Just start, make 17 resolutions & turn strategy active.
Three weekly insights to get funding
Happy New Year
I just arrived in Istanbul for our annual Mighty Ally planning retreat: Align 2025. Türkiye was most central for our team which spans from Uganda to Morocco, Malaysia to Ireland, and the States.
Hope you enjoy the New Year theme of this week’s newsletter.
And hope that 2025 is your best yet for funding.
— Kevin
💪🏽💛
Three insights
1. Just start and let the work teach you.
Are you ready to launch? Probably not.
New Year’s resolution:
Do it anyway.
Perfectionism kills more dreams than failure does. So launching too late is the real mistake.
As you work to become fundable and findable, you won’t start with the right brand strategy or fundraising message or marketing or pitch deck or website.
The world’s biggest brands weren’t born perfect either. They evolved through flaws.
🍎 Apple has failed with more than 20 products
📱 Samsung’s Note S7 phone caught on fire
🛻 Toyota recalls millions of cars annually
👓 Google Glass lasted only two years
🥤 Coke bombed with New Coke
Get it out there.
Learn from your data and donors.
Then, optimize your brand by 1% every day.
(We landed our first Mighty Ally client with only a crummy black-and-white PowerPoint and code name, and have been tinkering ever since.)
Launching is learning.
“Just start and let the work teach you. No one expects you to get it right in the beginning, and you’ll learn more from your mistakes than you will from your early successes anyway. So stop worrying so much and just look at your best bets and go.” — Jacqueline Novogratz
2. New Year’s resolutions to get funding.
More funding, less fundraising in 2025.
That’s your New Year’s resolution.
But how?
Be fundable and findable. That’s how. Next year, fundraise smarter (not harder) with these 17 power-move resolutions.
You got this.
3. Strategic planning is a verb.
Strategic planning is broken.
And it’s a hidden killer of many nonprofits.
Because too many nonprofit leaders think strategic planning is just a massive document we produce every few years to appease our donors.
Then it’s done and dusted. Long forgotten.
But “strategy is not something that happens at a point in time — it happens constantly,” says Delvedesign.
Not to mention:
Even for small nonprofits trying to raise enough money to stay alive, your strategy should help you immediately in fundraising.
So here are five quick tips to remind us this new year:
Strategy in action.
Funding follows.
Plan less, do more.
The weekly bonus
A collection of New Year’s predictions in fundraising, marketing, and philanthropy.
👩🏽💻 Fundraising facts you need to know in 2025
📊 5 Nonprofit Fundraising Trends to Watch in 2025
🤑 Nonprofit Marketing + Fundraising Trends for 2025
🌎 Why philanthropic infrastructure investment holds promise for 2025
🎯 5 Critical Nonprofit Trends for 2025 (+18 Ways They Should Inform Your Strategy)
Need my help?
If this advice is useful — but you’re ready to get even more fundable and findable — check out Brand Bootcamp.
It’s our self-paced, online course to maximize your funding. In just 15 minutes a day.
P.S.
If we thought our holiday travels were difficult, just a century ago it took a month and a half to travel from London to Beijing.