It’s almost 2024! To celebrate the crest of another year, here are five New Year’s resolutions for today’s nonprofit professionals.
1. Lose Weight
It’s time for nonprofit professionals to lose a little weight. You know what we’re talking about. That storage situation you have been neglecting for a few years.
It’s the closet with dollar store centerpieces and unused Legacy Society Gifts ready to topple out, or the storage unit filled to the brim with slightly sinister cardboard cut-outs from that local celebrity car wash fundraiser last summer. Or maybe you’re the type who can’t bear to toss out financial records from the 1990s.
Commit to losing the weight of a cluttered storage space for a clearer mind in 2024 … and more space to fill up with silent auction baskets crafted by your most eccentric board member.
2. Master a New Language
This year prepare to learn a new language at your job, as you take on more responsibilities or odd projects.
Perhaps 2024 is the year you will learn the intricacies of ADA-compliant construction at your facility or the dirty truth about spit valves in brass instruments for your orchestra.
Others will expect you to know the answers to their questions, so let’s get ready to be multilingual at work this year!
3. Fall in Love
It’s time to fall back in love at your nonprofit. And the best (and most human resources-approved) way to do so is by updating your CRM.
The CRM, or customer relationship management system or donor database, delivers perhaps the most meaningful and consistent relationship a fundraiser receives at work.
But when a CRM spits out unreliable data or habitually crashes, it becomes impossible to trust. The relationship erodes.
In 2024, it’s time to commit to finding a new, more mutually-beneficial relationship between you and the CRM in your life. Be sure to make this one of your new year’s resolutions. You deserve nothing less than a sexy new user experience and a streamlined query process!
4. Travel More
Nonprofit professionals need to travel in order to refresh their work souls and bring a new perspective to their work.
And didn’t you just mention you’re in the market for a CRM? You know what that means … a technology conference for fundraisers!
Not only do you get to visit Indianapolis or Baltimore in February, you will come back with 15 free stress balls and 7,300 emails from various database vendors who will contact you periodically, forever.
5. Learn a New Skill
Above all, nonprofit professionals should strive to learn a new skill in 2024. Perhaps that skill includes online auction expertise after a successful clean-out of the scary storage unit?
Or it may be a demonstration of an obscure function hidden within Bingo, the pet name you established for your new CRM.
Whatever skill you learn, it’s important to maintain your sense of humor when serving the community in nonprofit work. It’s often scrappy organizations tackling big problems and embracing obstacles along the way.
Now get to work on your new year’s resolutions. And best wishes in the new year!
