For fundraisers in the arts and nonprofit sector, the next six weeks are our prime time—it’s year-end campaign season! Many of you have likely been working on your end-of-year campaign for weeks (or even months!) already. But whether you’ve been in the weeds for some time or are just now realizing that December is mere days away, we want to share our go-to best practices to ensure a successful year-end campaign that helps you meet your goals and sets your organization up for success in the new year.

The election results are weighing heavy, and we at Bloom Arts will always stand in solidarity with and in support of the artists, advocates, and disruptors that use art as their form of protest, resistance, connection, sanctuary, and joy. We in particular stand with BIPOC, trans, immigrant, and disabled communities who will be particularly targeted in the upcoming administration. In our work and through our advocacy efforts, we are committed to anti-racism, dispelling ignorance, and battling hate. Grieve and process in the way you need, engage in communal care in your circles, and then take action through gathering, listening, writing, organizing, learning, creating, collaborating, and offering.

Curating and producing the Made By Women Festival was a professional milestone and a personal passion project for Account Manager, Monica Nyenkan. Her experience with Bloom Arts Strategy provided her with the resources and knowledge needed to support Dual Rivet and their team, while the festival, in turn, further enriched her approach to clients and their work.

Voting is not the end all be all. It is not a magic wand. But in the multifaceted strategy that is required for lasting social change, it is an indispensable tool. Whether or not we want to engage with this system, this system will engage with us. This system controls our roads, our schools, our water, and our air. It determines who we can and cannot marry, what we can and cannot do with our bodies, who can and cannot call this place home. Very often this system can even decide whether we live or die. With the deadline to register to vote looming, I ask that you remember that democracy, much like hope, requires discipline.

At the end of the summer, Stacy, Monica, and Eliza of the Bloom Arts team came together for a staff retreat in Baltimore facilitated by the Executive Director of Dunamis Boston, J Cottle. The goal of this time was to look back at the work we have done, acknowledge our accomplishments, and ideate about where we want to grow into next. Read on for individual reflections from each member of our team!

Let’s be honest, artists and creatives are simply not appropriately resourced in America, and because of these limited resources, it is likely that any given person working on a project is running more than one or potentially all of the following: creative direction, fundraising, production, documentation, marketing, costuming, sound design, the list goes on and on and on and on…Many artists are multi hyphenates, but for many creatives, this multiplicity is forced upon them due to a lack of support. The pressure to keep so many balls in the air can sometimes lead to your art falling to the wayside or your creativity suffering. As a choreographer myself, this has happened to me time and time again. Here are my tips for staying cool, calm, collected, cared for, conscientious, and CREATIVE.

If you are like most arts nonprofits, you likely just closed out your fiscal year or ran a June fundraising campaign - and you are EXHAUSTED. You’ve been pushing for what seems like an eternity to achieve an unattainable goal, but you did it! You got past June 30th. In fact, me writing “JUNE 30” just gave you a minor anxiety attack because you have already put that ugly, mean date far, far behind you. You just want to forget that it ever existed, turn off your brain until November when you start cramming for your calendar year-end campaign, right? So, that you can go full throttle for another 8 weeks and then collapse after December 31st, right?

Is this all sounding a little too familiar?

Listen. Friends, I’m here to tell you that there is a better way. And I’m actually going to use my Summer Guiding Principles to show you how.

Almost every week, I hear from a colleague or friend about how an organization that they love or one they are running themselves is in dire need of fundraising help and has no idea where to begin. I get it. Starting or reinvigorating a fundraising program can feel completely overwhelming. But just like with any large project, breaking it down into concrete, manageable steps can help ensure success.

It is hard to believe that an entire year has passed since Bloom Arts Strategy officially opened full-time for business. This was a massive leap of faith, but goodness are we glad that we made the jump.