A Guide to Nonprofit Strategic Planning

Imagine how history might have changed if Martin Luther King, Jr. had said, “I have a strategic plan”, instead of his famous words, “I have a dream.” What are your organization’s dreams for the future?

On the practical side, are you worried about the future? What are the critical issues you face? Have you taken the time to think big and think real about where your organization will be in one year, three years, five years? Does your nonprofit have a shared vision and a roadmap for getting there?

Lynne Dean, Director of Institutional Advancement at Northwest Vista College, recently joined us for a webinar in which she shared the key elements in a successful strategic planning process. In case you missed it, you can watch a full replay here:

Full Transcript:

Steven: Well Lynne, I’ve got 1 o’clock, do you want to go ahead and get it started?

Lynne: Let’s go for it.

Steven: All right. Cool. Good afternoon everyone, if you’re on the east coast, good morning if you’re on the west coast or somewhere in between. Thanks for joining us for today’s webinar: “A Guide to Nonprofit Strategic Planning.”

My name is Steven Shattuck and I’m a VP of Marketing here at Bloomerang and I’ll be moderating today’s discussion. And today I’m very pleased to introduce our guest; she is Lynne T. Deane, CFRE. Hey there, Lynne. How’s it going?

Lynne: Hey. Things are great. How are you?

Steven: Good. Thanks for being here. This is going to be a lot of fun. For those of you who don’t know Lynne, she currently serves as Director of Institutional Advancement at Northwest Vista College.

That’s one of the Alamo colleges in San Antonio, Texas. She’s talking to us live from San Antonio today. She also works with the Alamo Colleges Foundation, which oversees fundraising for those five colleges in the district.

She’s worked as a capital campaign consultant. She actually started her own consulting firm, that’s Deane and Associates, in 2006. She manages capital campaigns; she’s helped nonprofit organizations with campaign readiness, feasibility studies, board training, foundation and grant services and major gift initiatives.

So she’s done it all. She’s actually the immediate past President of the Plan Giving Council and San Antonio chapter of the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning and she oversees that chapter’s membership program also. She has also served on the AFP International communications committee and the host committee for the previous 2014 AFP International Conference.

So if you were there in San Antonio a couple of months ago, Lynne was part of that. So if you liked it, be sure to tell her and congratulate her for that. She has received her CFRE. She has her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and has also completed some special studies in journalism.

So Lynne, great to have you; this is going to be fun. You’re not just a consultant who is just a pundit, you’ve actually done all the things that you’re going to talk about today so it’s really cool for you to be here.

Lynne: Thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here and hello to everyone.

Steven: Let me do one piece of housekeeping, Lynne, before you go. Just so everyone knows, we are going to have a Q&A session at the end. So as Lynne is presenting, be sure to send any questions her way. You can chat in any questions in that chat box there on your screen.

We’ll both see those and we’ll try to answer as many questions as possible before the 2:00 eastern hour. We’d like to save some time for questions so don’t be shy. Do send some questions our way.

And I did want to mention, we were originally going to have Linda Lysakowski join us as a co-presenter but her husband has fallen ill. She’s actually at the hospital bedside with him now.

So she won’t be joining us today unfortunately, so we certainly send our well wishes their way and hopefully you can do the same.

But Lynne is here. She’s got a great presentation and Lynne I’m not going to take any more time away from you. So fire away.

Lynne: Thank you so much. Again, I’m really thrilled to be here and I’m so sorry that Linda could not join us and we’re all keeping her and her family in our thoughts and prayers.

One of the things that I wanted to share with you is that I love strategic planning and planning is important because it offers so many opportunities for an organization.

First, it is a way that you can change your organization from being reactive to proactive. And if done well, strategic planning can really bring people together to talk about your organization’s future. And secondly, strategic planning helps you develop a common vision.

The process really helps you build consensus for an appropriate strategic direction among stakeholders. And the third reason, strategic plans often lay the groundwork for development plans and these two plans, especially the development plan have a major impact on sustainability.

If done well, strategic planning can extend your mission to many more people and improve the performance of your organization and of course we’re all looking for that.

