And I know this doesn’t just apply to churches - nonprofits, schools, YOU are also preparing to send year-end emails out, thanking donors for their generosity and giving them one last chance to make a donation. But how exactly do you properly and authentically thank people for giving their hard-earned money while inspiring them to continue giving at that same level (or more!) in the coming year?

As you browse through this list, know that any of these items could easily be given to other leaders in your life. Do you have a special Elder at church you’d like to bless with something they wouldn’t normally buy for themselves? What about a school administrator or executive director for a nonprofit you donate to throughout the year? Is there a member of your board that you know is falling on hard times and they could use a little extra help? This list doesn’t need to apply to just your senior leadership team - get creative and think about all the leaders you interact with.

Whether financial, physical, or simply spreading joy and kindness through baked goods - generosity can have a big impact, especially during the holidays. And as a nonprofit leader, you have an amazing opportunity to capitalize on this as you wrap up your donations for the year. How can you inspire generosity in your donor base so that it translates into donations for your organization?

There are many ways to go about your email strategy, but we’re firm believers in getting back to the basics. Whether you're looking to engage existing donors or attract new ones, here are 7 simple but effective tips to help your year-end fundraising emails stand out for your nonprofit. TLDR: Make a good subject line, avoid batch sending emails, give a clear and urgent call to action, include a visually appealing progress report, time it right, and include a testimonial.

Navigating fundraising during a natural disaster requires a balance of compassion and commitment. By pausing to acknowledge the crisis, encouraging flexible giving, being transparent with your donors, and highlighting your long-term impact, you can maintain your mission while staying sensitive to what’s happening in the world around you.

Psychological safety, made popular and mainstream by Dr. Amy Edmondson, is the belief that you can speak up, share ideas, ask questions, or admit mistakes without worrying about being embarrassed, rejected, or punished. It’s about building a culture where people feel safe to take risks in their conversations with each other. When psychological safety is in place, teams are more innovative, collaborative, and successful. And this applies to every team, in every industry.

Your board of directors also plays a vital role in the overall success and sustainability of your organization in Q4. It’s even MORE critical when your organization is planning to launch into a capital campaign or major fundraising initiative. And if a capital campaign is on your radar for 2025, now is the time to make sure you’ve got a strong board of directors ready to go.

If you are hoping to raise major funds, capital funds, or launch new initiatives at your school or nonprofit in 2025, the time to start planning is NOW. At JSS, we've seen firsthand the difference early and thorough preparation makes. Spoiler alert: it’s huge!

The time is coming for your church to gear up for some sort of major financial ask and I’m a firm believer that preparation is everything. You could have all the right timing in the world, but if you don’t do the proper leg work, your campaign is at risk of falling flat. It’s important to remember that your audience (aka your members!) needs to be primed to hear your message.

Remember, key leaders don’t necessarily have to manage people directly from an HR standpoint; this frees them to focus on major decisions. Set up your people for success rather than simply filling roles in your org chart. When leaders are simply in the wrong position to lead, the effects can be devastating to morale and productivity.

At the heart of this story, is the reality that many church teams continue to live with a social norm that does not account for all the ways it can make employees feel unsafe. (Again, not just uncomfortable.) A key to a psychologically safe environment, particularly at a church, is a strong sense of belonging. And when employees regularly feel anxious or uncomfortable, (or perceived to feel inadequate), that sense of belonging is easily shaken.

The person responsible for leading a team of creatives, such as designers, writers, videographers, etc. is, in fact, a key decision maker - whether you are using her/him in that way or not. (And maybe it’s a Creative Director, if your org chart is aligned in such a way.) Let that sink in. This person must be in your inner leadership circle if the church is going to rely on creative elements to share your mission and vision.

There is one kind of intelligent failure in Advancement (or Development if you call it that) that I want to argue should be the counterpart to every major initiative or campaign - Feasibility Study. Think of the feasibility study as a new initiative handcuff. There is no initiative without conducting a study first. They are as inextricably linked as purchasing one left shoe and one right shoe.

Failure Recoil is an intentional, aggressive, and recalibrating response to a failure. Failure Recoil happens at the individual level and the systemic/team level. It is typically not an innate first response for the professionals working at your organization. We have found (and Edmondson appears to agree) that Failure Recoil takes effort, training, and a safe context in order for it to happen.

This post is for non-profit boards, and it centers on good habit failure response. It’s time to stop the board equivalent of nail-biting and smoking. Growth-minded organizations are finished with quick-brain responses to intelligent failures. The space that your innovative and failure-at-the-dinner-table organization now occupies requires a critical shift for the board members in their responses to failure.

A follow up conversation on the topic of fitting intelligent failure into your organization’s culture, with Dr. Lora Delgado, Professor of Education at Vanderbilt University. How do we experience failure? How do leaders best model failure within their organizations? How can failure be invited in a way that it becomes the norm?

Failure, at the organizational level, must fit into your regular consistent rhythms and require no team adjustments when it arrives. As the leader of your organization, you should grow beyond simply tolerating failure when risks are taken and it happens; rather, you should anticipate it and direct your team to the novel space where failure is possible. It is only in that novel space that innovation can happen.

Depending on failure isn’t depending on a strategy or tactic; instead, it is depending on the position of failure as an aspect of every strategy or tactic. It is the assumption that failure will be either the carry on bag or the one personal item that gets brought on every flight. When you depend on failure, you don’t proceed without a healthy dose of trial and error in the very design of your strategy.

“Any project that ends in successful innovation goes through multiple failures along the way because innovation occurs in the new territory where a compelling solution is yet to be developed.” One of the main reasons the work of John Sullivan Solutions continues to emerge is because of our commitment to workplace ambidexterity - the left hand and right hand of learning and doing.

If you are anything like me, your restful Christmas break only lasts a day or so before you get antsy and a little bit of cabin fever. Yes, the family events are a blast, and I look forward to each one of them. But due to the feverish pace of November and December in the Independent K-12 and nonprofit world, I don’t expect many of you to unwind for long.