Planning for next year

I can't believe I haven't blogged since Tuesday! There's no excuse either- I haven't been sick. So what's new? Well, I was up in Quincy on Thursday night at the midnight roll call selling calendars- it went well. I'm not a morning person, so going to the midnight roll call is much easier than getting to the 8am one. Quincy has always been a very supportive department, so I enjoy going up there. Tomorrow, we are doing the raffle drawing, which means that I will then have the fun task of contacting the raffle winners. I love doing that! It is great to call people up and give away prizes. I'm usually calling to ask for support, so it is wonderful to be in the opposite side at least once a year. Especially with Christmas this week, it is good timing to be giving out things.

What else is new? Not a whole lot of other things. This week will be fairly quiet- a lot of people are on vacation and it is generally just a really hard time to reach anyone- for fundraising and even with reaching new police/fire departments. I do have a lot of things to work on though- particularly planning for 2009. We need to have a lot of growth next year- both in terms of reaching new departments and continuing our work with DCF, but partiuclarly in regards to fundraising. I think we need more events as well as grants. With the economy, grants will probably be harder to come by, which means we need to work harder on finding new grant sources. I think that there will always be a market for smart, well priced events. I need to figure out what those events are going to be and who I'm going to work with. I also want to work on more outreach- attending more networking/social events and finding more public speaking opportunities. Those are really important for raising our awareness. I didn't do much speaking this year, so I really want to work on improving that for 2009. I did do a lot more social/networking events and those were great- not only fun, but really helpful as well. I want to find even more for next year. It is exciting to work on next year's plan. There is always so much promise with the start of a new year. I've been lucky that since 2004, each year has gotten progressively better and I want to work really hard to make sure that 2009 is on that track.

I know I'm talking like it is already New Years Eve and it is only Dec. 22, but most of the rest of this month will be planning for next year. I'm still working on calendar sales, I'll be in Grafton on Tuesday. After Christmas, it is pretty hard to sell calendars. People have already spent their disposable money, so asking for a donation isn't easy. I will work on contacting more departments, but like I mentioned earlier, it is hard to reach people this week and next. I do want to take a couple of days off as well. I can't afford to travel anywhere, but I want to find some fun things to do and there are some museums that I want to visit.

Anyways, that's about it for tonight. I'm going to finish watching the end of this now exciting Giants game- it was a pretty lousy game for most of it, but now it is in OT. Then I'm going to read some more of the new book that I have- I finally finished my John Irving novel, Widow for One Year- it was great. I have to write my list as well. It is only 11:30- I think this may be the earliest I've ever finished blogging. Giants won! Good night friends!