Do you think strategic planning = lots of long, boring meetings, followed by a big, bound report that rots on a shelf? All while the organization goes about doing the same thing over and over, but still hopes for different outcomes?!
Not on our watch!
At Grace Social Sector Consulting, we make sure strategic planning is engaging, equitable, participatory, wholistic, and dare we say FUN.
Yes, fun.
Not on our watch!
At Grace Social Sector Consulting, we make sure strategic planning is engaging, equitable, participatory, wholistic, and dare we say FUN.
Yes, fun.
As your strategic collaborator, Grace Social Sector Consulting ensure you:
- Consider equity and inclusion at each step of the process
- Replace analysis paralysis with getting to heart of what you can realistically do
- Brainstorm in ways that include everyone’s contributions
- Obtain a realistic, actionable synthesis of all group input (even if you generate, say, 50 big-picture, big-dream ideas)
- Achieve agreement at levels beyond what stakeholders thought was possible
- Identify—with crystal-clear clarity—your most realistic, mission-aligned priorities
- Produce an immediately actionable plan, with criteria for what success looks like
- Generate an easy-to-follow, written-in-plain-English road map to your organization’s most vibrant future
- Know, with confidence, that your fresh and flexible strategy guides all your mission-driven work
- Access tools to evaluate challenges and opportunities as they emerge and evolve
- Actually enjoy the process!
It's time to envision your organization's next 3-5 years, if...
- You're unsure whether your board and staff agree on your future direction and where to focus your energy
- You've completed everything in your last strategic plan
- You’ve done diversity, equity, and inclusion work—but it hasn’t yet been integrated into an organization-wide strategy
- It’s been a long while since you did any strategic planning
- Your organization has never done any strategic planning
- You're uncertain whether governance and staff structures, roles, and responsibilities align with organizational needs as you’ve grown and evolved
- Your organization has expanded or weathered a major change (we’re looking at you, COVID!)—and you need to determine a fresh direction
You'll benefit from customized Grace Social Sector Consulting strategic planning when:
- You’re ready to invest energy and funds into a process that engages your whole organization
- You know the greatest value of strategic planning lies in uncovering and questioning previously untested assumptions
- You’re ready to be intentional about your future
The strategic plan itself looks phenomenal. These are seriously some of the best working sessions I’ve seen a board go through, with high level strategic goals that can be divvied up into action steps defined by board/staff. That is everything a strategic plan should be. So many get lost in the weeds.
- Bridgette, Board member, human service nonprofit
Our strategic planning process moves your mission forward, and generates greater impacts
Step 1: KICK OFF. Gather details and orient key stakeholders who’ll collaborate on the planning process.
Step 2: DISCOVER. Deep dive into your current state via interviews, candid (and facilitated) conversations, meetings, and focus groups; run surveys to collect input; determine strategic questions to tackle. Consider how to equitably support the participation of all stakeholders in providing their perspectives.
Step 3: EXPLORE: Review insights from discovery with key stakeholders; explore the wider landscape and environment you work within; identify trends that could impact your future; brainstorm options and criteria for future decision-making; consider equity implications; identify 3-5 top priorities, integrating equity throughout; determine what each piece means for your future.
Step 4: DECIDE
Refine, agree on, and translate goals into a 1- to 2-page plan—a document that:
• Is written in plain English
• Delineates your next 3 to 5 years
• Shows how you’ll define success.
Determine how you’ll measure success over time
Review and update your mission, vision, and values (a crucial step to focus on at the end, because doing so generates better results)
Place key components in a 1- to 2-page plan
- Step 5: PLAN, + ACT.
And don’t worry: When it comes to implementation planning, we’ll take things one year at a time, so you’re not concerned about what might happen in, say, 3 years.
Map to-do’s for up to your first year, so you know exactly who will do what—and when
Throughout our time together, I’ll ensure everyone stays focused—including any new team members who join.
Included in every strategic planning process: Your own custom strategy screen
This easy-to-use tool helps you to deliberately address new opportunities and challenges that you could not anticipate during the planning process. And makes decisions oh-so-much easier, like: How aligned is [this new idea] to our mission? Are our solutions as equitable as they need to be? Do we really have the capacity to do _____? Will X further our equity journey?
Or maybe strategic planning ISN'T right for you right now
While almost all organizations benefit from strategic planning, sometimes it is more appropriate for nonprofits and associations to take a different approach….By instead, taking a good, hard look at what they’re doing--and decide what to STOP doing.
Most organizations skip this step—at their peril.
We call this important process a review and audit of your service offerings.
You can learn more about it here.
You may also want to explore organizational impact mapping: a Grace Social Sector Consulting service via which you learn to demonstrate your impact to potential supporters.
Or perhaps you don’t have the capacity to commit to a full planning process right now. Yet you want to get a better sense of where you are, your key stakeholders’ concerns, as well as your strengths and areas for growth. We call this an organizational assessment—a Grace Social Sector Consulting service that will generate that clarity.
Learn more anytime, by listening to our Mission: Impact podcast
Most organizations skip this step—at their peril.
We call this important process a review and audit of your service offerings.
You can learn more about it here.
You may also want to explore organizational impact mapping: a Grace Social Sector Consulting service via which you learn to demonstrate your impact to potential supporters.
Or perhaps you don’t have the capacity to commit to a full planning process right now. Yet you want to get a better sense of where you are, your key stakeholders’ concerns, as well as your strengths and areas for growth. We call this an organizational assessment—a Grace Social Sector Consulting service that will generate that clarity.
Learn more anytime, by listening to our Mission: Impact podcast