How Summer Planning Can Save You From Year-End Chaos

As the end of the year creeps closer, nonprofit teams often find themselves overwhelmed, scrambling to meet bold goals with dwindling energy. In this candid episode, I walk you through a powerful mid-year capacity check process that helps you avoid Q4 burnout—and hit your year-end targets with clarity and intention.

I dive into why year-end chaos really begins in the summer and how capacity blindness can sabotage even the best-laid plans. I also share a step-by-step process you can use right now to recalibrate your goals, protect your team’s bandwidth, and stay aligned with your mission.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why “capacity blindness” derails execution—even when your goals are realistic
• How to run a simple yet powerful capacity check with your team
• What mid-year planning can reveal that annual planning often misses

Key takeaways:

• Capacity blindness is not about setting bad goals—it's about underestimating the labor, time, and money needed to meet them.
• Cognitive simplification protects us in the short term but leads to chaos later without a structured override.
• A mid-year capacity check brings visibility to hidden resource gaps and lets you recalibrate before burnout sets in.

The Mid-Year Capacity Check: Step-by-Step

1. Break Down Goals into Tasks
   List every activity required to achieve each goal—no matter how small. Think copywriting, email design, board prep, stewardship steps, etc.
2. Estimate Time, Money, Ownership
   For each task, estimate how many hours it will take, who will do it, and what it will cost.
3. Assess Current Capacity
   Ask: Does the person responsible actually have the bandwidth? Is the funding secure? How maxed out are people already?
4. Expand the Definition of Capacity
   Can you use templates, bring in board members, or lean on partners to lighten the load?
5. Make Strategic Adjustments
   If capacity doesn't match your goals, now's the time to pivot—not in October when it's too late.

Resources Mentioned:

• 🧭 Reset Your North Star Mid-Year Planning Toolkit
  A complete toolkit for reassessing your goals, tracking progress, and aligning resources.
  👉 richiebabbage.com/midyearreset
• 🗂 Post-it Planning System
  A fun, structured strategic mapping process to help you build an actionable plan for the next quarter.
  👉 brookerichiebabbage.com/postitplanning

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Accelerator, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations that want a smart, powerful playbook for taking their growing organization to the next level.

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