Strategic Planning Themes: A Look Back at the Past Few Years

This article was initially posted on Nonprofit Pro.

Spotify, the digital music service, has me looking forward to the end of the year. That's because it released Spotify Wrapped, a year-in-review that provides all kinds of interesting data points about its listeners as a whole and my listening habits as an individual. I find it fascinating to learn about how many minutes of music we listened to, as well as how many plays our favorite artists and songs had during the year.

This got me thinking about strategic planning themes — What are they? How could I identify them? How might they evolve year-to-year? Understanding themes and trends offers numerous benefits to you as a leader since they can help inform decisions and strategies.

I parsed through more than 10,000 rows of strategic plan elements (core components, such as mission, vision and values), focus areas and goals from more than 375 nonprofits across the last three years. I noted the most commonly used words (including synonyms) by finding keywords and reviewing their context and sequences. Here are the four common themes of strategic planning over the past few years that I identified.

1. A Focus on People

Nonprofits rightfully have a reputation of caring about living things. From people development to a focus on customers and stakeholders, that reputation is represented in strategic plans as many organizations focus on people through team development or stakeholders.

Professional Development

Nonprofits are dedicated to professional development both internally and externally. On many plans, organizations noted the need to find and offer professional development opportunities to their staff. Many are looking for conferences, seminars and other types of training to allow staff to strengthen their current skills or explore new areas of interest. Other nonprofits offer professional development opportunities as part of their programming to their constituents.

Vision statement examples include:

• Establish strong professional development programs for staff and board, improve internal operations systems, and provide sufficient wages and support for staff.

• Enable the team to meet professional development goals and create programs that they feel most passionate about and equipped for.

Goal statement examples include:

• Team members to identify two personal and professional development goals every year.

• Establish an annual professional development conference of directors in our network.
  

Board Development

Board development is another area of focus on many strategic plans. Nonprofits are focused on this group of people to ensure they have the skills, values and commitment to effectively execute their missions. Many plans mention the need to create board committees. Others are looking to expand their boards to find professionals with skills in the areas the organizations need.

Vision statement examples include:

• Build an engaged, supportive and capable board.

• Establish effective and efficient policies and procedures for the board of directors to fulfill the purpose of the organization, ensuring fulfillment to the organization's fullest potential.

Goal statement examples include:

• Complete board recruiting plan policy, including board selection criteria, plan for vetting members and creation of board orientation packet.

• Increase board membership to 12 with diversity of skills and demographics.
  

Programming

Perhaps the most focus on strategic plans is about programming and communication for customers and stakeholders. Nonprofits are focused on refining programs to meet the needs of their community. They are also looking to expand the ways they reach and communicate with their stakeholders and customers.

Vision statement examples include:

• Deliver distance learning and virtual training and advising with a personal touch. (Create programming with deep consideration to how the instruction is led.)

• Develop community-centric programming.

• Create, communicate, and deliver information regarding programs throughout the county.

Goal statement examples include:

• Develop a marketing campaign to grow the program attendees to 20 in each offering.

• Develop a financial plan that supports program expansion by the end of fall.

• Develop program evaluation process.
  

2. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Diversity, equity and inclusion are top priorities among the nonprofits, and I know that there is still a lot of work to be done. A nonprofit’s strategic plan is a great place to document the work that you are dedicating to doing to advance these important values so that we can truly make sustainable changes and embody them.

Diversity themes in the review of strategic plans focus on bringing together a team of diverse individuals with different identities, qualities and backgrounds. Equity themes have many nonprofits reviewing all of their organizations’ policies, procedures and processes to determine how to help all people achieve the same level of success.

Strategic plans are also noting the importance of diverse groups having their voices heard in important aspects of the nonprofit. Some nonprofits have set a goal of creating committees of community members to hear their stories and plan to share that information across their marketing channels.

Other focuses of diversity, equity and inclusion in strategic plans include nonprofits creating initiatives, task forces and committees as a way of acknowledging the importance of DEI work and their dedication to creating institutional change.

Vision statement examples include:

• Increase the inclusivity and diversity of our events.

• Define and set a diversity goal for the board.

