We’re in the home stretch of 2024, and 2025 is just three weeks away. It has been a year of challenges for many in our sector, but we want to close out this year with gratitude and in celebration of the tremendous impact you’ve made as nonprofit staff, boards, and volunteers in communities across the country and around the world.

We helped people in crisis. We uplifted faith. We enriched lives through art, music, and theater. We registered voters and helped get them to the polls. We found homes for animals. We provided support for families dealing with illness. And so much more. In short, we have been part of changing this world for the better. Together, we have been champions for the public good.

Thank you for sharing your nonprofit journey with us this year. We wish everyone a happy, restful, and meaningful conclusion to 2024—and look forward to the difference we can make together in 2025.

Here at NCN, we do a lot of listening to come up with the content you read in this newsletter, view on our website, and receive from us in other ways. It’s one of our Core Values: serving others by listening and leading. We hear the feedback you provide—and we see the trends in our website traffic and the subjects people call and email us about.

As we hear your queries, our team works to provide trusted and timely information, gleaning trends along the way. For this final lead article of 2024, I turned to my teammates to each pick a trending topic to share some insights on. Bringing together the different experiences and areas of expertise of the NCN team, this compilation covers everything from leadership to fiscal sponsorship, and donor stewardship to the power of connection.

As we’ve said in the past about fundraising, it’s important to “have a plan, work the plan, and improve the plan.” With another GivingTuesday in the books, before turning your attention to end-of-year appeals, it’s important to take stock of what worked and what didn’t on GivingTuesday. That will help you make tweaks so those final 2024 appeals can be as successful as possible.

In that analysis, your nonprofit can learn from its own experiences and those of others. Tim Sarrantonio of Neon One posted an analysis of GivingTuesday performance data that highlights some of what worked—and what didn’t—for nonprofits last week. His insights, and the examples he shares, can provide further inspiration.

In an article in Stanford Social Innovation Review, Jim Canales and Stefan Lanfer of the Barr Foundation share their learnings from developing a communications culture to foster connection and build community. They emphasize the importance of centering communications around relationships and trust, as well as how important both words and actions are.

This article from Idealist highlights the importance of considering how to ensure recruitment processes don’t exclude neurodivergent individuals (those with conditions like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, etc.). The article provides practical tips for making recruitment processes more inclusive, such as simplifying job listings, auditing websites for accessibility, and training staff on neurodiversity. It also stresses the need to review and adapt interview processes to accommodate neurodivergent candidates.

Hundreds of people visit our job board each day, where they find thousands of nonprofit jobs across the country like those in this recent sampling. Browse jobs or list openings at your nonprofit.