Ideas for New Year's Resolutions for Nonprofits

Many of you are thinking about what will be the big goals for your organizations for 2008. For sure they involve programs (improvement and new ones), fundraising (or you might as well forget those great programming ideas) and financial management changes (cost cutting, funding new benefits).

Here are some additional ideas for 2008 resolutions to consider:

Advocacy – Why not initiate getting nonprofits with similar issues together with the purpose of starting an advocacy campaign for all of you. Whether it be policy change or increased funding for something that is currently not covering costs, advocacy is an important activity for nonprofits to be involved in.

Governance – Take a look at my article either at Charity Channel or on my website entitled “Highlights from the BoardSource Report: The Nonprofit Governance 2007 Index “ and see how you stack up with other nonprofits. Resolve to improve your governance this year. You can start with a conflict of interest or written whistleblower policy. More ambitious? Give your Executive Director a written evaluation this year.
Charity Channel's Nonprofit Boards and Governance Review

Volunteers – The face of volunteering is changing. Resolve to update what you have volunteers do and how they do it. Make an effort to recruit some new types of volunteers using skills you haven’t used volunteers for in the past. Resolve to add more professionalism to your volunteer program.

Build Relationships Using the Internet – There are new opportunities for online giving everyday. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that it is relationship building that counts. Update your website, send 4-6 eNewsletters a year, use email to advertise your events (including last minute reminders), initiate online giving at your website, start a blog, use MySpace, Facebook or YouTube, update your Guidestar profile. You may not have a lot of new donors right away but you are making an important investment in the next generation of donors who will only be doing business with you online.

Marion Conway Consulting