What are your nonprofit’s priorities and goals for 2025?

Prioritizing Collaboration and Sustainable Funding

Arts and Culture Alpine County (ACAC), a local arts agency, has obtained small grants from the Alpine County Board of Supervisors and Live Healthy, an organization under the Alpine County umbrella. Both of those groups have created memoranda of understanding (MOU) that spell out the responsibilities of both the receiving and giving organization.

This year, our executive director worked personally with the county’s development director to craft the MOU for the coming fiscal year. In addition to spelling out the work that ACAC is already doing, the MOU added a requirement for ACAC to support local artists with some financial compensation.

Also added was a requirement for the county to offer some assistance, such as putting ACAC in touch with people who could facilitate the financial increases and/or could offer intrinsic support, such as grantwriting classes.

Essentially, ACAC’s priorities are to hold events that benefit the community and include DEI and to work more with county representatives to increase collaboration and knowledge.

A grantwriting workshop and the continuation of arts shows in the local library are examples. Having an MOU with giving agencies is helpful when we ask for funding next cycle. We will be able to point out and document what we have done and ask for increased funding to do more, such as work on some public arts projects.

— January Riddle from Arts and Culture Alpine County

Diversifying Fundraising Strategies and Strengthening Donor Relationships

To effectively address fundraising challenges in 2025, we have developed an eight-point plan to stay focused and organized. We will diversify revenue streams and explore all our options. We will increase digital fundraising by developing a strong online presence, enhance our website and social media for compelling narratives, and host virtual events to leverage peer-to-peer fundraising.

We will strengthen donor relationships and build deeper, more sustainable relationships with our current and potential donors. We will encourage our supporters to create personal fundraising pages linked to our campaigns, especially during annual events and giving days. We will empower our supporters to be champions of our cause through engagement and through our volunteer opportunities.

We will research and target high-priority foundations and government funding sources while strengthening our relationships with our current funders. We will demonstrate the real-world impact of donations and gifts to create trust and confidence among our community. We will use data to inform and optimize our fundraising strategy for more targeted and effective efforts.

We will collaborate with like-minded organizations to amplify our impact. By setting clear, measurable goals and aligning them with a thoughtful strategy, our nonprofit will navigate all challenges head-on.

— Paul Marengo from The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center

Strengthening Board Governance and Organizational Efficiency

We are an all-volunteer nonprofit and will have our annual planning meeting in January. Looking forward to implementing some important tasks in 2025!

We will figure out what to do with two endowed accounts that have not been tended to in years: Do we work to grow them so it is a respectable amount? Or change it with donor approval?

We plan to improve board communications through an online document management program. We have some board members who are not tech-savvy, so we need something effective and simple.

Finally, we need to develop an annual planning calendar that is thorough, inclusive, and — most importantly — maintained and used by all board members.

— Christy Crosser from Estes Park Museum Friends & Foundation, Inc.

Building a More Equitable Food System Through Organizational Change

With new leadership in place, we are in an ideal space for new directional change and growth. We are committed to dig deeper into DEI work and do whatever it takes to become a positive example of an anti-racist nonprofit organization.

With hunger being a basic need, Farm to Pantry is considered a “ground zero” food justice organization, a quintessential starting point to launch a better, more equitable food system.

We feel that it is not only the right and ethical move, but also that it will help us serve our community better — tear down the barriers between “the haves and have-nots,” the “us and them.” Giving away food has never and will never end food insecurity, but we can move away from enshrouding marginalized people in victimhood.

Our goal is to empower our recipients by doing all we can to give them control over their lives and not be demoralized by being made to feel that life just “happens to them.”

Systemic inequity does entrap populations into situations out of their control; however, we can start the healthy process of giving them the tools to build their lives better by changing the structure, and it starts with us, as an organization.

According to Frederick Douglass: “The real, and only-to-be-relied-on movement…is the enlightenment of the public mind, the quickening and enlightening of the dead conscience of the nation into life, and to a sense of the gross injustice, fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of enslaving their fellow men.”

Even after all the time that has passed since abolition of slavery, we are still in a world of white privilege. And as Frederick Douglass states, to move beyond that, we must enlighten the public mind.

The best way we can chisel away at structural injustice is for us to start with ourselves. Farm to Pantry must do the hard work and self-examination required to set an example for others to do the same, not only in label but in deed.

— Kelly Conrad from Farm to Pantry

Scaling Services to Expand Support for People with Disabilities

As we enter the ninth year of providing professional affordable trustee services for persons with disabilities, we are focused on taking our program to scale.

Although we have over 200 enrolled trust beneficiaries, we know from government statistics that there are thousands of potential clients we could help, so that’s our laser focus.

To accomplish this goal, we are creating new partnerships with other disability-related nonprofits and service providers.

— Michelle Wolf from JLA Trust