Yesterday I shared one idea for closing this fiscal year well with your staff (or yourself) and starting the next one. I called it Pile some rocks. Today, I’ll give the second idea.

2. Conduct a staff retreat

I grew up in a family deeply influenced by positive mental attitude literature. Words have power to create emotions and impact both the world around us and the way we perceive that world. But some of this literature took things to an extreme:

• Stop lights were “go lights”
• Weekends were “strong beginnings” and
• Retreats were “advances”

“Advance” or “retreat,” the fact still remains that time away with your team is a powerful tool in your fundraising tool kit.

Whether you take a 1/2 day, a full day, or even a couple days, retreat time with your staff or board can be incredibly productive. You can:

• reassess what went well in the last 12 months
• what didn’t go well
• and what can be done differently in the next 12 months.

Too often, we expect the executive director or department director to come up with a detailed plan. That may be possible. But getting the input of the people who’ll carry out the plan can make it much stronger and give them more commitment to the plan. Since they added to it, it becomes “their” plan.

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

Retreats can lead to surprising discoveries that bring the team together too. These can come by doing a personality assessment or an individual strengths/weaknesses/love doing/hate grids or sharing in cheesy ice-breakers. These discoveries remind us that we work with real people with real stories.

Team retreats can conducted with an outside facilitator (like me!). A facilitator can see things about your team and work–both good things and bad–that you don’t see any more. You’re simply too close. And often your team can hear compliments or suggestions for improvement more easily from an outsider.

But team retreats can be very successful done internally too. Appoint people that are good at organizing parties to oversee the food and fun stuff. You can oversee the plan. It can be as simple as the one above. Close the doors, forward the phones, and take time to reflect with your team. It’s worth the investment.

You could use part of the time to pass out your pile of rocks!

If you’d like to find out more about having me facilitate a retreat for your team, send me an email at marc@fundraisingcoach.com. I’ve even packaged a retreat-in-a-box, complete with DVD, books, outline of the entire day, and interactive exercises. Designed to train a board of directors on how to ask for money, this can work well for teams too.

Other Possibly Related posts:

1. There’s still time!
2. Time Management Tip: Schedule your to-do’s
3. Advisory Team
4. When is the best time to host a fundraising movie event?
5. Peru’s on time