This morning I sat in a room full of nonprofit leaders at the Community Foundation for Loudoun and Fauquier Counties, working through what it actually takes to produce an annual report that works. Robin McGlothin, Amy Stirnweis, and Carrie Idol-Richards from the Good Plan Group walked us through the full arc: purpose, data, stories, resources,…
If everything you publish turns into a scramble three weeks out, you are not behind and you are not alone. It is one of the most common things a communications lead runs into, and it is rarely about working harder
The founder had built the thing she meant to build, and somewhere in the last twelve months had crossed a line she had not noticed crossing. The team had capacity. There was nowhere for the work to land that was not her inbox, and her inbox was where things went to wait.
The communications person had not had a chance to look at the editorial calendar she had been meaning to build since April, because every Monday since then had arrived with a more urgent ask. The organizations that ship consistently outperform the organizations with better ideas. An editorial calendar that lists intentions is not a system.
The development director silenced the debrief alarm without opening it, because the campaign was done and the team had already pivoted to the spring appeal. She knew from the four Novembers behind her that she was unlikely to write down what she had learned before January, by which point she would be working from a partial and self-flattering record of how it had gone.
