Reflect, Appreciate, Thrive: Powerful Questions to Close the Year with Meaning

How was 2024 for you? We’ve been receiving a lot of “year in review” posts from nonprofits and consultants and have been doing this reflective work too over the past few weeks.

In this challenging moment, it feels hard to write a “celebratory” post

We continue to be upset by the national election results. We are thinking a lot about how much brain space we want to dedicate to the chaos, destructiveness, and lack of leadership that we are seeing with the incoming administration.

And…we had a strong year over here at The Ross Collective.

Over the course of the year, we got about 100 (!!!) inquiries for strategic planning, facilitation, board development, and training projects. We worked alongside some incredible leaders doing fabulous, inspiring work.

We worked hard! We are energized by the sense of meaning and purpose in the work we get to do every day.

Some of the organizations and funders we worked with this year include: Futures Without Violence, Magic Cabinet, New Museum Los Gatos, O’Neill Sea Odyssey, San Francisco Zoo, Student Achievement Partners, Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy and Youth ALIVE!.

We also presented for SV Creates, Gunnison Community Foundation, Maine Association of Nonprofits, Board Builders Symposium, Technology of Participation Network, Montana Nonprofit Association and the Social Impact Advisor Network, in addition to teaching three different courses for Cal State University East Bay.

A highlight was saying “no” more!

We’re doing what we tell our clients to do: We continue to get greater clarity on our sweet spot and what is mission-aligned for us so we can focus on our most impactful work.

We said no to some potential projects, such as fundraising, that are outside of our core areas. Often we send them to colleagues who work in these areas, which feels win-win, since colleagues in complementary fields send us terrific projects too.

We declined strategic planning or board development projects that were small in scope, while offering the Strategic Planning Workbook, Board Development and Strategic Planning Courses and this newsletter so that leaders from smaller organizations  - and many other consultants-- can learn from our work and processes.

Coming in 2025: Inclusive processes, fifth birthday, and a book

In 2025, The Ross Collective turns five. (Long-time readers may remember that we launched in March 2020, the week the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a pandemic.)

The core of our work - designing and facilitating inclusive, participatory processes that honor and value each person, build investment, and move groups to thoughtful plans - has remained consistent. And given everything, the world needs this more than ever!

This year, we drafted a book manuscript on our strategic planning work. It needs some reworking, with a plan to release it in 2025.

What about you?

A highlight of writing this newsletter is feedback from community members. So we’re interested to hear - What are you feeling proud of? What are you struggling with? What’s next for you in 2025?

And if your Vision Board includes work with The Ross Collective - reach out! We might be writing about the joy of working with you this time next year. :)