Strategic planning can be either long-range or short-range but most importantly strategic planning is a process. It’s a road map for your journey to success and it works best when it is customized to fit the culture of your organization.

It brings all team stakeholders into the mix and doesn’t really give anyone the ability to opt out. The process drives everyone to build consensus and support the direction of the organization.

So who should be involved in all of this wonderful planning that you’re going to do with your organization? Well, each organization really needs to decide for themselves who should be involved in strategic planning. A good suggestion is to include representatives from all your various stakeholders.

We’re going to take a quick poll right now. Would you let us know and chat in your answers if you have a strategic plan? I’m going to pause just a little bit to give you a little bit of time to answer.

Oh, we have a lot of yeses. That’s always a good sign. And a few no’s; great, thank you so much. It looks like a lot of people do have strategic plans but they do have some concerns, so I’m glad that you’re here today.

Who are your stakeholders? I mentioned stakeholders earlier. That’s a very diverse group including the board of directors, your leadership group-which probably includes your executive director and key staff members-others, such as your representative partners, donors and also the users of your services. Your volunteers should also be represented in this process.

Many organizations like to appoint a planning committee to oversee the process and that’s a group that we call the planning cabinet. This group can include about five to eight people and their job is to help move the process forward and monitor progress along the way.

But this number of people that you get involved in your strategic planning process needs to be a balancing act. It is a balancing act. Too much involvement by too many people can make the process a little cumbersome but there’s also the danger of having too little involvement by too few people.

You may miss important perspectives. A key issue is letting those with an array of different perspectives into the room for planning.

Talking about the stakeholders at NVC, I want to tell you a little bit about our college. Northwest Vista College is one of five Alamo colleges in San Antonio, Texas.

We’re a community college that was established in 1995 and we held classes in all campus sites until Phase I of our campus construction was completed in 1998. Our campus is located on 137 beautiful acres in northwest San Antonio and features several buildings which overlook a man-made lake.

I hope you’re getting the picture here. The lake uses recycled water and it’s home to ducks and turtles.

In 2009 we completed construction on an additional five buildings including a library and resource center, performing arts center, a student support services building and two additional classroom buildings with laboratory space.

And last summer we added something really important, a parking garage, which has alleviated a critical shortage of parking spaces at the campus.

NVC is designated as a Hispanic serving institution and we are also very environment friendly and a smoke-free campus. In strategic planning at NVC we involve a broad range of stakeholders.

That includes representatives of our business council, key faculty and staff members, donors, representatives from the district level, students, as well as community members.

So, you’ve got all your stakeholders. How do you get buy-ins? Remember this word: participation. Participation is key. Be inclusive in getting stakeholders involved. Be sure that you have an open and transparent process. Keep the lines of communication open.

What are the major components of a strategic plan? Generally, plans include the mission vision and values, a strategic direction and goals. For each of the goals you will want to identify measures of success or what we sometimes call strategic metrics, strategies for achieving those measures and action steps.

Each action step should include the cost or budget, the person responsible and a timeline.

At NVC, each year that we participate in strategic planning, the first item on the agenda for the day or for the planning process is a review of our mission, vision and values and these items go in a separate document.

Our strategic plan document includes our objectives, strategies to achieve these objectives and organizational action plans.

These action plans include the budget needed, the person or group responsible and a timeline for completing this step. All of the action steps for our strategic plans are included in the workgroup action plan.

I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the SWOT analysis. In nonprofit organizations as well as regular businesses this is a common term. Internal and external factors combine to determine an organization’s strategic issues.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This is a key part of strategic planning because it examines the organization itself and the external and future environment of the organization.

Strengths and weaknesses refer to the organization itself. They are similar to assets and liabilities. They are current, that is, they exist now. Opportunities and threats exist outside the organization and they refer to the future.

I’m going to take another quick poll. Have you and your organization done a SWOT analysis? Please chat in your answers. Great. There’s a real mixture, several, it’s pretty much 50/50…goal setting.

Goals are broad-based and should be developed by your board and your staff together.

