Happy New Year! With the new year comes new opportunities and challenges for your Parks & Recreation department. It's a natural time to reflect on your department's progress over the past year and plan ahead. Making new year's resolutions for your organization can be a good way to get your team on the same page. Short on ideas? Here are 5 New Year Resolutions you can adopt to take your parks and recreation department to the next level.

1. Identify What Worked in 2018

While the New Year is often seen as a big 'reset' button, don't be so quick to hit it just yet. Before you start on implementing new ideas and initiatives, do a quick audit of the past year. What practices worked well? What impacted your organization for the better? List them out and work on refining them further in 2019.

2. Utilize the Power of Social Media

Are you maximizing the potential of social media? Even if your department is limited by budgets and resources, social media marketing is a cost-effective way to promote city events, new programs and important announcements. It's also a good opportunity to interact with your community online. Take your social presence to the next level by fine-tuning your social content strategy!

3. Strive for More Community Engagement

Are there any underrepresented groups in your community you'd like to hear from? Are you using the right tools to reach your audience? Are there any partnerships that may help your organizations' mission? Now's the time to think about these questions, evaluate and plan for the upcoming year accordingly.  

4. Try Offering a New Program 

Try to offer a new class or program in your catalog this year, based on any trends or insight you may have gained from your community. Do you know of any community members who have any expertise they'd like to share? Inclusive programs or classes that allow your members to experience different cultures are always a good idea as well. For more ideas, read more about our post on how to offer inclusive community classes.

5. Invest in the Right Technology

At the backbone of every successful Parks and Recreation Department is a powerful recreation management system that should help you make programming decisions based on analytics, allow your community members to register for classes easily online, help with payments, facility bookings and more. Is your current software helping you do all this and more? Investing in the right technology can help you cut down on back office tasks, allowing you more time to focus on connecting with your community. 

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