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This time last year, Greater Greater Washington shared our goals for 2016 with readers. Here's a reminder of what they were, along with our accomplishments and how we (mostly) achieved those goals.

Goal 1: Keep up the reach, breadth, and quality of the blog

In addition to keeping up the number and quality of posts we published, we also wanted to expand the geographic and subject matter range of content, increase reader engagement with the blog through social media presence and evaluate opportunities to pursue different kinds of media.

Thanks to contributions from more than 160 volunteer writers and Breakfast Links curators, we published 1,205 posts, on par with 2015's 1,203. Posts about housing and land use increased by 31% from 86 to 113. Posts about Maryland and Virginia grew only slightly.

We grew our Twitter following to 23.5k (17% increase over 2015) and our Facebook likes went up 40%, to 5,517. Our Instagram now has 1,510 followers, too. If you haven’t liked us on Facebook, yet, followed us on Twitter, or Instagram, please do!

We are also excited to be exploring an opportunity to pilot test a limited series of podcasts in 2017! We can’t reveal details just yet, but we look forward to sharing them with you when they’re nailed down.

Goal 2: Ensure that volunteers remain a strong and growing part of GGWash

As the organization grew from a mostly volunteer organization to one with staff, we wanted to be sure that volunteers continued to play a meaningful role in the organization in 2016. And, they did!

Last year we grew the number of people who contributed to the blog, from 139 in 2015 to 161 in 2016. As important as individual posts are, creating a community of writers who can cover urbanism issues on a regular basis is even more critical. In 2016, 54% of contributors wrote more than one post for the blog!

We welcomed new Breakfast Links curators and editors, volunteers who have helped with social media, and a volunteer who is working on a tool for creating data visualizations and maps specifically for GGWash! Staff also hosted four blogging workshops and trained more than 50 people to use blogging as a way to share information and observations about how our region grows and develops.

If you want to become a volunteer with GGWash, let us know by answering a few quick questions!

Goal 3: Inform people about and advocate for policies that support reliable transit and more housing options for more people

From our founding in 2008 to the start of 2015, we hosted more than 30 petitions on the blog, which mobilized people to take collective action more than 8,000 times. But hiring an organizer meant that we could be more strategic and intentional about our policy and advocacy efforts. We focused those efforts on two priority issue areas for 2016: housing and transportation.

In 2016 David Whitehead, Housing Organizer, led several initiatives to help readers better understand the housing affordability challenges facing our region and the policies that impact them.

  • In 2016 we increased our coverage of housing issues by 38% over 2015 and attracted new writers to share housing stories. From explainers about core housing concepts like area median income and rent control to controversial development projects (like this one and this one), volunteer writers helped the region’s residents understand the forces that influence housing affordability.

  • Since August, GGWash has worked with a diverse group of organizations to articulate changes to DC's current Comprehensive plan that would support the creation of more housing for more people across the district. The group has drafted a statement of priorities for this work, which will be made public later this month and provide an opportunity for other organizations and individuals to sign on. The Comprehensive Plan amendment process is a critical opportunity to ensure that as DC continues to grow it meets the demand for housing at all income levels.

We also undertook a massive effort to survey Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners to help residents make informed decisions about local DC elections. We made endorsements based on their responses to encourage urbanist-minded, hyper-local elected officials into office.

Our transportation policy and advocacy in 2016 focused mainly on Metro late-night service cuts. Contributors wrote a number of posts asking hard questions about Metro late-night service cuts and demanding more information from WMATA to justify the cuts. As a result, General Manager Paul Wiedefeld and other leaders invited GGWash and the Coalition for Smarter Growth to provide that information. Although late-night service cuts have, unfortunately, been made permanent, our community played a critical role in distributing accurate information about why these cuts were necessary.

Goal 4: Ensure that Greater Greater Washington has the financial resources to meet these goals

Early last year, we shared our projected budget, communicating where we expected our revenue to come from and how we’d spend those funds. We’re still working in the year-end financials and anticipate sharing a post about our budget projections versus what actually happened in a subsequent post. In the meantime, met 90% of our fundraising targets meaning we can continue our work in 2017 and beyond! Readers like you played an important role. Please consider making a contribution today or during our upcoming Reader Drive!

Goal 5: Strengthen our organizational capacity

In 2016 we set out to track some key metrics, bring some clearer structures and procedures to staff and volunteer activities, strengthen our board of directors, and launch a new website,

We brought on four new board members in 2016, growing the diversity of experience, skills, geographic, and demographic diversity of our board. Learn more about our board members, here.

We’ve begun experimenting with tracking metrics, specifically around the blog and how readers are engaging with Greater Greater Washington through the blog and social media. This was a big effort and one that was hard to keep on top of with our limited staff resources. If you love crunching numbers and would like to help us with our data collection and analysis in 2017, let us know!

And, how could we forget…the website! One of our major goals for this year was redesigning our website. This redesign transferred the website from the homegrown site David Alpert built using custom code, to an established content management system (CMS). We are really pleased with the final product. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback, alerted us of bugs, and kept reading during the launch!

Meeting our 2016 goals was a team effort. We couldn’t have done it without our volunteers, editorial board, board of directors and other supporters who chipped in last year. Thank you!

Sarah Guidi was Greater Greater Washington's Managing Director from 2015 to 2018. She now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her family.