Your goals will seem to kind of emerge and become apparent during the planning process as you identify areas of weakness and opportunities for improvement. You can select from a number of different areas as you establish your goals.

You may want to focus on programs and services or on finances, including income and expenses on your facilities or perhaps human resources, including your board, staff and volunteers.

Goals should be set by participants in the planning process. The number of goals that you set is really up to you but we have found that most organizations work well with three to five goals.

And here’s a big question, how do you know you have the right goals? You will learn whether or not you have the right goals as you get into the implementation of your plan.

It’s not really uncommon for plans to change during the term of the plan and you will also need to identify, how will you know that you are successful? How will you measure success?

Our current strategic plan at NVC covers 2010 to 2015 and just to be clear, we use slightly different terms at NVC than Linda and I use in our book that we’re writing on nonprofit strategic planning.

At NVC, we use the term “objectives” to refer to our main goals. When the 2010 plan was first developed, NVC established three objectives: learning, completion and sustainability.

Most organizations actually have three to five objectives which are developed in their strategic planning process by participating stakeholders. But how do you know you have the right objectives?

Well, when you visit your existing strategic plan during an annual review and participants agree that the original objectives accommodate the talent that you are placing right now, that’s how you know that you have the right objectives.

A way to assure that you have appropriate objectives is to make certain that you can measure success in achieving your objections. Objectives must be SMART. That’s an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Time- defined.

Strategies are the ways that organizations accomplish the objectives they have identified. As you outline your strategies, think about the people that can help, any technologies that you might need and what resources you have available.

When you take the time to help everyone understand the big picture and to see how their roles and work connect to those of others you will be making a huge contribution to the success and progress of the implementation of your strategic plan.

You and your team will probably find that it makes sense for some action plans and changes to start before others. Careful planning enables you to outline the route you will take to achieving the impact you envision and to set the stage for progress to come.

At NVC, the work group action plan plays a critical role in the implementation of our strategic plan and in accomplishing our objectives. For example, the group action plan in which I am involved is called improving student’s financial resources and funds for operation.

This is part of our strategic objective of sustainability. Remember, that’s one of those three main strategic objectives I mentioned earlier. Our strategy is community and partnership development. Our organizational action plan is to engage community partners.

In our work group we have, myself, our college president and our scholarship coordinator and our alumni coordinator. Our action plan charge is to increase revenues for scholarships and programs from foundation fundraisers.

What about Action Steps? One of the reasons, and the biggest reason that action plans do not get implemented is that the planning group hasn’t taken the time to answer what we call the big three questions.

Who is responsible for implementing this step, when will it be done, how much will it cost and how much will it raise? At NVC, our action plans are implemented through the activities of our work group action plan and also through individual action plans.

Both of these plans answer those big three questions by outlining who’s responsible, the timeline for getting that action item completed and the cost, as well as how much might need to be raised. Individual action plans are also used and we use them in our annual performance evaluation.

What about the Planning Retreat? Most planning processes involve at least one or more half-day, full-day or two-day retreats. During these sessions, board members, stakeholders and staff all gather to work on the big picture theme, the vision, values and mission as well as goal setting.

Choose an interesting and fun location for your retreat, not your own meeting room. Your planning cabinet can determine who should be included in which area of the retreat.

A facilitator can ensure of objectivity and have the ability to keep the group on track. And there are several options regarding facilitation. You can use a staff member with expertise in strategic planning, using a staff member from another nonprofit organization who has planning experience.

You can use a volunteer or you can work with a professional facilitator. You will need to decide what will work best for your organization and what will work within your budget.

At NVC the planning retreats have taken place at different locations. We’ve used two hotels near our campus and also we’ve had retreats on campus in a large meeting area.

The theme of our strategic planning is our mission: creating opportunities for success, either one full day or two half days, such as two mornings, and food is always part of our retreats.

Our agenda includes reviewing an updated environmental plan, developing our SWOT analysis and then developing our key strategic challenges and advantages. We look at new strategy themes and ensure that our strategic plan accommodates the challenges that we identify.

