Organizations are more likely to succeed when the stakeholders and key opinion leaders are aligned with its purpose, mission, and vision. The strength and credibility of any private, public, or third sector organization relies on collaboration, strategic planning and creativity.
There is a public expectation that organizations that are given the benefit and bounty of public dollars safeguard that privilege by acting in a moral and ethical manner. These expectations, coupled with the challenge for the nonprofit community to do more and be more transparent, are based on the current stagnant U.S. economy and the rising expectation that these organizations demonstrate outcomes and mission effectiveness. Meeting these expectations is foundational and the hallmark of effective nonprofit governance.
Key Questions that determine if your organizations need to engage in strategic planning.
1. Have you done strategic planning before?
2. What worked well and what will you change?
3. Has the Board discussed what they want to get out of planning?
4. Committed to active participation?
5. How much time are your Board members willing to put in?
6. Is your current strategic plan reaching its end-date?
7. Has the end-date passed on your strategic plan?
8. Does your organization not have a strategic plan?
9. Has your organization gone through any unusual shifts?
10. Does your organization have the capacity to execute the plan?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, please review the Strategic Planning Overview below. It offers a brief summary of what strategic planning is and why it is important and then provides an outline of the steps involved in completing a strategic planning process. Following the overview is a Readiness Assessment that
will help you to determine if this is the appropriate time for your organization to begin a strategic planning process.
Strategic Planning Overview
A. What Is Strategic Planning? A management tool that helps an organization:
1. focus its energy and priorities.
2. ensure that members of the organization are working towards the same goals; and
3. assess and adjust its direction in response to a changing environment.
· The process is strategic because it involves choosing how best to respond to the circumstances of the organization’s dynamic environment which includes being clear about the organization’s objectives and aware of its resources.
· The process is about planning because it involves intentionally setting goals and developing an approach to achieving those goals.
B. What Is Strategic Planning Not?
1. A predictor of the future.
2. A replacement for year-round board engagement and leadership development.
3. A substitute for the exercise of judgment by an organization’s leadership.
4. An operational or work plan that focuses on the day-to-day implementation of strategic decisions.
What Is the Process for Strategic Planning?
1. Getting Ready – determining the right time to engage in a strategic planning process, designing the process, including creating a Planning Committee, and identifying information that must be collected.
2. Assessing the Environment – reviewing an organization’s mission, vision and values, and analyzing its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) in order to identify its strategic issues.
3. Agreeing on Priorities – identifying an organization’s strategic directions and broad approaches to be used.
4. Writing the Strategic Plan – writing and approving the strategic plan.
5. Planning Action – setting short-term objectives and mapping out who will be responsible for what by when.
6. Evaluating the Process and Monitoring the Plan – reflecting on the planning process and putting monitoring mechanisms in place for the strategic plan.
Initiating a planning process at the appropriate time is important to achieve success.
The following elements and conditions must be present for a successful planning and execution process.
1. Commitment, support, and involvement from top leadership, especially the Executive Director and Board Chair/President, throughout the entire process.
2. Commitment to clarifying roles and expectations for all participants in the planning process, including clarity as to who will have input into the plan and who will be decision makers.
3. Willingness to gather information regarding the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; the effectiveness of current programs; needs in the community, both current and future; and information regarding community partners
and (potential) collaborators.
4. The right mix of individuals on the planning committee —strategic thinkers and action focused (individuals who can see things through to completion), as well as big-picture (conceptual) thinkers and detail-oriented (perceptual) thinkers.
5. Willingness to be inclusive and encourage broad participation so participants feel ownership of and are energized by the process.
6. An adequate commitment of organizational resources to complete the planning process as designed, e.g. staff time, Board time, dollars for stakeholder engagement, consulting support, etc.
7. A Board and staff that understand the purpose of planning, recognize what it is and is not able to accomplish and have clarity about the desired outcomes of the process and issues to be addressed.
8. A willingness to question the status quo, to look at new ways of doing things; a willingness to ask the hard questions, face difficult choices and make decisions that are best for the organization’s current and future stakeholders; and a willingness to support organizational change as a result of the planning efforts.
9. The organization has the financial capacity to sustain itself for the immediate future without a financial crisis appearing to detract from strategic planning.
10. Management’s commitment to carefully considering recommendations made during the planning process rather than disregarding decisions in favor of his or her intuitive decisions.
11. There is no serious conflict between key players within the organization (although a healthy dosage of disagreement and perhaps some heated discussions can be expected during a strategic planning process).
12. There are no high-impact decisions to be made in the next six months by an external source.
13. Board and management are willing to articulate constraints and non-negotiables upfront.
14. A commitment to tie the strategic planning process to the organization’s annual planning and budgeting process—to create a detailed annual operating plan for the upcoming year, and monitor/revise the strategic plan as needed.
15. A commitment to allocating resources to support the implementation of core strategies.
Introductions/Check-in
What positive planning experiences have you had? What would you recommend we do to make this planning process valuable and relevant?
Key Issues
1. What do you feel are the key issues facing the organization currently?
2. What strategic questions do we need to answer through the planning process?
3. What are some generative topics you have been longing to discuss as a board?
What type of plan do we want?
1. What have the organization’s past plans looked like? likes and dislike.
2. Do you want a three-year plan?
3. What elements do you want your plan to contain?
4. Required: mission, vision, strategic priorities, objectives
5. Recommended: organizational history/background, identity statement, outcomes, monitoring plan
6. What pieces already in place will you carry forward? Does your mission need review/updating?
Stakeholder Input
1. Who are key stakeholders of this organization?
2. What input have you already gathered from these stakeholders?
3. What additional outreach would be useful to inform planning?
Other Data to Gather
1. What else do we need to know to make good decisions about the key strategic questions we identified?
2. Does the entire board and staff have a good handle on our financial situation and our current funding model? Do we need to prepare a summary?
3. Would we benefit from an organizational assessment to better understand our current organizational health and what our capacity building needs are?
Setting Our Course
1. What is our desired timeline for planning, and what resources do we have to put into the process?
2. How much time will the board commit? Can we hold a day-long retreat midway through the process?
3. Do we have skilled staff or volunteers who can complete some of the stakeholder listening and data gathering we would like to do?
4. Do we have any funding to invest in an outside consultant?
5. How can we prioritize among our ideas to create a realistic planning scope?
Data Collection and Analysis Process
Review of Documents and tools (16 hours)
1. Past Strategic Planning Documents
2. Board minutes
3. Financial statements
4. Donor giving practices, history and trends
5. Administrative documents
6. Personnel policies, practices and procedures
7. Other
Assessment of Staff, Board and Key institution stakeholders (24 Hours)
1. Individual interviews
2. Individual completion of survey tool
3. observation
4. Analysis
Retreat (16 hours)
1. One day retreat agenda will be tailored to fit the organizations need.
Written Report (24 hours)
Franklin Management will provide a time phased detailed report with action plan and deliverables. The focus of the plan will be based on realistic approach to change management and institutional skills. The purpose of this phase is to carefully analyze and draw meaning and purpose to materials and data collected. The central focus is to discover meaning, analysis and solutions that would help the organization frame a strategy of institutional resilience and long-term organizational sustainability.
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