New Year, New Blog
Each year, many of us like to set time aside in January to take stock of what we accomplished in the previous year as well as lay out what we hope to accomplish in the coming year. Taking the time to look at what worked and where we fell short gives us a strong frame of reference for how to chart our future path.
In 2017, OMNI undertook a major strategic planning effort (more on this in a later blog post) to focus our work and ensure we’re consistently working towards achieving our mission of accelerating positive social change.
That work included the decision to make a more concerted effort to increase public awareness of the OMNI Institute and the amazing work OMNIites are privileged to do each day. To that end, in 2018, OMNI hired me as marketing director, and my first order of business was to tackle our outdated website, replacing it with one that would both effectively explain to visitors what OMNI does and act as a resource to the public as they consider research, evaluation, and capacity building services for their programs.
The new website was a huge project which moved OMNI in the right direction, but there is still so much to be done as we look forward to 2019, a journey I hope you’ll join us on.
First, as we think about our Core Values of Inquiry, Excellence, Agility, and Connection, we’ve committed ourselves to not only providing Excellence through our project work for clients and community partners, but to delivering it while demonstrating Inquiry by sharing our learnings and insights more broadly. Authentic engagement with communities, partners, and clients necessitates a willingness to share our struggles and successes—as a non-profit, as social scientists, and as an organization that exists to serve the public good while also striving to be a sustainable business. The hope is to engage more deeply in mutual learning, dialogue, and resource sharing with those we serve and those we serve alongside.
Next, there is no better way to attain connection with our communities, partners, clients and each other than to spend time together. With that in mind, you’re going to see us in the community more in 2019—whether it be at conferences, giving presentations, speaking with community groups about the importance of program evaluation, through webinars, or on social media. We hope we’ll see you there and that you’ll participate in those conversations—we know these interactions have more value when there are more voices at the table!
Finally, with both Inquiry and Agility in mind, as 2019 unfolds and we try new things on this blog and elsewhere, we hope you’ll share your feedback with us—you can start right now by checking out our new website and letting me know what you think!
Keep an eye out for our next post documenting our progress in the coming weeks!