Hope Bridges The Gap
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and, this week, I hope you all are braving the cold and prepared for the expected snow.
When you get out there and enjoy the winter wonderland on Friday, make sure you tag your photos and stories with @Choose901 so we can reshare your posts with the world.
Each Year Begins with Hope
Adarryll Jackson, Sr. is one of my favorite Memphis photographers, and as you can see above, he captured the celebration of the first moments of Memphis' 2025 so well.
It is interesting that we all make so much of a new year. It holds so much power in our culture and in our own personal psyche.
My personal belief is that this is all tied to our human need for HOPE.
Being human is hard. Our abilities have limits, but our feelings seem to be limitless. We can feel a desire that is much greater than our actual ability to meet that desire.
Hope seems to bridge that gap.
Hopes for 2025
For those of you who know me, even just a little bit, you can easily guess that my hopes and plans for this year far out punt what is possible. And it is even hard for me to choose just some of them to share with you all instead of all of them.
Here are a few to put on your radar, each associated with one of our campaigns:
Choose901: I hope that we raise enough money to create a full-capacity video team. Currently, this work is split among several people in various roles, but we need more depth from day to day. With the growth of the Choose901 Alumni program, we shifted resources from our media team to help the Alumni. Now, somewhat ironically, we need more media resources to help the Alumni work.
Teach901: Our goal is to help more of our current educators persist in the classroom from this Spring to the start of the school year in the Fall. Our survey data shows that teacher retention is high, and the average tenure of our teachers is now at its highest point since we began measuring annually over a decade ago. My hope is that this trend continues upward and is not an indicator of an upcoming large exodus. Teachers are Heroes! They need to be well celebrated and significantly compensated. My hope is that we rally to support them more than ever in 2025.
Serve901: Spring Break is always rocking and rolling with hundreds of college students from around the country, but my hope is that this summer, we will host more volunteers here in Memphis than ever before. If you know of a group—whether from anywhere else or right here in the 901—looking to make an impact this summer, reach out!
Choose901 Alumni: Come May, over 400 Memphis students will graduate high school and become Choose901 Alumni. This will bring the squad to more than 3,000 members! My hope is that our organization can launch our new Salesforce Data Hub to radically reduce the administrative time it takes to manage this work, allowing us to repurpose that time towards the relationally deep aspect of the campaign.
Give901: This is where those who want to help can get involved. It's your admission ticket to making a difference for good. My hope is that we welcome 20 more companies to our Give901 Partner squad and double the size of our $1,000-per-year giving club. Investing $85 per month might not seem like enough to make a difference, but it really adds up when hundreds of us do it together.
What are YOUR hopes?
Ok, I have shared a few of mine, I would love to know a couple of your hopes for this year.
I am serious. I really want to know.
At City Leadership, we believe “Everything Rises and Falls on Leadership”. So whatever is going to be better at the end of this year will be because of YOUR Hopes and YOUR Hard Work.
So send me an email at john@cityleadership.org
You can also find me in the DMs on Instagram.
Can't wait to hear your personal, professional, and even Grizzlies hopes for 2025.
