Top Tips to Wrap up the year

Top Tips to Wrap up the year

Top tips to wrap up the year!

 Now that everyone is starting to wind down after a tumultuous year, we finally have some time to get organised! Wrapping up the year myself, I thought I would share a couple of things that I am trying to do before going on break:

  • Celebrate the wins
    • It’s important to take the time to celebrate everything you’ve achieved this past year – whether it be how much you raised, the multiple events you pulled off, the great communications you published, the relationships you built or the students you helped, or all of the above. Pop that bottle of champagne with your team and feel proud of the big and little wins.
  • Schedule in time for planning with your team and management
    • Evaluate your year with your team – talk about the good, the great, the bad, the ugly. Write out a plan and make note of how you want to improve for next year, or avoid issues that came up this year.
    • Review your KPIs and goals for the past year and set new ones for the year ahead.
    • Look at your calendar and book in any dates, meetings and events now. It’s amazing how quickly diaries book up, so get ahead now.
  • Tidy up your inbox
    • You’ll be so grateful in January when you don’t arrive back to utter email chaos!
  • Write a to do list
    • As above. You’ll feel much better when you go on your holiday knowing your list is already written and you have a plan for when you come back to the office.
  • Write/contribute to the end of year newsletter or magazine
    • These communications can work as important tools to let the community know how the end of the year finished up. Help to wrap up the year by highlighting the good news stories from your school/college students and alumni.
    • Put save the dates in for any events already in the diary for the start of the new year.
    • Let people know when the office is shut down and when it will reopen.
  • Say thank you to your donors, committees & volunteers
    • Think about what end of year feeling you want to leave your supporters with – hopefully it’s a positive one!
    • Whilst it might be too late to do branded Christmas cards, a handwritten Christmas card is a nice way to touch base and say thank you to your committee members and donors at the end of the year other than via email.
    • For scholarship donors, you could send them an individual annual report – again, this takes time, but is a good way to tell your donors exactly how much their support has helped your school/ college/ university this year. You could include some photos and interviews from the scholarship recipients (top tip – collect them throughout the year), infographics to illustrate where their support goes and how their giving has made an impact this year, a letter from the Principal and even an overall giving update from the Director of Advancement.
    • Create simple thank you postcards – design a postcard (we do ours in canva) at the end of the year that you can send out in January to all of your donors who supported you in the previous year. This way we can say thank you again and start the year off on a positive note.

There are many ways to wrap up a year, but none will be perfect. Just try to find what works best for you and your team and build it into your routine!

Hannah Atwell

Director of Advancement

St Andrew’s College within the University of Sydney