The Top 5 Takeaways from our November Workshop

Last week, we were happy to host the 2022 Planning for Nonprofit Digital Impact + Culture Workshop—a half-day course designed to get nonprofits feeling excited and prepared for the year to come.

In the four hours with our attendees, we covered everything from activating internal audiences, organizing digital marketing efforts and pinpointing authentic community engagement, inclusive of a preview of the future of fundraising and events.

We’ll be hosting more workshops in the near future, but lest we let this one get too far away from us, we wanted to capture the top five highlights from last week. Curious? Just keep it scrolling.

1. Advocacy starts from within.
   We’re coming into a new year—potentially with new missions and visions to guide us. It’s time to look to the people who kept your organization alive in 2020 and 2021 and assess how they can be best supported as ambassadors for your shared work. This may mean looking to more flexible working environments or changing business objectives to suit the strengths of the team. Your team is your greatest asset—but you have to work for and with them to make sure your organization’s promise rings true.
   
2. 2022 requires action rooted in reflection.
   Unprecedented? A true understatement. We were wholly unprepared for what the last two years handed to us. And now, that this new normal is just, well, normal, it’s important to not be looking backward as a benchmark. We aren’t going back to a working environment, living environment or even giving environment that looks like 2019. We’re carving a new way forward.
   
3. Your community has changed.
   Maybe not the people that compose your community—but what they’re expecting from your organization has gone through a whole transformation. Instead of working off older assumptions, tap into your audience and ask what they need—and want—for your organization. Get straight to the heart of the matter and strengthen your marketing efforts with this new insight.
   
4. We’ve only become more digitally dependent in the last year.
   The pandemic changed us in innumerable ways but a direct result of 2020 and 2021 is a durable dependency on digital tools and tech. These digital interfaces kept us close when we were far apart and scared. They offered us us information when it was vital to stay safe. And our need to get online, or perhaps more acutely be online incessantly, seems to have stuck—at least for the short term.
   
5. Connection, accessibility and advocacy are paramount.
   Intersectionality sits at the heart of equity—and in order to achieve balance with your organization and audience, your work needs to rely on connection, accessibility and advocacy. Hybrid events offered us a unique opportunity to access more of the community, while the social and political events of the last 18 months opened up doors for dialogue that organizations might have been less likely to pursue in years past. By rooting your community organizing in the ability to drive relationships, meet people where they are and stand in partnership together grants your organization a framework for social commitment that is proactive, not reactive.

Bummed you missed out on last week's session? Heck, we are, too. But you can sign up below to stay in-the-loop with our future Workshop events. Coming up, we'll be hosting a series of educational events in the next year, like how to activate your board, assess and find the stories in your social data and get savvy with content marketing—so stay tuned for more.