This morning I sat in a room full of nonprofit leaders at the Community Foundation for Loudoun and Fauquier Counties, working through what it actually takes to produce an annual report that works. Robin McGlothin, Amy Stirnweis, and Carrie Idol-Richards from the Good Plan Group walked us through the full arc: purpose, data, stories, resources,…
If everything you publish turns into a scramble three weeks out, you are not behind and you are not alone. It is one of the most common things a communications lead runs into, and it is rarely about working harder
If you cannot pull a report that tells you what is actually happening, you are not behind and you are not alone. It is one of the most common things a development leader runs into, and it is rarely about the dashboard.
If you have grown fast and almost nothing is written down, you are not behind and you are not alone. It is one of the most common things a growing team runs into, and it is rarely a discipline problem.
The documents were written to be complete rather than to be used, and those are different goals. A process written to be followed offloads the knowledge it describes. A process written to be complete just describes it, expensively.
The founder had built the thing she meant to build, and somewhere in the last twelve months had crossed a line she had not noticed crossing. The team had capacity. There was nowhere for the work to land that was not her inbox, and her inbox was where things went to wait.
The communications person had not had a chance to look at the editorial calendar she had been meaning to build since April, because every Monday since then had arrived with a more urgent ask. The organizations that ship consistently outperform the organizations with better ideas. An editorial calendar that lists intentions is not a system.
Board reporting in 2026 is being asked to do more than it was built to do, and the reports most organizations have been producing were built for the old conversation. A board member reading a different chart format every quarter spends the first twenty minutes orienting to the format instead of weighing the substance.
Three versions of the same document sat in a shared drive, all contradicting each other, none updated since the person who wrote them left. A procedure written by one person, signed off by no one, never tested by a second pair of hands is not documentation. It is a liability dressed as one.