• We will identify, build and embrace the core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion into all of our nonprofit’s operations, as well as model those values as we advance our mission.

Goal statements examples include:

• Review all policies, procedures, and processes to ensure compliance with our board-approved DEI statement.

• Create a community voice group to regularly gather community stories for sharing across our social and other marketing channels.

• Create and implement a DEI action plan, including an official statement and policy on DEI efforts within the organization.
  

3. Measurement and Analysis

The benefits of leveraging data are numerous so I’m thrilled that “measurement” and “analysis” were two words repeatedly used across focus areas and goals in my review of strategic plans. Measurements and data analysis can provide leaders with the information they need to make informed decisions about their nonprofits. Additional benefits include increased productivity and greater financial stability by discovering and cutting unnecessary costs.

A couple of the most common areas for measurement were fundraising, programming and performance.

Vision statement examples include:

• Implement a performance management system for driving and managing daily operations and for tracking overall organizational performance (that align with strategic direction.)

• Fundraising efforts will be more goal-oriented, such as identifying specific amounts to raise for scholarships, using donor database effectively and personally engaging with donors using list of needs, stats, impact statement and testimonials,

• Establish a small set of metrics to measure our impact.

Goal statement examples include:

• Address feedback from program participants to increase satisfaction ratings measurement of program leaders to eight out of 10.

• Document and reinforce values to increase positive ratings in culture survey results from our team.

• Focus on deepening relationships with donors to increase our direct donor fundraising by 15% in the next year.
  

4. Strategic Planning

Another interesting point to note is that many organizations have chosen to include strategic planning on their plan in some fashion. It’s a great way to emphasize the continued focus that nonprofits should have on the strategic planning process.

Nonprofits are using their strategic plans to set goals for their processes of creating and implementing their plans. Many note the ongoing cycle of strategic planning and include the need to create their next three- or five-year plans.

Other nonprofits are branching out and creating different strategic plans for other aspects of their organizations. For example, one nonprofit is expanding with regional centers, so it created a strategic plan for its “home base” as well as regional centers since they will have different goals.

Vision statement examples include:

• We will have institutionalized a process of regularly reviewing, revising and updating our plan in pursuit of our mission and vision.

• Installed a strategic planning process that is a part of our culture. It will be part of how we run the organization.

Goal statement examples include:

• Develop a strategy committee that is responsible for advising in the development and implementation of strategies consistent with our mission and strategic plan.

• Establish an annual strategic planning cycle, to include quarterly reviews. Send meeting invitations to team members for the year.

• Plan semi-annual strategic planning and development meetings with the entire staff and board.
  

Key Takeaway and Next Step

Some of these themes are consistent year to year. I regularly see topics, such as fund development, communication and marketing, and programs, included on strategic plans. This isn’t surprising because they are at the heart of most nonprofits. However, the actions and tactics for each topic may change and evolve over time.

The use of social media, for example, is increasingly being represented on strategic plans as part of a nonprofit’s broader communication and outreach plans. What went from “use social media” is now a more sophisticated and detailed action plan such as analyzing engagement on social media platforms, creating a posting calendar and using social media to increase outreach efforts to constituents for a specific event or program.

It’s important to both know the information and to use it. I encourage you to review these themes and compare and contrast it with your own nonprofit’s strategic plan. If this information is represented in your strategic plan, how should it evolve over time? If not, should it be? I can’t wait to see what you do next and the themes that emerge next year.

How Having a Strategic Plan Will Help You Raise Significantly More Money

If you’re like most nonprofit leaders, figuring out how to keep your organization financially stable is perhaps your biggest pain point.

Individual donors, foundations, and granting agencies will often donate to your organization because their heart connects to your mission—helping children, pursuing social justice, teaching the arts, etc. However, for funders to support you many times, you have to appeal to their logical senses. To do that, your strategic plan can demonstrate that your organization is committed to executing your vision, and funders will be happy to support your well-run nonprofit.

With a strategic plan—and strong mission statements and vision statements—your nonprofit’s team will feel confident and aligned with your fundraising objectives. And an organization with positive energy towards their strategic objectives will stand out to funders more than a nonprofit that isn't tuned in to their organizational health and will keep their promises. 