Brainstorming and discussion are a large part of our strategic planning process. At NVC, this process is led by the college services quality initiative unit and specifically by the NVC Vice President of College Services in collaboration with the college president, both of whom serve as facilitators.

What about plan implementation? Once the plan has been developed and officially adopted, the focus then turns to implementation.

In almost every organization that achieves success implementing a strategic plan, we see two very common threads. Implementation really does seem to run more smoothly when a nonprofit has what can really best be described as a change mindset.

Additionally, the organizations that are successful use practical, step-by-step approaches to translate strategy, goals and objectives into very tangible actions.

These organizations continue to monitor progress on their actions and alter the direction or course of their journey when the environment in which they operate changes in some way.

The plan should serve as a guide, creating departmental plans, the planning cabinet also assists in monitoring progress on the plan and may make periodic reports on the plan’s implementation to the board.

As I mentioned earlier, implementation takes place at NVC through our work group action plans. Our planning chair is the vice president of college services who collaborates with our “E” team, which consists of the executive leadership of NVC.

We measure progress by the outcomes that we achieve and if we get off track we have what we refer to as an OFI, better known as an Opportunity For Improvement.

What about measuring success? Remember those measures of success that we mentioned earlier? They will really tell you how you’re doing along the way and indicate any areas which might need a little more attention.

During the implementation of the plan you will need a….assisting the person who will be responsible and involved in the work, timelines, as well as resources and the budget needed. Somebody has to monitor the budget and somebody has to do all the tracking.

Celebrating Success, this is really my favorite part. Remember to celebrate achieving your goal. Very rarely do organizations take the time to truly acknowledge the success that they have achieved when they complete a plan.

So, you completed the plan. Yay! That’s great. Stop. Celebrate. You can generate even more enthusiasm for the next planning cycle by spreading a sense of fulfillment and closure at the end of your current plan.

What about updating the plan? There are several factors that can indicate that you need to update your plan or maybe even develop a new plan. These factors include funding, competitions, be they internal or external and leadership. Think about the answers to these next questions.

Are there changes in the types and levels of support from your funders? Are there new competitors or potential collaborators entering the areas in which you have been operating?

Are there new internal or external policies creating opportunities or challenges that might have an impact on what you can achieve as an organization? Or, do you have a new CEO or executive director or a new and dramatic change in the board leadership?

All of these factors can indicate a need to update the plan or develop a new one.

At NVC, we update our plan on a yearly basis and as I mentioned earlier our plan covers 2010 through 2015. So how do you keep everyone up-to-date on your plan? It’s crucial to measure progress on the plan and we recommend the planning cabinet provide reports to the board on at least a quarterly basis.

Also, keeping your work group action plans or individual action plans or whatever tracking you currently do up-to-date is a way that you keep everyone up-to-date.

And what do you do if things go awry? The role of a planning cabinet is really to ensure that individuals and teams responsible for implementation of the plan are on task.

Benchmarks should be in place to enable you to monitor progress of the plan and when things get off track the planning cabinet should ask the individual or team responsible what can be done to help the plan get back on track.

We’ll stop here for questions.

Steven: Cool. That was great, Lynne. Thanks so much. Really great information there; I think you’ve got people thinking with some questions that have come in. So we’ll just kind of roll through those.

We’ve probably got about 15 minutes for questions so if you were wondering anything or maybe sitting on your hands at the time we’ve got Lynne here. She’s an expert on strategic planning. She’s here to answer any and all of your questions for the remainder of our session.

So Lynne, we’ve got one here from Mary Jo. Mary Jo is wondering, does the SWOT analysis, the goals and objectives, do those surface at the retreat? When do you actually look at those things? When do you sit down to figure and look at those?

Lynne: You can do this whatever way you feel is best for your organization. Some organizations choose to do the SWOT analysis prior to the retreat. The goals and objectives, however, should be discussed at the retreat.

Steven: That makes sense. So I was wondering something, as you were talking. You know, you used NVC as kind of your case study, which is great. I’m wondering, did you guys get anything wrong?

Were there any stumbling blocks specifically that you see that maybe you learned from or that kind of helped you develop or hone this process?

