I looooove project management. There’s just something so satisfying about checking an item off the to-do list that scratches my brain in a good way, seeing all the little pieces come together into the final whole.

If you’ve never managed a project before, it can definitely seem daunting with buzz words like Gantt chart, ROI, SMART goals, DONUT graph (no I made that one up). But honestly, its not that scary. It’s really just about sitting down and gathering your thoughts, getting them down on paper in a meaningful way. 

In today’s post, I want to walk you through the basics of a good Project Management Plan. At the end, I’ll give you a free Project Management Plan template you can download that I have used for over a decade while working at non-profits, for government, and for our small businesses.

THE PLAN

Name Your Plan

Like writing your name at the top of your worksheet back in elementary, start with a name. You can always change the name later as your plan becomes more clear, but it helps to take the scary blank page away.

“Join Our Family” Membership Drive

Opportunity / Situation

What’s going on in your world that you’re doing this project for? Just a few sentences about why you’re getting into this project.

With Family Day coming up, we want to tie in a membership drive campaign for the community to “Join our Family” and become a member or renew their membership. Summer Student Catherine has gathered member stories to share, so we’ll be using those to tie it all together. 

Audience

Who is this project for? Is it for a specific type of customer (Magic Players, jewellery lovers who are into K Pop Demon Hunters)? For staff only? Just for yourself? There can be multiple audiences, but try to keep it to three at most or you risk your project having too many moving parts.

• Primary: People connected to our organization, but not members.
• Secondary: Members about to expire.

Objective

What is your overall hope for this project? Here you don’t have to be specific, just a general: what does a successful outcome look like? 

Awareness of our Membership program and its perks.

Goals

This is where we figure out what exactly we’re trying to accomplish. Are you making a new thing? Are you trying to increase sales or social media numbers? Are you trying to find savings or reduce waste? Get specific.

Get 10 new members, and 5 renewals by March 8th, 2025.

Budget

How much money do you actually have to spend on this project?

Zip. Nada. Only staff time.

Strategy

What are all the pieces that you’ll be doing to reach your goals? You can start by brainstorming ideas, then refine it down to the items you think are most important to make this project happen. 

• Landing page with stories and big sign up button; featured in homepage rotator box
• Email blast to non-members introducing the campaign (News & Updates, Volunteers, excluding current members)
• Email blast reminder soon-to-lapse members to renew 
• Email thank you to current members
• Corporate social media
• Posts to Facebook groups
• Blurb in March enews

Plan & Timeline

Working backwards from your end date goal for this project, take all the items from your strategy and put them into a timeline. When do you want them to be finished? Who is going to do them? I also like to add in lines for their current status and any notes I might have about line items. This is where you can get fancy with Gantt charts or project planning apps, if you’re into that, but honestly a simple table chart does the trick just as well.

Evaluation

Once your project is completed, it’s important to take five minutes and review how you did. Did you reach your goals? Great! If not, that’s okay too. What went well, what was tricky, what would you change if you were to do this project again?

Had some issues pulling the soon to expire list. Pull this sooner.

And that’s it! When I get overwhelmed with a project, I would always just come back to this document and revisit the why and focus on the tasks I’d already laid out.

I have a template Project Managment Plan you can download here.

If you enjoyed this post, buy me a tea?