How To Best Kick-Start 2010? Ten Tips For Nonprofit and NGO Leaders.

Happy New Year! Here are 10 tips designed to kick-start your organization in 2010:

1. Send a Happy New Year note to your Board members and your leadership team. Include a calendar of already scheduled important dates. If you have Outlook for email, you can even attach them as separate meeting requests that they can click on and save directly to their calendar.
2. Make sure that your mission and vision is front and center in everything you do this year. 18 prominent places to keep in mind.
3. Hold a budget review session with your leadership team to make sure that everyone knows the financial challenges and opportunities for the coming year. Put similar monthly or quarterly meetings on the calendar so they don't fall between the cracks.
4. Create a draft of your own personal development goals for the year. Circulate it to your board and leadership teams and get their input on other critical areas for learning. Create a process for your staff to do the same and commit to supporting them in reaching their goals.
5. If you haven't done so within the past year, circulate a Board self-assessment survey, and review it at the next regularly scheduled board meeting. Set Board "enhancement" goals and build a strategy to reach them.
6. Review your existing grant application calendar or create one if you haven't yet got one. Create check points and due dates well in advance of the deadline to avoid last-minute crunch time on writing. Look for gaps and research new opportunities that could be added.
7. Run through your website and see what content needs to be refreshed. Do you refer to 2009 at all? Are your program descriptions current? Make sure that your other marketing and outreach collateral is up-to-date, too.
8. Build a dashboard of program, financial, and other goals that can be easily referenced to measure progress at any time. Decide with whom and how you will share updates. More on dashboards.
9. Schedule meetings with local media to catch them up on your plans for 2010. Find out what interests them and keep it top of mind to ensure good press coverage.
10. Don’t forget to celebrate your successes within and throughout your full organization. Keeping your staff and volunteer teams engaged, excited, and enthusiastic is going to be critical this year.

What other things are you doing to kick off 2010 successfully? Just log in and comment!