This January, the DBD Team is making resolutions to help us be better. Today Lora suggests that maybe we should resolve to fix things before they break.
So much of fundraising work is cyclical. Annual campaigns, events, United Way campaigns, etc. all combine to give our yearly calendar a rhythm and sense of expectation. Rarely do nonprofit leaders find themselves with extra time on their hands, so it becomes very easy to take last year’s plan and polish it up for the new year. Why fix something that’s not broken?
Some of us on the Donor By Design team are known to enjoy breaking things.* We get bored easily and after doing a program or a report the same way a couple of times, we get the itch to “break it”… although we’d probably call it “innovation.”
Maybe there’s a happy medium between the two. What if we resolved to “fix it before it breaks?”
When we have a chance to do something for the third (or thirtieth) time, it’s a chance to make it better. We can:
Resolve this year to take one of your responsibilities and fix it before it breaks. Whether that’s what you write in your thank you notes or how you run your board meetings or the agenda for your biggest event of the year — see what you can “break”. It can always be better, and making it so will make you better too.
* Not naming any names but they might rhyme with Spruce and Nora…