If you’re about to participate in a strategic planning session, you may be expecting a conversation about mission statements, goals, priorities and perhaps a few sticky notes.
Those things may all make an appearance.
But they aren’t really the point.
At its best, strategic planning is a chance to step outside the day-to-day work of running an organization and have a different kind of conversation: Where are we going? Why does that direction matter? What will it take to get there? And what choices do we need to make now to give ourselves the best chance of succeeding?
For nonprofit organizations, those questions are especially important.
There is almost always more work that could be done. More people who need support. More programs you could offer. More partnerships you could pursue. More funding opportunities you could chase.
The challenge is rarely a shortage of good ideas.
The challenge is deciding which ideas matter most.
Strategy is about making choices
One of the biggest misconceptions about strategic planning is that the goal is to capture everything an organization hopes to accomplish.
It isn’t.
A strategic plan that says yes to everything doesn’t provide much strategy at all.
Good strategy helps an organization make choices. It creates enough clarity that, when a new opportunity appears six months from now, leadership can ask:
Does this move us toward the future we said we wanted?
That question becomes enormously useful.
It helps boards govern.
It helps staff prioritize.
It helps leadership decide where to invest limited resources.
It helps funders, partners and community members understand where the organization is going.
And perhaps most importantly, it gives people permission to say not now to opportunities that may be worthwhile, but are not the organization’s current priority.
That is particularly important in the nonprofit sector, where mission-driven people can easily find themselves trying to solve every problem they encounter.
Strategic planning creates alignment
Most organizations do not arrive at a strategic planning session as a completely blank slate.
Board members have ideas about what the organization should become.
Staff see opportunities and challenges through the lens of delivering the work.
Leadership may be thinking about funding, capacity, partnerships, risk and sustainability.
Clients, members, service users and community partners may see the organization differently again.
None of those perspectives is inherently more correct than the others.
Strategic planning creates a structured opportunity to bring those perspectives together.
The goal is not necessarily to make everyone agree about everything. The goal is to develop enough shared understanding that people can move in the same direction. That alignment matters enormously once the planning session is over.
Because strategy is not implemented in the planning room. It is implemented through hundreds of decisions made afterward.
Your mission, vision and values are meant to be useful
Many organizations already have a mission, vision and set of values.
During strategic planning, we may revisit them.
That doesn’t automatically mean they need to change.
Instead, we want to ask whether they still accurately describe the organization you are today—and the organization you are trying to become.
A useful mission should help explain why the organization exists and who it exists to serve.
A useful vision should describe the future you are working toward.
Useful values should influence how people behave and how decisions get made, not simply be words that sound good on a website.
As you prepare for the session, try not to focus on perfect wording.
Think instead about whether the ideas underneath the words are still true.
Look backward before looking forward
Strategic planning is future-focused, but one of the best places to begin is by looking honestly at where you have been.
Consider the last few years.
What has worked particularly well?
Where has the organization made a meaningful difference?
What are people asking you for more of?
Where have you struggled?
What have you been doing because “we’ve always done it,” even though its value may no longer be clear?
What has changed around you?
There may be shifts in funding, community needs, demographics, technology, regulation, partnerships, workforce expectations or the broader environment that change what is possible—or what is necessary.
Strategy should respond to the world the organization is operating in now, rather than the world that existed when the last plan was written.
Think about the organization you want to be
It can be tempting during strategic planning to immediately jump to activities:
“We should launch this program.”
“We should hire someone.”
“We should expand into this community.”
“We should apply for this funding.”
Those ideas are useful, but try going one level higher first.
Imagine the organization three to five years from now if things have gone exceptionally well.
What is different?
Who are you serving?
What impact are you having?
What are you known for?
What has become stronger inside the organization?
What are your staff, volunteers or members able to do that they cannot do today?
What kinds of partnerships surround you?
What has become financially or operationally more sustainable?
And importantly:
What are you no longer doing?
Sometimes the clearest strategy emerges not from deciding what to add, but from deciding what the organization needs to leave behind.
Be realistic about capacity
Ambition matters. So does capacity.
One of the easiest ways to undermine a strategic plan is to create priorities that assume unlimited people, money, time and energy.
Nonprofits rarely have any of those things.
A useful strategic conversation therefore needs to consider not only what we want to accomplish, but also what the organization will need in order to accomplish it.
That might include new skills, stronger systems, different governance practices, new revenue sources, partnerships, technology, staffing, volunteer capacity or infrastructure.
Sometimes the strategy is not simply to do more. Sometimes the strategy is to strengthen the organization so that it can do its existing work better. That is still growth.
Think beyond funding
Funding will almost certainly influence what is possible. But funding should not become the strategy.
When organizations begin with the question, What can we get funded?, they can gradually find themselves following available dollars rather than their mission.
A stronger question is: What are we trying to accomplish, and what resources will make that possible?
That shift matters.
It allows funding, partnerships, earned revenue, volunteers, advocacy, technology and other resources to become tools that support the strategy rather than forces that determine it.
Come prepared to challenge assumptions
Every organization develops assumptions over time.
We assume certain programs need to continue.
We assume certain stakeholders expect particular things from us.
We assume certain partnerships aren’t possible.
We assume there isn’t enough money.
We assume a particular group would never support an idea.
We assume growth means becoming bigger.
Some of those assumptions may be completely correct.
Others may simply have never been questioned.
A good strategic planning process gives us permission to ask:
Is that actually true?
You do not need to arrive at the session with all the answers.
Curiosity is often more valuable.
What should you think about before the session?
Before you meet with a strategic advisor, spend a little time thinking about the organization from a few different perspectives.
Consider:
- What are you most proud of about the organization today?
- What do you believe the organization does exceptionally well?
- Where do you see the greatest opportunity for impact over the next three to five years?
- What concerns you about the organization’s future?
- What needs to change?
- What should absolutely remain the same?
- Whose needs are changing around us?
- What opportunities are we not currently taking advantage of?
- Where are we stretched too thin?
- What could we stop doing?
- What does long-term sustainability look like for this organization?
- If we could accomplish only three meaningful things over the next few years, what should they be?
Don’t worry about trying to provide the “right” answers. There probably aren’t any.
The purpose of a planning session is to put different perspectives on the table and explore them together.
A strategic plan should change what happens Monday morning
There is one final test I like to apply to strategic plans.
Will this change what the organization actually does?
With love,
Erin
