How to develop a strategic plan if you work in the not-for-profit sector
In the not-for-profit sector, strategic planning is seen by some as an opportunity to re-energise and recalibrate their team or organisation. By others, it is seen as just another blue sky conversation that is unlikely to translate to tangible action or being an abstract concept that is disconnected from the work they do every day.
Strategic planning isn’t everyone’s bag, nor should it be. What it should be, however, is a plan that engages the people that matter to an organisation, including clients, staff, leaders and external stakeholders. This plan will help these stakeholders to understand where an organisation has come from, what they are now and where they are heading in the future. Capturing unique perspectives and combining them with the external policy environment and sector trends is key to formulating a strategic plan that is multi-dimensional and positioned within the current context.
A good strategic planning process should result in alignment across an organisation (from the c-suite to the frontline) regarding their desired future state and how, at least on a principle level, people within the organisation will work together towards achieving their vision and delivering on their mission. Further, a well crafted strategic plan will have high utility as a living tool that assists an organisation steer through change, grow and meet identified community or sector needs.
Developing your next organisational strategic plan
So, how should you tackle your next strategic planning process? Whether you engage a consultant or not, whether you go deep or light touch - there are a number of key steps that can set your strategic planning process up to be meaningful and insightful.
By considering each of the following domains and accompanying tips, you can ensure that leaders have the information and insights they need to feed into the development of an effective strategic planning process.
Looking internally
Hear from those close to the organisation about the current state and desired future state. This could be achieved through engaging an external consultant to facilitate workshops or online focus groups with staff, setting up a survey to open the opportunity for feedback for a range of internal stakeholders (e.g. staff, leadership, board members) and reviewing and summarising progress against previous strategic plans. By collating this type of information, you’ll gain an understanding and many ideas around what is and isn’t working within your organisation and what should be considered for action in your strategic plan.
Looking externally
External engagement is vital to understanding how a range of diverse stakeholders (e.g. consumers, referral partners, funders, peak bodies) perceive your organisation in its ‘current state’ and identify opportunities for ‘future state’ growth. Engaging with stakeholders external to your organisation could be achieved impartially through external resourcing but could also be equally as rewarding and meaningful for staff to engage directly with consumers, or leaders to engage directly with funders or peak bodies. All that is needed to get you off to a start is a conversation guide and basic data collection tool to guide staff in what questions to ask.
Preparing participants
Many people waltz into a strategic planning session with a pen, paper and (hopefully) a positive attitude but conversations of this nature can be large, unwieldy and (at times) off-topic. One way to get your team to focus on key information is to prepare them for the session and task them with homework. This can be done by kicking it old school and sending around a collated slide deck or summary document, summarising the findings from looking internally and externally. Another way of doing it (and something we’ve been experimenting with for some time now) is to pre-record one (or a number) of webinar-style briefings that participants can consume prior to the session itself. We’ve found this to be effective in briefing key leaders to summarise key findings and inspire strategic thinking in preparation for the planning session. You could also toy with the idea of tasking up participants to respond or present back to part of the presentation at the start of your session to get everyone talking.
Formulating the plan
The strategic planning process will likely happen iteratively over a number of sessions where leaders are brought together to identify organisational objectives, strategic activities and change activities. This is often guided through something similar to a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) if you are a bit more old school, or a SOAR analysis (strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results) if you are more contemporary minded and keen to keep things positive. Additionally, a facilitated conversation regarding setting or refreshing the organisation's vision and mission is usually standard fare. While the process of formulating the plan may take a number of loops of feedback from your team and some blood, sweat and tears, the iteration (and agreement) is worth it in the long run.
Developing the product
Draft a strategic plan document to articulate the organisation’s strategic direction over the next few years. Once you have your content sorted, it is time to get creative and ensure that the look and feel of the document is easily digestible, clearly reflects your organisation and is easily accessible. Additionally, consider whether having an internally facing and/or externally facing version of the strategic plan would be worthwhile. Often the externally facing version is aspirational whilst the internally facing version is a little more detailed and directive.
My organisation now has a strategic plan, party time!
Good news (and congratulations), your organisation now has a strategic plan. Bad news (and condolences) the hard part is yet to come. Many organisations approach strategic planning and ‘set and forget’, waiting for the annual review to roll around or tackle it again at the conclusion of the plan’s lifecycle.
Our greatest tip for not-for-profit organisations is: start to plan for strategy execution at the earliest possible point. Have a think about what mechanism would be most suited to overseeing the delivery of the strategic plan. Is it your executive team? Is it your board? Is it a specifically created governance group that takes charge of overseeing the delivery of the strategic plan? Whatever the governance mechanism - it will be better than your strategic plan gathering dust on your organisation's bookshelf.
Looking for more help to develop your next strategic plan? Check out how we can help here. Or, keep reading about the work we do with not-for-profit organisations.
