Planning for Success: 5 Ways to Make 2024 Your Organization's Best Year Yet

Phew! You made it! WE made it! 2023 is over and we can look forward to all the potential that 2024 holds for us.

For many, the new year serves as an opportunity to reset and realign our personal goals but it is also a great time to do the same for your organization. Using this season to do some intentional planning around what your organization wants to accomplish in the coming months is a great way to give yourself an advantage and set yourself up for success.

An annual plan is one tool that can help you identify your organization's goals and set out the road map to get there whether you are looking to build capacity, strengthen your fundraising efforts, or access grant funding. Annual plans are also great time-savers and can help make sure your organization stays on track.

But creating a plan for the year can be a daunting task. Below are some tips to help get you started in planning to make 2024 your organization's best year yet!

1. Take a Full Inventory

It can be pretty hard to figure out where you’re going when you don’t know where you've been. Taking a full inventory of your accomplishments, deferred goals, strengths, and areas for improvement gives you a better picture of the tools you have to get where you want to be. Don't make the mistake of limiting your inventory to your organization! No good plan is complete without input from the community (nothing about us without us, am I right?) and involving your community members from the start can save a lot of back peddling later.

2. Know Your Goals

SMART, SMARTER, SMARTEST: the debate continues to rage over what goal strategy is best for success. While I am not here to weigh in on that debate, I am here to advocate that you start somewhere. So instead of getting SMART, let's KISS (keep it simple, sweetie): write down a goal you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it by. We can get into what's realistic and measurable later on but for now, just take the first step of naming what you hope to achieve and hold yourself accountable by putting a date on it.

3. Plan for Implementation and Revisits

Your goal is the destination but having a plan is the road map to get you there. A good comprehensive plan should include your goals, a detailed timeline with key steps necessary, and diverse fundraising options to support your project. But a plan left behind is no good at all. Give yourself the advantage of mapping and calendaring your plan's implementation and opportunities to revisit and adjust as needed.

4. Communicate Your Plan

A plan is only as good as its implementation and Harvard Business Review cites that 60-90% of strategic plans never fully launch. There are many reasons a plan can fail but oftentimes it is as simple as a *Cool Hand Luke voice* failure to communicate. Plans that only involve or stay among high-level organization members are almost guaranteed to never come to fruition. Determine how you are going to communicate your plan throughout your agency and to your community.

5. Celebrate!

I know I am about to lose you here but stick with me! Nonprofit work is hard and it can often be thankless and the burnout is intense. What motivates us to do this work is different for everyone but the need to celebrate our wins is universal. And yet it is the last step we talk about and the one that we are most willing to skip. Much like rest, we have been conditioned by our hustle-obsessed culture to view celebration as an expendable or frivolous step in our process. But we now know that both rest and celebration are vital to growing our impact. Taking the time to celebrate our wins with those who helped us get there keeps the momentum up, contributes to a positive work environment, encourages collaboration, and is crucial in preventing burnout. 

Want to take 2024 to the next level?

Leger Consulting is here to help you build and implement single and multi-year strategic plans to help your organization increase its impact and grow its good. Reach out today to learn how we can make 2024 your organization's year for growth!

Getting feedback from the community as part of our client's 2024 strategic planning process.