Every autumn, I set aside a few days to do my business planning for the following year. I review the past year, set goals for the year ahead and make tactical plans to achieve those goals. During my planning in the last couple of weeks, one big goal I set was to do less in 2018.
To scale back, I’ve identified two areas of my work that I’m going to eliminate – at least for the next year or so:
- The #NPMC Twitter chat
- My online course, Start a Better Nonprofit Blog
Deciding to shelve these two offerings isn’t easy because I know that they are both helping nonprofit communicators. But the core of my business is working directly with nonprofit clients and that will be my focus in 2018.
The last #NPMC chat will be on Wednesday, November 29
I started the #NPMC Twitter chat in May of 2013 (check out the full archive of every chat since 2013). The community is strong and I’ve had a number of participants step forward to facilitate, start the conversation with relevant blog posts and help to get the word out. I’ve never had more help than I did this year, in 2017. But that help made me realize just how much of my time and effort are still required to make this monthly chat a success; even with a tremendous sharing of the work, it remained a very significant undertaking.
So if you’d like to connect with your nonprofit marcom peers in this real-time conversation before we go on break indefinitely, make sure to join this month’s #NPMC chat.
Date: Wednesday, November 29
Time: 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. E.T.
Topic: building great nonprofit marcom teams
The last day to access my blogging course will be Thursday, November 23
Two years ago I launched my online course about blog planning, Start a Better Nonprofit Blog. I designed the course as a step-by-step system to help participants finish with two main outcomes:
- A practical plan for running a manageable nonprofit blog with a purpose
- A strong editorial calendar filled with enough topic ideas for the next six months
I’m very proud of the quality of the course and the results that participants have achieved by taking it. But part of giving myself a little more room on the schedule in 2018 is going to mean taking a break from managing and promoting it.
So, I’ll be accepting the last round of students in Start a Better Nonprofit Blog for one more week: from now until Thursday, November 23, 2017. Then, I’ll be closing the course registration for at least a year. If you register now, you’ll have full access to all of the materials – I just won’t be bringing in any new students in 2018.
If you want to get in to Start a Better Nonprofit Blog before access to the course closes indefinitely, register here by next Thursday: https://moflow.ca/sbnb
I know that both of these offerings provide value, and that my announcement might be disappointing. My decision to shut down the course for 2018 is firm and #NPMC chat’s break will be indefinite but up for evaluation. If you have feedback on either, I’d love to hear it!
