Make the last week of 2009 the most important week of 2010

I’d like a show of hands from all of the fundraisers out there who didn’t miss a deadline or blow an opportunity in 2009.

That’s funny, I’m not seeing a lot of hands. Maybe I should install Skype or something on my computer.

Anyway, for those of you who did raise your hands: thank you. You probably don’t need to read the rest of this post.

Now for the rest of you.

So what was it? Did you receive the dreaded polite phone call from a program officer asking about an errant final grant report? Did you blanch when your boss asked about the status of a major donor’s annual gift? Did you realize that the birthday for Mr. Friskers, your board chair’s cat, has come and gone and you forgot to send a card again?

Did you lose a lot of sleep worrying about all of the above?

Consider using this week (or if you’re on holiday, make it next week), to set up a tickler system using Outlook Tasks.

The first step is to gather all of your real and self-imposed deadlines in one place, right now.  I’m talking about the anniversary dates of all your 2009 asks (assuming they were on time – if you were late in 2009, schedule them earlier in 2010), the dates of your unexpected gifts (if you had any), the grant deadlines you are currently anticipating, report deadlines (whether mandated by a funder or appropriate as good stewardship), invitation mailing dates, birthdays or other personal milestones you’ll want to acknowledge, etc. etc. etc.  Take some time to gather everything.

The second step is to create 12 new categories in Outlook Tasks.  One for each month of the year.  Name them like this: “01-2010 January 2010” so that they’ll appear in chronological order when you view your tasks by category.  Then populate each of these categories with your deadlines, leaving yourself plenty of cushion.

Sound complicated?  It is!  But don’t worry, I’ve got detailed instructions on my website (click on Outlook Development Office Task Master).  You can download it for free.  And you don’t even have to register.

Shoot me an email at matt@tacticalfundraising.com if you have questions -- and please forward this resource to a friend.