June 2021 — In Service: The Column of the ADRP President

Keri Kallaway
Senior Director, Donor Relations and Gift Services
Children's Hospital Colorado Foundation

Dear fellow ADRPers,

Happy Summer!

Summer is my favorite season. For me, this time of year brings renewed energy and a happy spirit, in my home life and in the office.

Particularly at work, this is the time of year we begin our budget and planning process for the year ahead. With that, it is a great time to reflect on what has worked well over the past year or few and what hasn’t worked so well. What should we start, stop, or continue within our program?

Like many of you, the past year and a half forced my team to try new things and invent new processes. We moved to virtual events and implemented Thankview. We scheduled more thank you calls and wrote personal thank you emails in lieu of formal thank you letters (when appropriate). And, we scheduled Zoom meetings with some donors and their chairholders for stewardship updates instead of sending written reports. All proved to be positive changes.

In hindsight, one lesson learned over the past year is that change can be good. The challenges presented forced us to think outside of the box and do our work differently. We stretched our current skills and learned new ones.

So, as my team and I begin program planning for 2022 we will consider all of our latest efforts and decide which elements of our program to continue with or enhance and which elements to “retire.”

What changes will you make? How will you evaluate the effectiveness and ROI of your activity? What will you reinvent or introduce to your program? Challenge yourself and your team to be innovative with just one element of your program or build upon a change you made this past year that yielded positive results. It will pay off!

And remember, connect with your peers on My ADRP to learn about the new things they've added to their programs.

In gratitude, 

Keri Kallaway