What are your plans for 2016?

The New Year is well and truly here, people are back at work, people are (or most likely have) planned their annual giving.

Have you done you annual planning yet, did you spend time before your break working on what you want your organisation to achieve this coming year and how you will go about it?

If you haven’t, don’t panic, it’s not too late. Maybe instead of diving in to all the emails that will appear in your inbox, you should gather your staff around and have a brain dump about what you want to achieve this year and share ideas, skills and, workload on how, when and who will lead the charge to achieve the goals.

Growing supporters, growing income will be at the forefront of many wishlists. I would suggest that you spend time, if you haven’t already, looking at what did and didn’t work last year. If one particular message gained your more support than others, lose the weaker ones from any thought for this coming year.

If you found that one-on-one communications, phone calls, personalised letters and emails worked best, test this again this year. Perhaps, if you haven’t already, split/segment your database; use different material, days/times etc to test different sectors of your database.

The start of the year is when you should be reevaluting your work, testing a few things, you can’t leave it to the middle of the year when you know you haven’t reached the income goals you have set to make drastic changes.

Use the start of the year to test, test and test some more.

We all know that our communications aren’t a one size fits all, so make one change this year, and stick to it. Adapt your communication style to suit the different segments of your database.

Busy professionals probably want details delivered succinctly, to the point; older people likely want to hear more about individuals they have helped, the like to hear the stories. Millenials want to know what they can do, right here, right now.

As I’ve said, it’s no one size fits all.
When you hit the office, pop on the jug, brew a tea or, coffee; gather your team around and do a brain dump, don’t see this as taking up time that could be better used for other things, see it as an investment in your organisation.

You only have one start of a New Year, make it worthwhile for your organisation and you, your team, those you help and, your supporters.

What are your plans?
How do you start your year?