When is the best time to plan your year?
Today.
That’s right! Even if it is a quarter of the way through the year right now, don’t wait until next year! You can get started today!
Planning a year for a nonprofit is essential. I’ve seen so many nonprofits not living up to their potential in securing income, eliminating burnout, and applying for much needed grants!
If you work at a nonprofit, or as a freelancer if you work with nonprofits, then this is one of your first steps in HUGE momentum.
In early December of 2018, I finished facilitating a hybrid 10-week Strategic Planning Group and since then have launched a completely online Nonprofit Strategic Planning Course. The individuals in nonprofits, or freelancers looking for more services to provide nonprofits, are definitely set up and ahead of the curve for the next year!
I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed and found useful the Nonprofit Strategic Planning Course. My team is working on putting together a full day retreat with the entire staff to share some of the information we learned through the program. We are not only grateful for the excellent information that you presented to us but the resources that will help us stay organized and improve productivity within the organization. – Samantha Taitano, executive director of Manelu
In any case, even if you haven’t sat down and completed your planning yet, or even if you have, you are going to want to implement this step-by-step process. This is a snapshot of one of the modules from the Nonprofit Strategic Planning Course.
You will learn how to get ahead of your year and make sure that you have:
- Funding Success
- Eliminate Burnout
- Avoid Competition
Okay, let’s get into your next year Calendar Tips.
The best thing to do is to print out a full-page of the current year calendar that lists all the months and dates, and a piece of paper. Or download the FREE Printable (click here), where we have everything set up for you! You can also just utilize a calendar and a piece of paper if you already have one in front of you!
Here are some questions to consider:
- What are your nonprofit’s milestone events for the upcoming year?
- What are other community-wide big events for the upcoming year?
- Do you need to adjust the dates of your events?
- What are the grant and funding timelines for the upcoming year?
Once you have really nailed down this calendar, then make it available and visible for your staff. Let people know what projects are in the works and what they should be prepping for.
This activity really shouldn’t take very long at all yet will save your nonprofit hours and hours (maybe even eliminate repeating the same unsuccessful year) and will help everyone understand the vision.
You can also mitigate having an unsuccessful fundraiser or missing a grant deadline simply by planning it in advance, getting corporate funders before to commit to funding your event before others, and prepping for grants!
