A Totally Different Take on the Year-End Review

0:00 You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share a totally different take on the year end review. So stay tuned. If you wanna have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive Nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter. It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.

0:51 Bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because as we're coming right up on the close of 2025, I think it's always important to do a review and take stock of the year that's just gone by. And it might be more important than ever in this particular year, given what a wild ride it's been. There's a lot of different ways you can come at a year end review, and you probably already have a process in place in your organization.

1:36 So yay, you should do that. But I'd like to call out something specific that I think is especially important at the close of 2025. And that's to take stock of your wins. And that, you know, for some Nonprofit leaders, that feels like a stretch right there. How do you clock a win in completely chaotic and abnormal times? Our normal definition of wins may or may not apply. For some they will. For others it's gonna look a little different this year. But here's the thing. I promise you that no matter how you're feeling about the year and how happy you may be that it is almost over.

2:19 There were wins. If you're still standing and you're listening to this episode, there were some wins. And it would be a disservice to ourselves and to our teams to overlook those. To allow all the challenges overshadow that. It would be pretty easy to just sort of heave a sigh of relief and say, thank God we survived this year. But that would be selling yourself massively short. So let's not do that to ourselves. Instead, let's do a deep dive on what those wins looked like this year. I'd like to invite you to take a look at five categories of wins and ask yourself a series of questions around those.

3:07 And the first category of wins is just straight up survival. We kind of have to start here because it's no small thing. It is worth reflecting on how you did that, on how you survived 2025 when not only were nonprofits under attack, but for a lot of nonprofits, your very mission and the people you serve were specifically under attack. So survival alone. That's a win. The fact that you're still here, the fact that you're still providing services, that you're showing up and doing the work and serving the people that you're meant to serve. That in itself is a win, and it's worth celebrating.

3:49 But it's also worth reflecting on how you did that. Some questions to ask yourself and your team: What was the shared vision that guided you? What were the values that guided you? What were some of the above and beyond things that each member of your team did that made a difference and that contributed to the organization's survival? And then here's a really powerful question. What did you not do? What traps or pitfalls did you avoid? And what guided you in that? Another really important category where I've seen a lot of wins this year across a wide array of nonprofits is the category of finding new directions.

4:34 And that could be a lot of different things. I don't wanna limit it because I saw so many nonprofits find additional directions to pursue. If they found one avenue blocked, they went around it, they found a new direction. If they saw an opportunity and went after it,when maybe they wouldn't have under different circumstances. So the first question is, what new directions did you explore? Either out of necessity or out of a chance to pursue opportunity. What were those? And in what way did they become a win for you? What allowed you to see opportunity even in the middle of crisis and chaos?

5:15 That's huge. I think that's something that's super valuable to reflect on and to take lessons from that forward. And what made the team feel both empowered and excited to pursue those new directions? Another wonderful category of wins that is partly related to finding new directions, but it's bigger than that, is creativity. Could be in terms of finding entirely new sources of funding, finding a new way to sell what you are already doing. Innovation. New ways of doing things, new approaches. Maybe you started experimenting with your messaging and added some new techniques that you hadn't used before.

5:56 So a really valuable question is, what were some of the most creative ideas, approaches, solutions that your team came up with this year, and how did those create a win? And, what did you do to foster creativity and to make space for it? Because creativity doesn't always get rewarded. It doesn't always even get allowed. So if you found that you had wins that were a result of creativity. Those are doubly worth celebrating because it's not just about the win that you got'cause you were creative. Part of the win is that you had space to be creative and that you fostered that, you created a climate in which that was possible.

6:41 That is a win all by itself and will pay dividends far down the road. Another very important category of wins to reflect on is the whole part about taking care of the people you serve. And this isn't just about the services you provided to them. It's also about all the other ways you cared for, stood up for, and perhaps helped protect the people you serve. So some questions to reflect on here. What were some of the biggest impacts you made on your clients' lives this year? What really stands out to you? What would they say stood out for them? What were those huge impacts?

7:22 And, how many of those were beyond the scope of your routine services? And, what values were you honoring when you did that? That group of questions. Each may surface individual wins in answer to the question. But taken as a whole, it also represents massive wins in terms of the impact that you had and how much it mattered. And finally, the category we often don't give enough attention to, and that's taking care of one another. That includes self-care, by the way. Some questions to consider here. What additional things beyond the routine did you do to support team members as they dealt with uncertainty, chaos, loss, and all the other emotionally laden experiences they went through this year as a result of being dedicated to this work.

