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When You’re Planning Meetings, Include Other Religions

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Eid Mubarak

Did you know yesterday was a Muslim holy day?

Eid mubarak! That was the appropriate greeting for Muslims yesterday, Sunday, August 11, 2019, as they celebrated Eid al-Adha, one of the most important holidays of the year.

Because it was Sunday, most people in the U.S. would have no trouble avoiding schedule conflicts with Eid al-Adha this year. The secular calendar that most people use in the U.S. is based on the Gregorian calendar, created under the direction of Pope Gregory. Because of its Christian origins, it assumes that Sunday is not a work day.

But Muslims follow a lunar calendar, which means their holidays are NOT on the same date every secular year. Jews follow a lunisolar calendar: ditto. Other religions and cultures also follow their own calendars, so you won’t know the date of their holy days and holidays the way that, for example, everyone in the U.S. knows December 25 is Christmas.

Even if you have a printed or online calendar that mentions all the dates, how do you know whether that day is something that is merely marked (like Ash Wednesday for certain Christians), or taken off from work completely (like Easter)?

The Best Thing to Do is Ask

When you’re scheduling a meeting with a group of people, the best thing you can possibly do is ask ahead of time.

Of course, if you ask and someone says, “I can’t make it that day because of a religious holy day,” you have to be prepared to say, “Okay, let’s look for another date.” If you ask and then you say you’re holding the meeting anyway. think of the message you’ll be sending!

You can look up a calendar of holidays ahead of time and familiarize yourself with other people’s religious observances and cultures–but that is no substitute for asking the people you’re actually working with!

A Jewish Holy Day Calendar for 2019-2020

 

 

Here’s a guide to scheduling around the Jewish holy days that I thought you might find useful.   I didn’t write it, only edited it slightly and updated it each year, but I vouch for its accuracy.

Category I.     MOST JEWS PARTICIPATE.

Please do not schedule meetings around these dates.

ROSH HASHANAH (Jewish New Year) begins at sunset Sunday, September 29, 2019 and continues through Tuesday, October 1.

YOM KIPPUR (Day of Repentance) begins at sunset on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 and continues through Wednesday, October 9.  While Yom Kippur is a fasting day, meals are prepared in advance for the breaking of the fast at the end of 27 hours.

Typically, even some of the least religiously observant members of the
Jewish community do not work on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah.   Please keep in mind that even though the holy day may begin at sunset, these are
home ritual centered holy days, so a great deal of advance preparation is
required.  In other words, please don’t schedule a meeting for the afternoon
preceding the holiday because I will be cooking!

PASSOVER (Celebration of Freedom from Slavery in Egypt) begins at sunset
on Wednesday, April 8, 2020; continues through nightfall on Thursday, April 16.   THE FIRST TWO DAYS (through Sunday evening, April 10, 2020) require refraining from work.    LOTS of cooking and preparation before this holy day.

—————

Category II.   Many observant Jews refrain from work.

I count myself as observant.

SUKKOT (Festival of Booths, or Tabernacles) begins at sunset Sunday, October 13, 2019 and lasts through Sunday, October 20.  THE FIRST TWO DAYS (through Tuesday, October 15, 2019) traditionally require abstaining from work.

SHMINI ATZERET (Eighth Day Assembly, ending Sukkot) begins at sunset on Sunday, October 20, 2019 and lasts through Monday, October 21.

SIMCHAT TORAH (Rejoicing with the Torah) begins at sunset on Monday, October 21, 2019 and lasts through Tuesday, October 22.

The LAST TWO DAYS of PASSOVER begin at sunset Tuesday, April 14, 2020 and last through Thursday, April 16.

SHAVUOT (Festival of Weeks, or Pentecost to our Christian friends) begins at sunset on Thursday, May 28, 2020; continues through Saturday, May 30.

TISHA B’AV (fast day marking the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem) begins at sunset on Wednesday night, July 29, 2020 and continues through Sunday, July 30.

—————–
Category III. Observance doesn’t require refraining from work.


HANUKKAH (Festival of Lights) begins at sunset on Sunday, December 22, 2019 and continues through nightfall Monday, December 30.  Every night, candles on the Hanukkiah (eight-armed candelabra, sometimes called “menorah”) are lit.

PURIM – Begins at sunset on Monday, March 9, 2020; continues through Tuesday, March 10.

