As the end of the year approaches, we always see a spike in workloads: the end-of-the-year push to get things done. But some things are much more important than others, which is why we wanted to share one of Maliasili’s favorite management and prioritization tools with you now: weekly goals.

You can make your planning more effective and strategic by starting out with taking a big picture view of the year ahead. Here we explain why organizational annual work plans matter and how you can go about developing one.

From team work planning sessions to stakeholder roundtables to board meetings, you too can facilitate effective meetings online. Here are some of our top tips from the past several months...we made many mistakes, failed, tried and tried again so you don’t have to!

We get asked a lot about what management actually looks like, so we thought we’d share a glimpse into our own management routine.

This week, the African Conservation Leadership Network convened an online session to share insights on fundraising strategy between several top conservation funders and a group of Africa’s conservation leaders.

There’s been an uptick of community conservation stories in the media recently. In fact, we’ve started compiling stories where our partners are featured and the list is growing. This new attention also brings questions around media engagement, and so we wanted to share some tips about how organizations can navigate this sometimes tricky space.

We recently asked African conservation leaders we work with what kind of help and support they need right now. We were moved by two comments, both of which remind us that these are exceptionally hard times. While we might be more comfortable with what has become the ‘new normal,’ we need to remember to step back and take time to support ourselves and our teams. Here are some nudges and reminders that might help you support your team and yourself…

Maliasili’s CEO, Fred Nelson posted three top fundraising tips on LinkedIn recently, which highlight some key points in thinking about how to sustain and strengthen organizations during the COVID crisis and beyond. Check them out here.

Last week Maliasili attempted something we thought we would never do - we held a weeklong online team ‘retreat’ (which we aptly dubbed the ‘non-retreat’). The main takeaway: it worked! While in-person time is invaluable, our virtual experiment was a success and so we asked our team to help us develop some top tips for effective online meetings to share with you:

"Down, tired, stressed,” these are just some of the ways African conservation leaders described how they’re feeling these days when we spoke to them this week about ‘combating burnout.’ This is how organizational specialist Adam Grant defines burnout: “The heart of burnout is emotional exhaustion — feeling so depleted and drained by your job that you have nothing left to give.”