Before I head off into the digital isolation of the Lake District for Christmas and New Year, I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to reflect on what’s been one helluva year.

The DoNation was in a pretty precarious position at the start of 2012; funding was running dry and the team had gone down to one – me. I was beginning to imagine my next big adventure, imagining the epic cycle adventure I’d embark on if I had to close up shop in the land of Do.

But (thankfully) that didn’t happen. I mean, I’d love to have joined the Spicycle ladies on their epic Himalayan cycle, but that will have to wait for another year. Instead, I’ve been proudly (and somewhat enviously) watching Doers going off on their eclectic range of challenges through the screen of my MacBook Pro.

We’ve seen Doers doing all sorts of mind-boggling things: from Mark Wood skiing to the poles to the Life Size Media team doing the DoNopoly challenge; Helena and Cameron’s wedding ‘gift list‘ to De Beauvoir Primary School ‘Doing’ for their Community Games day; Mike Barry running the Henley Half Marathon to a team from Ernst & Young cycling, hiking, running, and kayaking from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. And 130 more incredible Do challenges.  Together, they have inspired people around them to Do 1,832 simple things to make a difference, themselves.

Behind the scenes, we’ve been pretty busy too: from receiving Nesta Innovation in Giving funding to being ‘hacked’ by Good for Nothing; hosting our first Do Awards to getting onto the Young Foundation’s Accelerator program; running our first corporate programmes to pitching at Ideas Idol; welcoming Ruth onto the team and partnering with People & Planet. And the pace certainly isn’t slowing.

January will see social impact surveys landing in your inboxes (please take two minutes to answer them!), us preparing to pitch at the Accelerator Demo Day, and focusing hard on developing and delivering our employee engagement tools.

And hopefully it’ll see some of you Doing great New Year’s Resolutions too…

But for now, it’s time for a mince pie.

Happy Christmas all, and a very Happy Do Year from the muddy santas of The DoNation!