And a few other seasonal and historical holy days that I won’t mention, because enough already!  If you want to know more about the meaning of these holidays, you might consult www.jewfaq.org or the book Seasons of Our Joy, by Arthur Waskow.

[Dennis] A final note which I thought worth adding from my own experience: Even if someone (who might be Jewish) tells you “It’s no big deal” to schedule meetings and conferences on these days, doesn’t mean that that’s true for all Jews.  People maintain different levels of observance, and a more secular Jew may work on a day when I would not.

When in doubt, please ask!  I can’t speak for other Jewish consultants, staff, board members, and interns, but I know I always prefer to be asked.

Thank you!

Halloween in September? For Nonprofits, Yes

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Halloween lawn

The lawn was eerie. Long strands of spider web draped over its length, a bat hovering over the withering shrubs, and a gravestone poking up from the dried grass.

The scariest thing was, it was a full month before Halloween!

As you can guess, I’m not a big fan of Halloween in September, or Christmas in October, or back-to-school in July. But you should be-when you’re filling in your communications calendar.

Creating a good message takes time.

It pays to know what you will be saying ahead of time. For that article you want to write or that video you want to record, you may need to find facts, or set up a photo shoot.

You may need to interview someone. How long will it take to schedule that meeting? From experience, I would say: estimate the longest time you can imagine it will take–then double it.

And once you have the facts, the photos, the interviews, the quoteable quotes in hand, you still have to write or edit. You don’t want to do any of that at the last minute.

Schedule that message weeks or even months in advance. Then schedule the steps it will take to create that message. Put them on your calendar.

Your audience needs time to respond, too.

Have you ever received an invitation to attend an event the day after you were supposed to RSVP?

If your message is inviting people to attend an event, to “Call your member of Congress TODAY!,” or to do anything else with a deadline, you need to send it to them well in advance. And you probably have to send it more than once.

That means you have to start creating the message even earlier, and send it out more often. Put time for creating it AND a date for sending it on your communications calendar.

Yes, you can wait until the last minute to create your message and hope inspiration strikes. Yes, you can gamble that your supporters will drop everything to respond to your call to action.

But that’s like Halloween in September. It’s just…scary.

How to Make Your Calendar Your Best Friend

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calendarNothing feels more awful than getting up in the morning and realizing you have no idea what to write.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Create a publication calendar and you’ll never have that feeling again.

Create a publication calendar in 5 easy steps

Step one: open up your favorite calendar tool. Outlook, Google Calendar, a specially designed piece of software or a paper calendar with pictures of puppies every month: it doesn’t matter, as long as it works for you.

Step two: think of seasonal topics.  Back-to-school, Fall, Winter, New Year, Spring, Summer. National holidays like Thanksgiving and Independence Day. If appropriate, religious holidays like Christmas, Easter, Rosh Hashanah, or Ramadan. Heating season, if you provide heating assistance.  Camping season, if you do summer camps.  Mark each topic on your calendar at the right time to be talking about it.

Step three: find the hook that will make each topic a real story, one that’s interesting to your audience. Back-to-school is not a story in itself. “What you need to know about your child’s first day at our preschool” is a story! Mark that on your calendar.

Step four: now think of events your organization is holding. Fundraising events, friend-raising events, community forums, advocacy days at the statehouse.  Put those on your calendar too, and find the hook for each one.

Step five: think of campaigns your organization is launching at specific times of the year. Are you registering people to vote? Signing them up for low-cost bank accounts? Creating sports teams? Put those activities on the calendar, too, along with the hook that will make your audience want to read about each one.

Use your calendar to make communicating easy

Now, your calendar is full of ideas and specific ways to present them.  That means:

  • You can work on them in advance. Get photos, line up interviews, look up statistics…whatever you need for the post can be done ahead of time instead of at the last minute.
  • You can coordinate your messaging. Your blog, your social media postings, your newsletter, and even your face-to-face meetings with supporter can all reinforce the same message, so people are more likely to grasp it and retain it.
  • You can improvise.  It’s easier to improvise when you already have a plan in place. If a hurricane strikes, or one of your issues trends in the news, or if you receive a visit from Michelle Obama or the Pope, of course you can put that into your calendar. You’ll be in the perfect position to decide whether to delay a previously scheduled topic or just post more often.

What do you put on your publication calendar? Is there something that you post about that makes you stand out from most other organizations?

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