What data do we have to back this up? In 2020, Mission Met conducted a fundraising survey to learn more about the relationship between strategic planning and fundraising. From the 169 nonprofit leaders that participated, 86% of respondents said that having a strategic plan had a positive impact on generating revenue through grants, donors, events, etc. And respondents that regularly reviewed, revised, and measured their strategic plan were over six times more likely to generate revenue as a result of their plan.  

Want to read more details on the relationship between strategic planning and positive fundraising results? Check out this guidance on how to improve your fund building in Mission Met’s article on how strategic planning will raise you significantly more money on NonProfit PRO’s blog!

Simplicity Helps Your Team Take Action

One of my favorite articles that I’ve shared with our customers over the years is Dan and Chip Heath’s piece in Fast Company called “Analysis of Paralysis.” 

The two basic points of their article are:

1. Too many choices can paralyze you, and

2. Simplicity helps you take action.

Although this seems intuitive, the Heaths back it up with some interesting research:

(Researchers) gave doctors the medical history of a 67-year-old man who’d been suffering chronic hip pain from osteoarthritis. He’d been given drugs to treat his pain, but they had been ineffective, so there was only one viable option: hip-replacement surgery, which would involve a long and painful recovery. Then a final check with the pharmacy uncovered one medication that hadn’t been tried. Would the doctors like to give the drug a shot? 47% of doctors chose to try the medication in a final attempt to keep the patient from going under the knife.

Another group of doctors saw the same facts, except they were told that the pharmacy had discovered two medications that hadn’t been tried. If you were the patient with the bum hip, you’d be thrilled -- two nonsurgical options are better than one. But when the doctors were presented with two nonsurgical options, only 28% chose to try either one.

What happened here is decision paralysis. More options, even good ones, can freeze us, leading us to stick with the ‘default’ plan, which in this case was slicing open someone’s hip. This clearly is not rational behavior, but it is human behavior. Similar tests with different groups have revealed consistent results.

Over the years at Mission Met, we’ve seen these same types of results as it relates to strategic planning. Plans that are long and complex tend to get shelved. Why? Because, just like the doctors, the people responsible for executing the plans are super busy. For them, it’s much easier to blow off a complex plan than trying to sit down and work through all of the plan’s details and decisions.

The lesson? Simplicity will help your team take action.

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At Mission Met, simplicity is a cornerstone of all of our programs/services. Specifically, our START strategic planning course provides organizations with a practical strategic plan that they can successfully achieve. Learn more about how START can transform your organization.

Customized Guidance Right Under Your Nose

A few days ago I had a conversation with a customer who needed some help figuring out how to best lead her team through the pandemic. Like so many of those that I’ve been talking with, she has a team that is worried about several things: their funding, the needs of those that they serve, and if they’ll make it to the other side of the crisis. 

While exploring her strategies I directed her to some of the most powerful guidance she could lean on. This guidance was customized for her team and could be found right under her nose: her organization’s mission, vision, and values, or what we call the Compass.

When I told her about this she basically said, “of course, I hadn’t thought of that.” 

Your mission, vision, and values are at the heart of your organization. They are “friends” that can provide grounded and inspired insights about how to lead through tough times.

Below are some specific ways you can engage your team with your Compass: 

• Staff and Board Meetings: Incorporate a 15-minute standing item on your relevant staff and board meetings to do one of the following:

  • Review your mission and/or vision statements and discuss how your organization is pursuing them.

  • Select one of your organization’s core values and have everyone take a moment to share how the value is being acted upon.

  • Discuss how these items are personally motivating.

• Staff Performance: Integrate your organization’s Compass into your regular one-on-ones and the annual review. 

• Job Descriptions and Responsibility Documents: If you’re hiring staff or selecting new board members then you’ll want to make sure that they’re aligned with your mission, vision, and values. Ensure that these elements are incorporated into your job descriptions and board responsibility documents. 

• Onboarding: Review the Compass in Mission Met Center as a component of your onboarding process for both new staff and board members. 

• Marketing and Communications: Highlight the mission, vision, and values on your website, newsletters, and other marketing collateral and communication. This can inspire both your team and your community. 

