How to avoid the dreaded "scramble" 🍳
Written by katie test davis
It’s a familiar feeling. You know the one…
“OOPS! We completely forgot. It’s time to do that project again.”
It sounds like…
“Oops – we totally forgot to start on the Annual Report and now we need to run a sprint to meet the big donor meeting deadline.”
“Oops – we forgot to do our yearly update of the website, and now an important policy partner is reviewing last year’s outdated information.”
It’s the WORST! I hate it when an annual project that you KNOW (gosh darn it!) happens every year sneaks up on you, and you’re left scrambling to get it done.
So let’s make a pact – eh? This year will be the last year that projects sneak up on you from behind and spook you into action. Here’s how to prevent the dreaded scramble.
make a list
I know, it’s nothing revolutionary. But it is handy. Go ahead, block half hour on your calendar, and keep that date with yourself.
With that half hour, set a timer and brain dump a list of everything that has to happen in your communications workflow each week/month/quarter/year. Try to remember everything that your organization produces as part of your outreach efforts.
Here are a few things most communications teams have to do each year, just to get you started/jog some ideas:
Digital media
Website
Newsletter
Social
Media Relations
Report releases
Annual announcements
Events/Trainings/Conferences
Training staff or volunteers on communications best practices
Fundraising events or galas
Collateral
Annual Reports
Giveaways
Letters
For our nonprofit partners, year end giving campaigns
map it out
Take all those tasks from your brain dump, and map them to the appropriate time frame (month, quarter). I personally like to do this in PowerPoint because I’m a big weirdo who loves PowerPoint. But you can do this in a spreadsheet or even a plain Word doc.
Then, ensure you’re properly planning for, well, planning and strategy. Once you’ve marked all the due dates of your big deliverables, work backwards and map out the planning and production.
Go ahead and plot it onto a chart or a calendar. Here’s a snippet of what that might look like:
set reminders
Great, now that you’ve got your annual projects mapped out, you can see when you need to start those big projects.
Start by setting calendar reminders for kicking off those big annual projects – think of them as little love notes from past-you to future-you. In the calendar reminder, link documents like project debriefs or previous project plans so your future self doesn’t have to go searching for them.
Need an extra nudge? Schedule Slack messages to pop up like a friendly tap on the shoulder or snooze old project emails to reappear just when you need them most.
It’s like having your own personal assistant, minus the coffee runs. Trust me, your future self will thank you for being so on top of things!
get help
Once you map out all your annual projects, you can see (literally) where your busy seasons are. There may be certain months or seasons when that to-do list is running off the page, or a season where your team is particularly busy.
We’ve got your back. Sometimes those big annual projects are the easiest ones to delegate. Your ‘back burner’ tasks can become ‘front burner’ tasks for us!
When your big annual projects pile up, or when you’re juggling too many things at once, Forthright is here to help. Whether it’s lending a hand with communications strategy, tackling tasks to give your team some breathing room, or stepping in as an interim communications director, we’re pros at making the overwhelming feel manageable.
Let us help you keep things moving smoothly – so you can focus on making the world a better place for children and families.
PS - Need tips for creating a great annual report? We’ve got you.
