Balancing Hope and Reality: Leading Your Mission-Driven Organization into the New Year
The final months of the year are always a busy season for our team—and one of my favorite times to be in conversation with nonprofit leaders.
As the calendar turns, many leaders begin dreaming about the year ahead. What roles should we add? How much can we fundraise? What programs should we launch? While my conversations often center on hiring, I’m always grateful to hear the broader context about what organizations are envisioning. Leadership decisions don’t happen in isolation. They sit at the intersection of vision, people, resources, and timing.
It’s here, as we sit with a cup of coffee imagining the year ahead, that we need to live in the tension of dreaming vs. reality.
Dreaming is essential. Every meaningful mission begins there. But dreaming alone isn’t leadership. Execution is what gives vision credibility. As the saying goes, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” And execution, done well, requires realism.
As organizations step into the new year, here are four areas where I see leaders working to strike that balance.
Programs
Nonprofits are deeply passionate about the people and causes they serve. There is always more good to do! But trying to do everything often dilutes impact rather than expanding it. “If you try to do everything, you won’t do anything well.” – Warren Buffet
Instead, ask: What one or two programmatic priorities would make the greatest difference this year? What is the greatest need for the people we serve? What’s the probability that we successfully execute on what we commit to?
Fundraising
We recruit A LOT of fundraisers. Every nonprofit needs them!
When we approach strong fundraising candidates about a position, one question almost always arises: What’s the fundraising goal—and is it actually achievable?
Fundraising goals disconnected from reality erode morale, budgets, and trust… for your team, board, and donors. It’s essential to be ambitious, yet prudent, when carefully setting your fundraising targets.
Processes
Like many organizations, our company had an off-site retreat in December. One of the many exercises we did was spending time in front of a whiteboard to identify ways to improve our workflows. There were plenty of good ideas… use AI for this! Hire somebody for that! Cut this step out of the process! In the end, we found that if we take one or two processes and put in a concerted effort to improve them, it would move the needle in a tangible and impactful way.
Change takes time, and it’s hard. Many large companies have staff members, even entire departments, dedicated to “change management.” Rather than trying to fix everything this year, prioritize the improvements that will have the greatest impact and commit to them well.
Teams
Q1 is often when leaders quietly wrestle with team questions: Who do we need to add? Where are roles misaligned? Is the culture healthy? Are our KPI’s incentivizing the right activity?
These conversations aren’t easy, and unfortunately there is no textbook answer to nailing the people-part of your organization. But it’s critical that we give this task the time and energy it deserves. Often, we prioritize what’s urgent -- the next donor meeting, press release, or annual gala event. Yet we don’t give due time to what’s most important: our people. Who is on the team… the culture they are operating in… and the incentives in front of them makes all the difference. Getting these things right will multiply our efforts for tackling those urgent matters.
The work you lead matters deeply, and it deserves both ambition and care. Dream big this year. Set goals that stretch your organization forward. And do so within the guardrails of realism… so your team remains energized, your mission remains credible, and your impact remains lasting.