It’s only been a month since the new calendar year began – which means it’s not too late to take stock of the year gone by.

It’s something we did for all our clients over the last few weeks.

(Read to the end for a bonus. If you follow these steps, we’ll review your plan to give some additional feedback.)

Sit down.

Open a clean document (or new paper, if that’s your style).

Write down everything you did this past year to market or fundraise.

• “Chanukah appeal”
• “Parlor meeting in Feb”
• “Table at the local conference”
• “More emails”
• Vechulu

Then write how it went. Here are some questions to help you process the takeaways:

1. Overall, did we feel like this was successful?
2. Why do we think it worked?
3. If it didn’t go as planned, why do we think that happened?
4. Were there any tangible, measurable results? If so, what were they?
5. If we did this again, what are 3 things we’d do differently?

Based on this, create an agenda for the twelve months ahead.

This will be a combination of:

1. Things you’ll repeat
2. New things you want to plan

Here’s an example of how we did this for our clients:

First, we reviewed everything that went out this year. (In this case, we were hyper-focused on emails, so we went through each one to check open rates, donation stats, etc.)

Then, based on what we saw, we consolidated our thoughts:

TAKEAWAYS: trends and other insights we noticed.

In this case, it was the types of emails that got high donation rates.

In your case, it might be that turnout to the event was lower than you thought because you realized it coincided with another calendar milestone that made it less convenient for people.

OPPORTUNITIES: Things we should try, based on what we’ve seen did work.

In this case, it was noticing that we should send more emails on Motzei Yom Tov, because this specific audience likes donating then.

In your case, it might be realizing that people actually loved the snail mail you sent. You got a lot of positive feedback and should definitely try doing that again in the year ahead.

PLANS: The action steps needed to make this all happen.

In this case, it was a list of what to change about our technical email set-up, as well as new email ideas to add to our schedule.

In your case, it might be putting all your fundraising plans into a calendar so you know what they are and can start preparing, without them sneaking up on you.

If you try this, let us know.

Email us a copy of your digest + takeaways within the week (by Feb 14) and I’ll bezh spend a few minutes reviewing and adding input or additional thoughts.

This way, you’ll start the year with intention – and clear next steps. You know what works, what doesn’t, and how to make this year ahead your nonprofit’s best one yet.

Our agency helps multi-million dollar nonprofits with marketing strategy and copywriting that touches hearts. And gets people giving. See our NPO packages

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