We have just completed another great year, which is summarized in the SDM 2025 Annual Report.
2025 was another hugely successful year for us. We were busy, our calendar was consistently full and we were often booking out several days, if not a whole week ahead. Our website and social channels grew and we continued to add lots of new online content, in particular short-form video content. We further strengthened our connections within the community, and feedback from our clients continues to be wonderful. We appreciate every kind word.
Read on for more details from our SDM 2025 Annual Report to learn more about our successes and challenges, and our goals for next year.
Our Strengths
Our number one strength is our staff. With the addition of our Office Manager, along with our leadership changes, we are continuing to strengthen our team. Our focus remains on providing knowledgeable and patient staff, whether working directly with clients or creating additional online resources.
Our reputation is very important to us, and we strive to provide support when external organizations reach out to us. During 2025 we had four times as many organizations reach out to us for support, and we are thrilled to be included in Brad Hutchison’s Calendar this year.
We have continued to provide drop-in hours at the Milano center and this year we are trying something different for our first few ShopTalks of the year with Client Tech Stories!
In the coming year we will be building on these successes and strengths to continue to expand our resources, both in-person and online.
Our Opportunities
Our staff are also our greatest opportunity. We make sure to build time into our calendar for staff to work on creating resources (blog posts, videos, presentations etc.). This provides opportunities for staff to grow, learn new things and sharpen technical skills. Creating these resources also allows us to reach more people, as our library of online resources grows.
We continue to apply for grants, achieving our goal for 2025 of submitting five applications. It is a competitive space, and we face some unique obstacles. While we were not successful last year, we have built a solid library of responses that we can re-use, re-focus and improve on each time we apply for a grant.
Our Challenges
We are forever balancing responsible use of our funds with a growing and evolving need and desire for our services. Like all small businesses we see year-on-year increases in our costs, so this balance gets more difficult. This year also marks our 10th Anniversary, and we want to celebrate, so we are mindful of that too!
Supporting and rewarding our staff will always be a priority, as is maintaining the quality and consistency of our work – both with clients and for our online resources. As part of our Anniversary celebrations we will be refreshing our branding and improving our website, all of which takes time. So, managing our workload and commitments is more important than ever.
As we launch new programs, for example our Client Stories ShopTalks, or look to expand our kids’ lessons, we need to figure out how to do that with the resources we have. To that end, we will be looking at additional fundraising and sponsorship opportunities this coming year.
By the Numbers
We look at two areas when analyzing our data: our appointments and clients, and our online channels.
Clients
We helped 1000 unique individuals this year. Some people come once, some come every week. We are consistently maintaining 4000+ appointments and drop-ins. Our staffing levels (and space in the shop!) mean that this is just about as busy as we can be, and we are also still supporting 9000+ paid staff hours. In addition, we filled 80% of our available staff hours with appointments. We need to be mindful of this number to ensure that we are still allowing sufficient time for our online resource building.
The top topics that we see in the shop are website, phones and email. It’s always interesting looking at the data to see what our most common questions are! And, our newsletter subscribers continue to grow, up 10% this year, but more importantly our open rates are consistently above average!
Online
We grew across all channels this year, with the biggest growth on our website. Our page views grew from 40k to 68k, and our visitors from 27k to 50k. We are very proud of this growth as it demonstrates a need for our blog content, and that our efforts to optimize and target our content is working.
On Facebook and Instagram we saw growth, but at a slower pace. This is not uncommon for small business channels, and while the follower number didn’t increase hugely (Facebook from 812 to 858 followers and Instagram from 246 to 277 followers) our reach did increase significantly. Our small business Facebook group also continues to grow and is now sitting at 115 members.
Our Goals for 2026
Compiling the SDM 2025 Annual Report gave us a great opportunity to pause and reflect. To see what’s working, and to review what’s not. This allowed us to set meaningful goals for the coming year.
Looking ahead to 2026 our main focus will be our 10th Anniversary celebrations! Our recent blog post, SDM in 2026: The Year Ahead, has more details. We want to celebrate our supporters, community partners and clients, and ourselves!
Another key focus for the year will be increasing our income through donations and sponsorships. We want to keep doing what we’re doing for as long as possible, and that means ensuring that our funds can do that!
2025 was a great year, and we are excited for 2026. Ten years is a huge milestone, and we are grateful everyday for our clients and the support we receive from the community. Being able to help our clients is incredibly rewarding, and we are always looking for new ways to do that.
Here’s to 2026, we hope you join us!
