Major gifts have indicated they like the search range (the range of dates in the date popup from search screens) to be from 2010 onwards. The range is configurable as an offset so to keep it at 2010 we need to increment it each year,. The url is
civicrm/admin/setting/preferences/date?reset=1 - change the start offset which is 6 in the screenshot to (current year - 2010) - ie. 7 for 2017
By the time you get to reading this much of the ticket you will be more than half way through completing this task - but please set one up for next year too