than through a single service.
Once you know the form fits, find out when you file it. not stated sets the requirement, and not stated maintains the form itself. Your own command or agency adds local timing on top of that, so ask your administrative office if the deadline matters to you.
Finally, decide how you will complete it. You can type into a fillable file or print a blank and write by hand, and the rest of this page walks you through both paths in order.
Now fill it in. Work from the top of the page downward, and do not jump ahead — the identifying block comes first, the substance of your entry second, the certification last. Later boxes often depend on what you put at the top.
Your first action is verification. Find the edition date on the form and match it against not stated. A mismatch means you are working from a superseded printing, and because DD forms change Department-wide rather than service by service, the office receiving it will notice.
Take the fields in order and answer all of them. Mark inapplicable items N/A instead of leaving white space. When you reach a date, copy the format shown on the form, since a reviewer reading a different convention may misread your entry entirely.
When you reach a Privacy Act Statement, read it before you continue. It tells you the legal authority for collecting your information, what the Department does with it, who else may see it, and whether you have to answer at all. That last point is worth knowing before you supply personal identifiers, not after.
Finish with the certification. Print the form and sign in ink, or apply a digital signature with your CAC if the receiving office accepts one. Do not type your name in the signature box and consider it done; that is a name, not a signature. Date the block immediately after signing.
Then check your work against the usual failures: an obsolete edition, empty required boxes, handwriting nobody can read after scanning, wrong date format, missing signature or date.
Look up an unclear item on the form face before anywhere else, then in not stated. Should the two texts conflict, the directive is the one you follow.
Download the form
First, look at what you can download. The set covers PDF, the form runs 1 pages, and you will complete roughly 200 fields.
Take the pdf if you are unsure. Then check which kind you have: if the boxes highlight when you click them, you have a fillable pdf and can type straight into it, and your entries save with the file. If nothing highlights, you have a printable pdf — send it to a printer and use black ink.
Go with the typed route whenever the choice is yours. Consider what happens after you submit: the copy gets scanned, forwarded and filed, and each pass costs handwriting some legibility. Block letters help if you are stuck with a pen.
What the form asks for
- A. Component.
- B. Date reported (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no dividers).
- C. Fiscal years reported. From:
- Fiscal year to:
- Actuals: fiscal year.
- Appropriated (enlisted): fiscal year.
- Authorization: fiscal year.
- President's budget: fiscal year.
- President's budget: fiscal year.
- b. Newspapers/supplements. Actual. (2) Media.
- (3) Production.
- Appropriated. (5) Media.
- (6) Production.
- Authorization. (8) Media.
- (9) Production.
- First President's Budget. (11) Media.
- (12) Production.
- Second President's Budget. (14) Media.
- (15) Production.
- c. Outdoor. Actual. (2) Media.
- (3) Production.
- Appropriated. (5) Media.
- (6) Production.
- Authorization. (8) Media.
With the form finished, route it to the office named in not stated or in your organization's own instruction. Keep a copy first. People rarely regret having one and frequently regret not having one.
When DD Form 804-5 references another form, search on the series and number. Because DD numbers are common to every military department, the number by itself identifies exactly one document.
Here is where people go wrong. They see a number in an instruction and download whichever form matches it. But DA and DD are separate systems — Army-specific in one case, Department-wide under not stated in the other — so check which series you were sent to before you take the file.
Plan to repeat this step whenever the form comes up again. Revisions follow directive changes, changes in what data is collected, and updates to notice language. Since nobody notifies you, check not stated at download and you have covered it.
Before you go, note what is not covered here. You have the blank form and instructions for completing it; you do not have legal guidance, and no statement on this page determines what any office will do with your submission. Direct those questions to not stated, to the personnel office that serves you, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 804-5?
- DD Form 804-5, Officer Recruiting Advertising Resources, June 2000
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?