Implementing these activities can help you lead and guide your team more effectively. The benefit will be a team that has more trust, deeper relationships, and an even stronger commitment to your organization's important work during these difficult times.

Rhythm and Blues Co-champions

I had the pleasure of seeing Mavis Staples, an American rhythm and blues singer, at the 15th Nelsonville Music Festival last weekend. Mavis, who will celebrate her 80th birthday next month, still performs over 200 shows a year. While watching her belting out vocal lines and performing for the crowd, I was reminded of a critical concept in strategic planning.

Due to being about ten feet back from the stage, I was able to see her and the band interact closely throughout the set. Great music is created through spontaneous and authentic reaction to your fellow musicians -- both through musical expression and from subtle non-verbal cues. I’ll tell you, great music was being played that day.

Rick Holmstrom is the guitarist and Mavis’ band leader. An accomplished musician in his own right, Rick joined Ms. Staples on many tours over the past decade. Based on their private on-stage banter, prodding from Mavis to keep his solos going, and small, sharp glances, it was clear that while Mavis was the show, Rick was directing the band to give Mavis what she needed.

In addition to being a great rhythm and lead guitarist, his presence didn’t distract from Mavis’ vocals. Instead, he supported and reacted to her vocal lines. These two have a great relationship and have developed a way of sharing the leadership role. It was most evident when Mavis had some small lapses in memory as to the next song. He gently reminded her with a raised eyebrow and a whisper of where to go next, in a non-judgmental and supporting way.

In strategic planning, we call Mavis and Rick “co-champions”. Mavis is the leader and Rick is the manager. Mavis looks out for the big picture and Rick makes sure that the details happen. Each of their roles are critical.

Over the years we’ve seen scores of strategic planning clients benefit from the co-championing model. Co-champions complement each other’s strengths, create mutual accountability, and can make the process more fun.

In our strategic planning software we’ve added features to allow different elements of a plan to be championed by multiple people.

If you aren’t already doing so, consider co-championing your next strategic planning initiative and see what sort of results you get.

Be sure to check out Mavis Staple’s latest album, “We Get By.”

Mavis Staples (Photo credit: Wikimedia)

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Uh, what? Now, try reading the title of this article backwards, starting from the far right and reading to the left. It likely took you a few seconds to do that, going letter-by-letter to make the title out: "Riding a Backwards Bicycle".

You know, you've spent your whole life paving pathways in your brain to read from left-to-right. It's a well-ingrained habit that is difficult to change.

What about another ingrained habit, like riding a bike. What if a bike was set up "backwards" in some way? Could you ride it?

Take a few minutes to watch this entertaining video to learn more. You'll find the time well-spent and may even want to share it with your friends.

So what does this all of this have to do with strategic planning, leadership, management, and running a nonprofit? A ton. Essentially, building your organization's capacity is often about overwriting old habits with new ones. Just like learning to ride a different type of bike.

What are some of those old habits that you might like to change? Try these:

• Writing strategic plans but not implementing them.

• Waiting to the last minute to complete grants.

• Doing more work in the evenings and weekends than you'd like.

• Viewing funders as people that support you (versus people that you support too).

• Providing the executive director with sporadic performance reviews.

• Doing everything yourself and not delegating very effectively.

You may not view these as habits, but they are. They're individual and organizational habits. And, like the guy in the video, with some insights and a committed practice, you can change them.

Which brings me to an excellent resource for you if you'd like to learn more about changing habits: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and In Business by Charles Duhigg. I read this book last year and have meaning to write about it ever since. It's fascinating. Duhigg provides a fantastic overview of how habits form and how you can change them. So, if you're serious about making changes in your life or organization, the concepts in this book are gold. The ideas will even help you ride a backwards bicycle if you'd like...

Charles Duhig - The Power of Habit

Why I'm Happy to be a Freak

LG Cosmos flip phone

(Note: I wrote this back in early 2016 (despite the 2019 date above). Well, in 2017 I ended up migrating to an iPhone. It just became super obvious that the dumbphone was holding me back from providing my team and customers with the support they deserved. The shift was one of necessity to serve better.)

