Ep 285 | How to Actually Celebrate Your Wins!

Celebration sounds good in theory, but who has time for it! There is always something else that is around the corner, another thing to add to the to-do list, another board meeting. Making time to celebrate your wins and your teams wins, sometimes feels like a waste of time. But it is so important!!

Creating a plan for your celebrations, just like you do your goals, can go. along way in making sure you take time to relish in those wins. It goes such a long way to bring your team together and avoid burnout.

What you'll learn:

→ The importance of celebrating wins, big and small
→ How to set milestones and pre-plan celebrations to keep your team motivated
→ Strategies for incorporating personal goal-setting and celebrations
→ Ways to get your board involved in the celebration process
→ Tips for maintaining momentum and avoiding burnout

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[05:25] Pre-plan milestones and celebrations to keep your team motivated. This will make it so much easier to track when its time to whoop it up and know there is already something lined up to do.
[06:54] Consider having a “Celebration Chair” on your board to help execute the planned celebrations. Their job is to keep you posted when you're close to your goal and be your cheerleader. Then, they can help execute the already planned celebration.
[08:00] Implement a personal goal-setting and celebration strategy to stay motivated on your own tasks. Figure out what your mini milestones are and give yourself a treat when you accomplish it.

Full Transcript

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
So the other day, I was on a call with a group of nonprofits, small to medium sized nonprofits, right? And this executive director was sharing how she's stressed out with her year end giving campaign. They really want to end the year in the black, and so she's really was looking for some support for how could she kind of engage her board, get her board excited around helping them kind of close out this gap that they're looking to do. And then she said, Well, we've raised $10,000 this year already for our year end giving campaign, and the most that we've ever raised is 2500 but I really want to close this gap and end the year in the black, and I just haven't even taken the time to kind of celebrate it. And so it really hit me, because I feel like that's not abnormal for most of us, right? There's always another event coming up, or another sponsorship we need to go after, or a new grant that we need to kind of write up. There's always kind of that next thing that we forget, to celebrate the wins raising $10,000 when you've only ever raised 2500 in a year end. Giving Campaign and a year is not over, is a big win that should be celebrated. It doesn't mean that you're going to stop the hustle or the grind or the work, whatever word you like to use, but it does mean that you should take some time for you and your team to really celebrate that win. It can be it can be motivating, it can be exciting. It can kind of pull people together to continue to do the work, and we know that burnout around fundraising, Fund Raising Professionals is really high. And so how can we continue to move things forward? Engage. Encourage our teams, encourage ourselves, encourage our boards, our stakeholders, the people that are supporting us, to keep doing the work, even when it feels impossible, too big, or like we're never going to get those wins that we want.

So I'm going to share with you some of the things I shared with her, some other things that we kind of put into place or that we're working on for next year, and kind of a fun way that you can maybe engage your board in some of these celebrations. So that's what we're going to talk about in this episode, it's the end of the year. We're starting a new year fresh. Let's keep the momentum going. Let's keep the excitement going. Let's keep our team motivated and have some fun. I know the work that we do is often serious and heavy, but that doesn't mean that we can't have fun. So before we get into this episode, it is brought to you by our December freebie. If you are looking to build in self care and support for you and your team and create a culture of rest and brain rest, not you know, again, we're not quitting our jobs. We're not quitting the work that we need to do, but just building in those moments of quiet in our day. We put together a guide with 50 ideas for how you can create self care moments in your day at work as a team or individually, so that you can grab some of those and just fit them into the pockets of your day. They don't have to be big, long day spas. You should do that once in a while. But what can you do in 15 minutes or 10 minutes, and how can you kind of calendar them out to make sure that you are prioritizing your self care as much as you are prioritizing the work that you're doing so you can grab that at the first click.net/resources. I hope you grab it. I hope you sit down with your team, whatever your team looks like, and really talk about what that might look like for you and your organization in 2025 again, you can grab it at thefirstclick.net/resources. Let's get into the episode.

Intro
You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
So you probably have goals for 2025 and we've talked about this in previous episodes, about how to stay motivated, how to keep moving, and some of that is by creating milestones. What are the milestones that we want to hit to keep us on track towards hitting our goal? It could be a financial goal. It could be a registration goal. It could be ticket sales. It could be registrations, whatever it might be. It could be adoptions, number of people that you're serving. It could be getting people off your wait list. It could be numbers of grants, whatever, whatever your goals are. I want you to take a look at the ones that are kind of the the biggest drivers for your organizations, maybe the ones that are going to take you the longest or or maybe the ones that you're most excited about, or maybe the ones that are the newest. Anyway, pick three or four goals that you think are going to make the biggest impact on your organization, whatever that might be. And we're going to block out milestones, whatever that might be. So our goal is $100,000 we're gonna hit when we hit 2550 7500, we're gonna do little mini celebrations along the way, and we're gonna pre plan those celebrations so it's not like, Oh yeah, okay. We hit 25,000 What should we do to celebrate? It's okay. At $25,000 once we hit that goal, we're gonna go celebrate as a team. We're. Gonna go out to lunch at $50,000 we're gonna have, everybody is gonna get a $50 gift card, whatever. At $100,000 we're gonna do, everybody gets a half day off to use at their disposal, whatever makes sense for you and your organization. But then you can also put a little bit of budget behind it. So you could say, Hey, we've got $150 at each of these milestones that we're going to spend.

