Strategic Planning

Who are you? What do you do? Who do you do it for? Creating an effective mission statement focusses staff and engages the community behind your organization. This is your organization’s WHO, WHAT, and WHERE. If the public only remembers one thing about your organization, this should be it. Whether we start from your existing mission statement or from scratch, we will draft a clear statement everyone can remember. 

Aim high to envision the future that could be if your organization completely achieved its mission. How will your constituents’ lives be different because your organization existed? This is your organization’s WHY. Together, we will identify the central goal that will rally your team and inspire them to do their best. Staff work because they need a job; they work for your organization because it gives their lives purpose. 

How does your organization interact internally and with your constituents? What makes your organization special? This is your organization’s HOW. Your core values are the ethics that support the culture of your organization and the decisions that it makes. We will undertake a process to determine if the organizational values identified by staff nurture the culture you wish to develop and what changes may need to be made to better align the two.  

This process reviews current organizational structure, policies and procedures, resources, and programming relative to existing organizational goals or in preparation for a new strategic planning process. The deliverable will be a formal report with recommendations for future action.

Depending on whether this will be a basic update of an existing plan or an entirely new plan, the process will take between one and two months. The plan will set goals and objectives tied directly to the mission and vision of the organization. 

Based on the availability and level of involvement the board desires, the first meeting would either be a six-hour session on a Saturday or a three-hour evening or Saturday session. A strategic planning committee would meet prior to the first full board session and again prior to the second session for two-hour working meetings. Throughout the process, I would be working with staff and individual board members as needed. After the second full board session, where the first draft of the plan will be presented, I will complete the final draft of the plan and submit this document for review and approval at your next board meeting. 

Your organization will likely require an action plan to operationalize the goals and objectives of the strategic plan. This process would rely more on the staff than the board, though based on the size of your staff the strategic planning committee may meet to review initial ideas and the first draft of the plan. I will work with staff to create logic models and evaluation tools for strategic plan objectives and a format for reporting progress to the board. This would likely be a one-month process resulting in an easy-to-track matrix identifying what tasks are to be completed, by when, and by whom to meet the objectives of the strategic plan.