Forward

Every year I do a three-part review and planning process. I call it Review, Reflect, Forward. Today’s post is Forward. I’ll be discussing what’s up in 2015 and what I’m most looking forward to next year!

If there were one word that sums up 2014 for The Storytelling Non-Profit, it would be: everything.

As you could probably tell from the first two posts in this series, I did a ton this year. It was a year of trying and testing everything. That’s why I think 2015 will (hopefully) be summed up by a very different concept: refine.

In alignment with my vision of being an exceptional teacher and thought leader in our sector, I will be cutting back on the number of clients we work with to 2 per quarter. I believe this will give the team and I greater capacity to focus on doing amazing work that gets results for our clients, while giving us space to expand our teaching and training. I will continue to blog 3 days a week and hopefully we’ll have a couple of guest bloggers contributing great content, too!

What am I most looking forward to in 2015?

• Publishing my book in February! It’s been a long, but very fun process of writing, editing and designing the book. I seriously can’t wait to share it with the world!
• Offering more in-depth trainings. I’m always humbled by the positive feedback I receive from webinar attendees who enjoy the tactical approach to teaching. Next year, I hope to offer more in-depth and advanced trainings.
• Coaching. I’ve had two coaching clients this year and have loved working with both of them. Next year I’ll be making space to support 5 coaching clients.
• Building a stronger community. I love the blog and email newsletter community, but sometimes it feels like one-way communication. I want to talk to more of you and I want everyone to talk to each other! I’m considering starting a Facebook group or LinkedIn group. Thoughts?
• Exploring personal narrative in fundraising. I’ve written a couple of posts and given a talk on the power of your personal narrative in fundraising. It’s a topic that’s received a lot interest and I hope that explore it more and create a few tools for helping non-profit professionals develop and use their narrative.

What’s my wish for 2015?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Broadly speaking, I think my wish is to explore more of the nooks and crannies of storytelling. Through that exploration, I always strive to create useful content and ideas that non-profits can take and apply to their work.

There other side of the coin is to empower more non-profit professionals to practice storytelling. I have always been fond of the idea of bringing more vulnerability into our communications and I think that storytelling does that in a very natural way.

Here’s to 2015 – a year that will bring more stories to tell!