Why We Should Celebrate Milestone Anniversaries
Independent Schools Experiential Education Network (ISEEN) 15th Anniversary Party in January 2020 (before the pandemic hit)
This week, I had a milestone birthday. It was one that came up way more quickly than I ever imagined it would. But isn’t that always the way it is with birthdays as we get older? The last decade moved so quickly, but it was chock full of amazing events. It was the decade I moved to two different cities, met and married my partner, had my kid, and started a business.
If it weren’t a milestone birthday, it’d be any other birthday. Maybe I would’ve reflected on the last, ridiculous year, but because this birthday is a milestone, it prompts me to reflect on the entire preceding decade of accomplishments and challenges and love. The process of reflection has been informal, but supremely valuable.
I think honoring and acknowledging a milestone can be similar for businesses, brands, and organizations as they are valuable benchmarks for reflection. They also provide an opportunity to bring the past, present, and future together to understand how they fit together. And by documenting them throughout that milestone year, you are creating stronger connections between people who are veterans to your organization, those who are new, and to those you’d like to bring on board in the future.
Take the Independent Schools Experiential Education Network (ISEEN)--an organization I worked with prior to starting Doerr&Co that provides transformative professional development opportunities for experiential educators. When ISEEN’s Executive Director, Shoshanna, and I started working at the organization in the summer of 2018, neither of us had been involved in the organization before. We had so much to learn in our first year, but then all of a sudden in our second year we realized ISEEN was coming up on it’s 15th birthday.
When we realized this milestone was approaching and acknowledged that it was, indeed, significant, it shifted the way we approached our messaging and our focus on that entire year’s programs. Even though we had both only been with the organization for a year, it was an incredible opportunity for us to learn about the roots and founding of the organization in more tangible ways.
Board members and founding members of the organization offered their reflections and memories that helped draw us and those newer to the organization into visualizing and understanding the initial intentions. It gave us an opportunity to appreciate the present moment in seeing how far the organization came from an initial retreat with just over a dozen people to two annual institutes with between 50 and 160 attendees. It also gave us an opportunity to look forward to the future and make goals and plans for what was ahead, especially in terms of social justice and racial equity work.
This was all reflected in our messaging throughout that year. We framed each of our quarterly newsletters on the themes of past, present, and future. And at our annual institute in January 2020, we had a party (because, of course you should have a party) where we asked speakers to feature those exact themes of past, present, and future.
Speakers at ISEEN’s 15th Anniversary Party — Clockwise starting from top left: Shoshanna Sumka ISEEN Executive Director, Mark Cutler (veteran ISEEN member, representing the past), Ray Wilson (ISEEN Board member, representing the present), and Drea Gallega (ISEEN Institute attendee representing the future)
As someone who didn’t have a history with the organization prior to starting the job, the reflections and celebrations of 15 years made me feel even more connected to the work. And it made me excited for the future. Although I left the organization after that January 2020 event--and no one could have predicted how the pandemic would upend everything (something that surely ISEEN will reflect on at 20 years)--celebrating the milestone sticks out as a valuable experience. I still feel connected to the organization. While a lot of that is my close friendship with Shoshanna and the amazing people I met through the work, celebrating 15 years of accomplishments made me feel even more rooted in the mission of the organization.
It’s for this reason that I heartily believe that all organizations should embrace their milestone anniversary/birthday. As that milestone approaches, strategize how you approach the messaging. The “past, present, and future” framework is useful in thinking about those communications. Bring people in your network into the process. Interview them, give them opportunities to reflect, and especially think ahead to what they want to see from your work. And, of course, throw a really fun party!