Strategic Planning Reinvented

Have you done your 2023 strategic planning yet? I know a lot of nonprofit leaders are overwhelmed by the strategic planning process and for good reason. As nonprofit leaders we want to make sure we are spending our time on high ROI activities and the old way of strategic planning just seems, well kind of pointless. I know you think you spend your time on things that matter, but you HAVE to be able to articulate that to stakeholders and funders, and the way you do that is through a strategic plan…or a document that says exactly what you are trying to do, why, for who, how you’re going to measure success and the exact key activities you’re going to focus on to get you there. Every year you need to state your intended goals and key activities to get you there, so at the end of the year you can prove you did what you say BUT you don’t need to be a slave to the old strategic planning process where you spend 6 months dissecting every piece of your existence, the industry landscape and developing a 20 page document. As someone who has founded a nonprofit myself and been a nonprofit consultant for years, I HATE spending months or even weeks on planning and talking just to have the plan sit on a shelf. It ends up being more of a philosophical document than a practical one. So I have reinvented the strategic planning process to one that require less talk, and is all about more action so we can make BIG impact. I call this reinvention an IMPACT ROADMAP and you can create yours in a day and be ready to kick 2023 off right