So it doesn't feel like you're spending money. It's part of your budget. It's part of your plan. You've got it all put in place, and you know exactly what it's going to be planned. It's ready. 25,000 we know that this is what we're gonna do. So what this does is a couple of things. Number one, it keeps you motivated. So again, as you get close to that milestone, it's easy to have that next push to say, okay, team, like, We are $5,000 away. As soon as we hit that, we get a pizza party at the office. Like, let's see how quickly we can get this done. So we can schedule that pizza party. It gives you motivation for some of those bigger goals to kind of keep things moving if you're getting a little behind, it also gives you another push to say, hey, like, we really want to hit this milestone. We really want to hit this number. Here's some strategies. How can we do this? And then you've you scheduled the party so everybody kind of knows what's going on. And then I would love for you to have a person who's responsible for the execution. And I think in smaller organizations, this could be a really fun board role. Who wouldn't love to be like the celebration I don't know. I don't have a great name for it, but like, you know, like the celebration chair and their their goal is to, okay, these are the goals that we're tracking. Their goal is to stay with the executive director, get the reports on where we are towards reaching those milestones, and then they get to execute and set up the events. I mean, that's that could be really fun role for somebody, and it can be really impactful for your organization.

Now, for personal goals, if you want to do this for yourself, for example, if you watch my podcast on YouTube, you'll notice that my office has been a hot mess like this since June we moved. I have not prioritized unpacking my office. So I might have certain milestones. There's boxes all over here. So I might say, Okay, I've got 15 boxes in my office. Once I unpack 10 boxes, I'm going to buy the whiteboard that I really wanted for my wall to help stick keep me organized. Once I get my whole bookshelf done, this behind me, I'm going to, I don't know, whatever it might be, maybe buy something else that I want for decoration in my office, a new book, whatever it might be. So you can do it for your personal things also, but you want to plan them in advance. I think that's the thing. So in the example that I shared in the intro, it's like, yes, you can take 15 minutes or a half a day and celebrate this $10,000 it might build momentum, and then you get back on the horn and you work on that next goal, because those two goals are not related, and I think that's where we really get stuck, is that we start to hit a goal. But that doesn't mean that everything else is still on track. So should we really be celebrating when we still have so much more work to do? Yes, you need to celebrate these wins in order to feel motivated, in order to feel successful in order to continue moving forward. So that is my challenge for you, create a plan. Figure out those celebrations ahead of time, enlist your team. Have fun with it. Get excited. Create those milestones, create those goals, create those systems for tracking. Because I think the other side of this is a lot of times we don't have those milestones, we're not tracking them, and all of a sudden we might even hit that goal, and we didn't even realize what a big win that was, and we don't celebrate, and that's a shame. The other thing that my business coach does with us, and this, again, it just depends on the motivation and how you work, is she gives herself a if I hit my goal, this is what I get to celebrate with if I don't hit my goal, this is my quote, unquote, punishment, right? And some of the punishment examples that she has given us have been like she has to do the dishes for a month. She hates doing the dishes. She gave her husband a shot of if she doesn't do it, her husband gets money to go on a shopping spree, whatever it might be. So for some of those goals, or I don't think we want to punish, quote, unquote, punish our teams, but for some of those personal goals for yourself, if that's something that would help motivate you, then feel free to also implement that as well.

I don't like doing it for all my goals, but for some of the ones that I'm most excited about, the ones that I know are really going to kind of help me transform my business, kind of the big goal that I might be scared to go for, or that I might be nervous to do the work, or the things that I struggle the most to accomplish. So for example, the tasks that I don't like to do as much but I know are important for my business. Sometimes that's a great motivation. Question, because, you know, I don't like to do these tasks, but I know they're good for me, and so if I don't do it, then I'm going to get a secondary punishment. And punishment is kind of a strong work, but I think you get what I'm saying, so try that as well for you, if that's something that would be impactful. So I really hope that you will implement some celebration strategies into your organization that you will celebrate those wins, big and small. Create those milestones so that you have something to talk about along the way and get excited about and get your board excited right. Use them as momentum. Use them as motivation, but schedule them in advance, just the act of knowing that you have a plan in place will help you make sure that you take advantage of those celebrations. Put them on the calendar, write them down, make sure your controller knows about them so they can help hold you accountable. Make sure you have the data and the reporting and everything ready to go so that you can have some fun in 2025 and keep working towards those big goals so that you can increase your impact and build your organization the way that you want it. I know this was a short episode, but it's December, and we have a lot going on, so I didn't want to waste any of your time. We only have one episode left in 2024 so I'm excited for that next week. But as always, you can check out the show notes and more resources and additional episodes at thefirstclick.net/285, I hope that you will subscribe wherever you listen. We are switching up our podcast to every other week next year, but we've got some more fun content and elements coming your way, so I'm excited about that. But for now, subscribe so you don't miss out on a single episode. Watch our episodes on YouTube at Digital Marketing therapy. Thank you so much for choosing us to be your partner in your online fundraising, and we will see you in the next one.