3 New Year Goal Setting Tips for Non-Profit Marketers

I’ll admit it, I am a goal-setting junkie. So the beginning of January is one of my favorite times of the year. Returning to the office after a (hopefully) restful holiday season I am recharged and ready to get back to work.

For goal-setters like me, it is a magical time. It’s a time of year when sharing your goals is encouraged. Friends ask about your New Year’s resolutions and your plans for the year ahead. Websites and blogs post their best productivity hacks. Store shelves are full of beautiful planners and other tools to help turn your pen scratchings into reality. It is a season that celebrates daydreaming.

New Year’s is often thought of as a time for crafting personal health goals (which we quit by February) or creating new habits (which — if we are lucky — make it to the second week of January). Instead, I believe this season can become one in which we set realistic and achievable goals for our work. While many of the non-profits I’ve worked for do not start the fiscal year in January, the slow late December and early January days provide the perfect opportunity to reflect and set goals for my work in the year ahead. I also find that leadership is receptive to new ideas in this season as well, thus it is a perfect time to present goals and ideas (as long as they don’t fall too far outside of the plan for the fiscal year).

If you’re a marketing professional in the non-profit sector, I hope you too have time this season to reflect, reorient, and set goals for the upcoming year. I hope it brings you a sense of calm and motivation in the new year. And, most importantly, I hope the results show the fruits of your labor when these goals are implemented.

Outline Your Goals

The first step is to identify what goals your team is trying to achieve. Consider your organization’s mission. What could your team do to help drive forward this mission for your organization?

Next, think about the different operations of your organization and how you could aid in achieving the goals of these functions.

• Do you want to raise more money?
• Attract new donors?
• Grow your email lists?
• Create more brand enthusiasts or activists?
• Educate more people?
• Advocate more?

If your organization’s functions are divided into teams at your office, you may even consider setting up meetings with leadership for those teams to find out what their goals are and how their goals could translate into marketing goals.

Of course, making sure to write SMART goals is important. You’ve probably heard of this framework before, but it demands that all goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. While in the brainstorming phase, it is okay to not shoot ideas down, when finalizing the goals you’ve outlined. Then it is important that they meet these criteria.

Categorize and Prioritize

Once your goals are outlined, divide them into categories by the functions of your organization, for example:

• development or fundraising,
• external audience growth,
• education, etc.

This is an easier way to visualize all of the goals you have identified.

Now is a good time to identify the decision-makers on these teams that are related to these goals. Who will you need to talk to in order to craft and execute strategies for these goals? Identifying them now can help you set up the appropriate meetings and work on the next step towards making these goals a reality.

From there, you can prioritize. You may have set an ambitious number of goals, which is great to challenge yourself, but which ones will you prioritize? This prioritization may shift throughout the year, which is normal, but starting off the year with your priorities laid out is best.

Identify the Audience and the Intended Journey

Now is the time to identify your intended audience for your outlined goals. Who are you trying to reach? This is a very important question for when you start drafting a strategy plan, so that for each goal you are creating the right content and reaching them through the right channel.

Lastly, keep in mind the marketing funnel or customer journey for each prospective goal. How will you persuade your audience to take the steps needed to help you achieve the desired outcome? This is a more complex step, and if you are not sure what I mean by this, check out this helpful article on Hubspot. Basically, you need to answer how you will bring new audience members into the fold and convert them to take the desired action.

Happy goal setting! I hope these tips are helpful as you begin to plan for the year ahead. Of course, setting your goals is only step one and will need to be followed by many other steps such as: crafting a strategy, presenting to leadership or team members, delegating tasks, creating project management documents, and ensuring proper progress reporting is in place. Identifying the proper goals is necessary for all of these future steps!

For now, I wish you a restful holiday season, and the time and space you need to reflect on your desires and goals for the upcoming year.