8:18 In a lot of ways, this past year had some echoes of 2020 in terms of the emotional toll it took on folks. The reasons were very different. But the stress levels and the pressure on everybody working in direct service nonprofits was enormous. And so I think it's super valuable to take a look and ask the question, how did we support one another in that process? How did we help each other at a minimum be okay? And ideally to thrive? Another question that's related to that, but is quite specific is, how will you recognize and lift up everyone's extraordinary efforts in this past year?

9:00 What will that look like in your organization? I've been talking with a lot of Nonprofit leaders at the end of the year, and I've heard some really cool creative out of the box ways that nonprofit leaders have gone out of their way to really lift up the extraordinary efforts of all of the team over this year. And it has been deeply appreciated by everyone on the team. Most of us in Nonprofit do this work because we feel called to it. We are driven by the vision and the values, and so we show up in a big way. But it doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot out of us in the process. Realizing that that's known, that that's noticed and appreciated and valued, helps a lot.

9:44 And helps keep folks coming back to keep doing the hard things. Now, these last two questions are gonna be probably the hardest ones. What were the self-care strategies that were successful for you? How did you help yourself stay sane, stay grounded, stay healthy emotionally and physically? And to keep your energy where you want it, so that you can show up the way you want to. In this work, but also in life in general. What were the self-care strategies that allowed for that to happen? And if it's your sense that that area was lacking, I would ask you this: is there really anything more important to pay attention to than that It's so easy for us to think that we've gotta show up for everybody else.

10:35 We gotta do the thing, we got to sacrifice, do it all. But we have to be careful because there is a potential enormous cost to that. We can wind up taking ourselves outta the game. And none of us wants that. The self-care is essential, but it's way easier said than done. So take an honest look. Ask yourself what self-care strategies worked well for you. And where were some of the places where it just didn't happen and there were some costs, and you felt the impact of that. But mostly focus on what worked. And think about what strategies for self-care do you wanna carry forward into 2026.

11:19 And what additional strategies would you like to explore that would more fully round out your your self-care toolkit? So that you can go into 2026 with the energy and motivation and excitement that you wanna bring to this work and that I know you feel. Because you're in this work for the passion that you have for the work, for the people you serve, for the issues you work on, all of it. The most important thing you can do for yourself and the organization is to keep feeding that energy. To find practices that feel good and that continuously feed that energy. And there's no such thing as too many wins in the self-care category.

12:01 'Cause every time we do that well, we increase our effectiveness, we increase our ability to show up for the people we care about and for the things that matter to us. Not just at work but throughout our life. And more than anything, that's what I want for you in the new year. So I hope these questions are helpful. I wanted to offer a little bit different way of doing a yearend review that focuses on the kinds of wins that would easily be overlooked otherwise. I already know that if you had some ginormous obvious wins, of course you are celebrating them. Awesome. And I send up the Dr.

12:42 Seuss pantoozles and things to celebrate with you. But I also hope that you'll take a look at these questions for reflection and dig into some of the wins that maybe aren't as obvious, but that are every bit as important as the great big showy ones. Thanks for listening. And I'll see you in the next episode in the new year, right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Before you go, I have some news I think you're gonna want to hear. To kick off the new year, i'm gonna be offering a brand new program designed to help you take your advocacy results to the next level. I've designed this program to focus on a handful of the most powerful and effective strategies for engaging your money and policy decision makers in a way that gets you the results you want.

13:33 We cover lots of different strategies and techniques here on the podcast, and I've heard so much wonderful feedback about the value folks are getting from that, which is awesome. But I also hear that it's a lot. And what I hear more and more is just gimme the things I absolutely have to have. Tell me what's gonna be the most effective, the most powerful, and let me focus on that. So that's what I've decided to do with this new program. It's laser focused on a set of core strategies that are incredibly powerful and universally effective. It doesn't matter where you live, it doesn't matter what service niche you're in.

14:14 This is the shortest path to success. I'll be teaching those core strategies and supporting you with lots of coaching and weekly conversations, all designed to equip you to get the results you want. I am limiting this to the first 10 founding members who step up. I'm limiting it because I wanna make sure that you get exactly what you need from the teaching and the coaching. And as a founding member, you'll have the opportunity to direct the focus of the coaching as we go. Think about how many times you've been frustrated with a decision maker not getting it, not getting the true value of your work and its impact.

14:57 This is where we fix that. So come on in. Shoot me a message on either LinkedIn or the podcast website. I'll put those links in the show notes. And let's make a plan to work together in the new year and start getting you those next level results.