Any examples from the whole NVC process, that maybe you can think back on and say “Hey, we didn’t do a great job at that, but we did learn a lot from it?”

Lynne: Well, we have an excellent Vice President of College Services, who handles and oversees all of our strategic planning, and I have to say, I think we do a really good job of strategic planning.

We’ve had a number of external factors that have had an impact on our direction but I think that generally, we seem to be moving in the right direction. In addition to that, we also coordinate well with the district.

Steven: Cool. We’ve got a question here from Kaelin. Kaelin, I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. They’re wondering, do you have a template for the quarterly report to the board.

Is that something that you have a template for that maybe folks can use or what does that actually look like? What’s that content kind of look like? What all is in that document?

Lynne: That’s really, generally, an update. It can be a Word document, it can be in an Excel spreadsheet that includes your action plan. You can actually have your action plan worksheets and use them as the template for the quarterly report to the board.

At NVC we actually complete our work group action plans on a quarterly basis and those are presented to our strategic planning vice president.

Steven: Cool. We’ve got a question here from James. James is wondering about the location of the retreat, I think.

“Do you have creative ideas for locations? They are on a tight budget,” he says. “What are some ideas of places that they could do this and not spend a whole lot of money in the process?”

Lynne: Well, one of my favorite locations that we had a retreat-I was working for another organization-and we held our retreat at a museum. And a lot of times museums are very willing to work with you and let you have a meeting room free of charge, so I think that’s something to look into. Libraries are also good resources.

You might even want to look at some of the city facilities like recreation centers. You might have a meeting room that might be willing to let you have it either on a complementary basis or maybe at a very low cost.

Steven: Cool. That was a good idea. I hadn’t thought of that. Great. Mary Jo here is wondering, is the mission statement and vision statement done before the retreat or at the retreat and if so, how is that done? What’s a good timing for that, in your mind?

Do you think that that should actually be all the people in the room at the retreat working on it or should it maybe be done a little bit beforehand, kind of like the SWOT analysis?

Lynne: That’s a good question because the answer really depends on where your organization is in its growth cycle. If you’re a new organization, then yes, you probably will be working very closely on the mission and vision statements during your strategic planning process.

If you’re a more established organization, then you probably will be looking at that at the beginning and if the majority opinion agrees that the mission and vision is working then that’s really an indication that you don’t need to devote any more attention to the mission and vision phase.

But if there’s consensus that those statements need some work, then you can definitely make that part of your retreat.

Steven: That makes sense. Here’s one from Walter. Walter is in the process of setting up action committees comprised of three staff members and three board members to bring their organization back on track.

Walter is wondering what would you suggest would be a good place to start for those groups? What should they talk about maybe in their first few meetings? What should they tackle first?

Lynne: I think if there’s a strategic plan in place they need to look at that and probably a SWOT analysis would be a really good place to start.

It’s not uncommon for organizations to do a SWOT analysis in the middle of a strategic plan to really take a breath and pull back for a few minutes and look and see where they are, if there is some environmental factor, is there something internally that’s happening that is having an impact on the organization.

Steven: That makes sense. Well cool, I think some questions are still coming in, but Lynne, while people are sending in maybe their final questions, I want to give you a chance to talk about your book.

I know you’re really busy and somehow you’re also finding time to write a book on top of it. Where can folks learn more about you and the work you’re doing in your practice?

Lynne: Well, I am just so excited that Linda Lysakowski and I have been working on this book on nonprofit strategic planning. I have to be honest, Linda was the one that got me into this.

I have just thoroughly enjoyed working with her and really bringing together all the information that an organization needs to develop a nonprofit strategic plan.

And this is the kind of book that you’re going to be able to look at this book and go through it and have all the information at your fingertips and you will be able to develop and put into place your own strategic plan.

Steven: You’ve got a special offer for the book, it sounds like?

Lynne: Yes, yes. The book, we have finished our manuscript and we have, the Foreword of the book is written by the President and CEO of the San Antonio Area Foundation, Dennis Mills.

We’re real excited that he agreed to write the Foreword and so that’s going to be included in the book, and it should be released hopefully this summer.

