In order to succeed in 2016, whether it be in online fundraising, donor retention, digital marketing, or service provision, you need a plan.
Establishing SMART objectives will give you that road map. Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound objectives will help you measure progress towards goals, and to hold you and your team accountable for each small step along the way.
Is your lofty overall big picture goal to “get more donors” this year? With SMART objectives, you can drill down even deeper to ensure that your success and your progress can be measured.
For example, some sample SMART objectives for 2016:
- Gain 100 new donors by the end of this year through our annual appeal and in-person events.
- Raise 25% more through online and mobile donations than we did last year.
- Recruit 50 people to set up peer-to-peer online fundraising campaign pages for us this year.
With your SMART objectives, you know where you are going. After refining these objectives, you will need to dive down even deeper to identify specific strategies, tools, and tactics that will make success possible.
This month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival gave nonprofit bloggers an opportunity to share posts address the importance of creating, implementing, and measuring SMART objectives in conjunction with big goals.
Lucky us – and lucky you! We had some fabulous submissions from nonprofit bloggers on this topic.
Scott Simons leads us step-by-step through a case study of using the SMART technique of objective-setting with a nonprofit client.
Marcella Vitulli provides us with The 2016 Nonprofit Fundraising Strategic Plan Guide, which explores the fundraising planning process and breaks down each of the necessary elements that will allow you and your team to elevate your next campaign.
Claire Axelrad is spot on in her post about smart donor retention. As she says, “You can’t do this effectively without first knowing your retention rate; then setting a retention goal with measurable objectives, specific strategies and assigned responsibilities. Once you do this, then you can make some magic happen!”
The Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of Boston (disclaimer: I am a member) has launched a challenge for nonprofit professionals in 2016 to help them with goal-setting and strategic planning. You can join the challenge and share your journey by using the hashtag #npsquadgoals.
I’m a huge fan of metrics, and this post – 15 Fundraising Success Metrics to Start Tracking by Bill Tedesco – is a must read.
What are your goals and SMART objectives for using Facebook? Abby Jarvis helps you understand how to measure your progress using Facebook Insights.
Do you measure your nonprofit email engagement? Jeremy Koch details how to establish SMART objectives for your email marketing campaign to measure ROI.
Jamie Lewis give us 7 concrete steps on goal setting for a mobile fundraising campaign.
What is a Nonprofit Blog Carnival?
The Nonprofit Blog Carnival is a monthly round-up of blog posts on topics for people like you, at nonprofits. Each month, the host creates a theme and sends out the call (in a post like this) for posts on that topic. Then the host (that’s us!) collects the best ones in a round-up post towards the end of the month. You can write a post for your own website or blog. It doesn’t have to be specifically for the Carnival, or even mention the Carnival.
Check out the January 2016 Blog Carnival hosted by Beth Kanter for an example.
To submit, visit our call for submissions – March’s Carnival is on the theme of Reaching Millennials and Beyond and will be hosted by blogger Allyson Kapin.
Comments 1
Nice Job Julia, thanks for letting me be a part of this.