2023 is here and we are excited for what this new year will mean for our nonprofit organization. We accomplished so much in 2022! You can read about 6 of our accomplishments here and get a rundown of the projects we completed (by season) here. But homelessness is an ongoing problem in our community so we cannot stop or slow down. With your help, we can achieve even more in 2023!
Today we’re reflecting on our priorities for the year ahead. Read on to learn about five of our major goals for 2023. And stay tuned because in our next blog post, we’ll talk more specifically about how you can join our mission.
Commit your work to the LORD and your plans will be established. (Proverbs 16:3)
5 Goals for ICPADS in 2023
To reach new levels of success in 2023, we have selected five goals that will help us focus our efforts and work in the year ahead. In no particular order, our goals are:
Increase Our Email List and Number of People Reading Our Newsletter
ICPADS started a monthly newsletter about a year ago and we are excited to say that right now we have about 550 recipients and about 20% of them open the newsletter each month.
The ‘open rate’ isn’t too bad for a nonprofit that is just getting started. Data from Mailchimp in 2022 indicates that the average open rate for nonprofits is 25.17% and other sources report that a ‘good’ email open rate is between 17-28%.
So, we’re doing okay, but we’d love to increase these numbers in the year ahead. If you aren’t currently on our email list, click here to join and get our monthly newsletter!
Increase Volunteer Service to 300 Hours Per Month
We love working with volunteers because it gives people a chance to really feel connected to our cause and understand the important work we do. Our Director, Harrison Holtkamp always says that “Volunteering is a cashless donation.” Volunteers are vital to our mission, and we’d love to get more volunteers in 2023.
We started tracking volunteer hours mid-2022, so to give you an idea of our current numbers:
- November: 280
- October: 158.75
- September: 252.5
- August: 206.2
We’d love to get more volunteers this year, so we can reach 300 volunteer hours for the first time, and then consistently meet that goal every month.
Quadruple Our Donations
As a nonprofit, we rely on donations from the community, including monetary gifts and goods donations. We look to increase our donations in 2023 – in particular, monetary donations which will help us with payroll.
Historically, we have operated primarily on grants. Grants are wonderful, of course, but one problem is that most of them restrict “payroll” as an expense. In other words, they can be used to fund our operations and pay bills but cannot be used to pay people to do the work.
While we do have many volunteers helping us, we also need to hire trained and dedicated staff to help us carry out our work. Payroll is the largest expense for Interfaith Community PADS, and since we can’t use the money from grants for this purpose, we must get monetary donations from the community to cover the costs. By quadrupling the amount of donations we get in 2023, we’ll have the money we need to staff our shelter and ensure that our homeless guests get the care they need.
Increase Recurring Donations
A related goal for 2023 is that we would like to increase the number of recurring donations to our nonprofit homeless shelter.
A recurring donation is when a donor pledges to contribute a set amount each month, for example, $50. Recurring donations help because they give us funds that we can count on each month for our expenses. They’re also convenient for the donor because the donation is split up over the course of the year—they can make a large financial impact but split the donations into smaller monthly payments.
Here at ICPADS, we have worked hard to put into place the technology to receive automated monthly donations. Now we just need to find more caring community members who are willing to contribute on a monthly basis! Our hope is that recurring donors find the process both easy and rewarding.
Continue to Offer Comforting Care to Guests
Our final goal for 2023 is to continue to offer quality of care to homeless guests who stay with us throughout the year. In 2022 (as of November) we had:
- 169 new guests
- 7503 bed nights
- 15,006 meals served
- 75 guests housed
- 1925.7 volunteer hours
We offer food (dinner and a light breakfast) and a safe place to sleep for members of our community who are experiencing homelessness. We take people when no other shelter will, or when other shelters are full and have a waiting list. We connect guests to services and help guide them through the system set up to help them into permanent housing. And we hold them accountable for their success. This is important work, and we want to continue to offer this level of service to guests in the year to come.
You Can Help Us Achieve These Goals!
So, there you have it, 5 goals for ICPADS in 2023. There is a lot to achieve and we could use your help. Stay tuned for our next blog post when we will outline the many ways you can join us on our mission in 2023!