So what we want to do is if you would like a 15% discount on the book when it comes out all you need to do is just send me an email or send Linda an email and we will notify you when the book is available and we will give you a discount code.

Steven: Cool. And I’ll definitely include your email address in my email a little bit later so folks can take advantage of that. So, we’ve got some good questions coming in if you have a little bit more time to stick around and answer some of them, we can roll through them.

Lynne: Yes, yes. I’d be happy to.

Steven: Cool. Mary Jo is wondering about vision statements. Do they change for each plan that you do?

For example, in the next three years they want to tackle certain issues. They want to increase student and funding opportunities. So you go through this process and kind of edit those mission statements every once in a while or do you just kind of do one and stick with it for the long term? What do you think about that?

Lynne: It’s been our experience that mission and vision statements don’t change very frequently unless there has been a real shift in what the organization decides, what the main issues that the organization wants to handle.

I would think that the mission and vision statements, except for organizations that are still in their growth cycle, I would think that the mission and vision statements really tend to remain relatively constant.

Steven: Can you think of an opportunity when someone would change it, I mean short of a radical shift in the organization, mission or plan?

Lynne: Yes. I think if an organization has really been more focused on something like crisis management or some particular audience or client and then they want to shift more into prevention or some other aspect of service, then definitely the mission and vision is going to change.

Steven: But there’s not any sort of, I mean this is not a really good reason to change it every three years, just to update it, you don’t think it should be updated just for update’s sake necessarily?

Lynne: I don’t think so. In our experience, we really haven’t found a lot of organizations that make drastic changes to their mission statements.

Steven: Cool, that makes sense. I’ve got one here from Martha. “The development component of our strategic plan is brief,” she says. “The board is wanting to jump right into a development plan. Should they update the strategic plan first or can the development plan replace a section of the strategic plan? What do you think they should do there?”

Lynne: I think you can jump right into working on the development plan because the strategic plan is really the big overview of your organization with your goal.

The development plan is more of a strategy and an action plan for a cost for raising the series to accomplish to goals in your strategic plan.

So the development plan can be done and can actually be something that replaces that part in the strategic plan or actually it should be separate. The development plan is really separate from the strategic plan but it evolves from the strategic plan.

Steven: That makes sense. Well cool, I know we did a lot of questions. We went a little over time. I know I wanted to keep this to about a half-hour or
so. I appreciate you sticking around and answering some questions. Is it safe to say that folks can email you if they think of anything else? Would that be okay?

Lynne: Absolutely. I would love to hear from everyone.

Steven: I knew you’d say that. You’re so nice. Well cool then, this was a lot of fun. Thanks for batting solo, I know you didn’t expect to do that today but great information. I definitely enjoyed it. Hopefully everyone else did.

We do do these webinars once a week. We’ve got a great one coming up next week. We’re going to have Sandy Reese as our guest. She’s going to talk about your first fundraising campaign.

So maybe if you’re a small nonprofit or a new nonprofit and you’ve never done a full-blown fundraising campaign.

You’ve got to register for this webinar. She’s going to show you how to do it. But check that out.

We’ve also got some really cool webinars coming up in July that you can check out on our webinar page there. They’re totally free, totally educational, so if you see something there, please do register. We’d love to have you back next week and in the weeks that follow.

So this was great, Lynne. Thanks again. I’ll say a final thank- you to you and thanks to everyone for joining us, for taking about a half hour to 40 minutes out of your busy day.

You will be directed to a little survey form after the webinar. Please do fill that out. Let me know what you thought. I curate all these webinars so I’m always interested in feedback.

You won’t hurt my feelings. I don’t think you’ll hurt Lynne’s either, so do fill that out if you have a few minutes.

Lynne, thanks again. Enjoy the rest of your day in San Antonio. Hopefully it’s not too warm down there.

Lynne: Oh, well thank you. I really enjoyed this. It was fun.

Steven: Yeah, it was fun. I will be sending the slides and a recording shortly, so look for an email from me later on this afternoon.

So with that, I’ll say thanks and so long. We will talk to you next time. Have a great rest of your day.