In the high-tech San Francisco area where I live, I'm a freak. You see, I'm one of the few that choose to use a dumbphone instead of a smartphone. A picture of my humble little LG Cosmos flip phone is above. It's decidedly not very cool. It just makes phone calls, texts, and takes horrible 1.3-megapixel photos. And I couldn't be happier.

I've made that choice not because I'm fearful of technology. I've designed and built electric cars. I've produced websites, built awesome spreadsheets, and co-founded a strategic planning company that has built a strategic planning software platform. I'm comfortable with technology.

And, I don’t have anything against smartphones. A while back I tried out both the iPhone and a Droid for a few weeks. They were incredible in the millions of things they could do. But that's just it. I don't need my phone to do a million things. I just need it to make phone calls and send texts. (I use my laptop to send emails and conduct all of my other internet-based business.) So after a few weeks, I returned the amazing smartphones and went back to my dumb phone. I realized that, when compared to the iPhone/Droid, my flip phone helped me to:

• Disconnect and keep my life a little simpler.

• Maintain better control of my time.

• Focus on those around me rather than get distracted by the cool apps on the phone.

Basically, the smartphones weren't the best fit for me. It turns out that I'm not alone in my perspective. Check out these articles that convey similar sentiments:

• Why I Still Use a Dumb Phone (And Have No Plan to Change)

• Why My iPhone is Better as a Dumbphone

So, that's my phone story. I share it with you with the intention to help you think a little bit about your phone choices. Whatever type of phone you use, I hope it is meeting your needs. If you're like me, sometimes I get sucked into the cool gadgets before I realize what's going on. Perhaps this article will help you pause for a moment and consider your options. You know, I'll probably have to get a smartphone at some point. Or at least a smarter phone than the one I have now. But in the meantime, I'm happy being a freak.  

Why I Quit An Executive Director Job (Or, The Importance of a Common Organizational Vision)

Many years ago I had a part-time job as the executive director of a small nonprofit. It was a great job in many ways. I loved our mission, the people we served, and the challenges we faced. Plus, at the time the job was a perfect complement to my other consulting work.

However, I had one main problem with the job: the board chair (also the founder) and I had dramatically different visions for the organization. He wanted us to be a somewhat regional program that used our nonprofit status primarily to qualify for funds. I, however, wanted us to become a strong nonprofit organization with a larger and larger national reach.

It's important to note that I liked and respected the chair. We were friends and worked well together in many ways. But we -- the two leaders of the organization -- simply had two starkly different visions. One vision wasn't necessarily better than the other.

Our difference of vision led to my departure.

Your vision directs your actions. Because my vision was to grow the organization, I was always trying to catalyze strategic planning, staff/board development, and other capacity building ventures. The board chair resisted my efforts because those activities didn't support his vision. The result is that we grew more and more frustrated with each other and, despite our attempts, we couldn't reconcile our clashing visions. So I gave my notice and left the position.

I've thought back on that situation many times and I always come to the same conclusion. Leaving was the right thing to do. The experience taught me some key lessons:

• The relationship between the executive director and the board chair is often the most critical one in a nonprofit. If that working relationship is fractured then it impacts everyone. It should be an organization's priority to get that relationship right.

• An aligned organizational vision is central to a leadership team's effectiveness. The healthiest organizations have leaders with common ideas for where the organization is going.

• Despite the best intentions, sometimes people have to move on from their jobs.

These lessons have impacted my strategic planning consulting work. I'm always interested in the ED-Chair dynamic and the vision of the leadership team. It's a red flag for me if I see problems there. It should be a red flag for you too. I hope my story and lessons learned are of help to you.    

Feel free to share your experience with ED-Board relationships.

A Simple Formula for Trust

A few years ago I read a book by Stephen M.R. Covey called The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything. Covey's insights gave me some practical ideas to better discuss the concept of organizational trust with my clients. One of my takeaways was simply a way to describe how you created trust. He said that you built trust by demonstrating your competence (delivering on-time results, utilizing simple processes, etc.) and character (living your values, treating others with respect, etc.) Viewed differently, if trust were a tree, character would be the roots that kept you grounded and competence would be the trunk and branches evident to all.

Conversely, of course, you destroy trust when displaying poor character or incompetence. Perhaps most helpful was a simple and powerful formula he shared to describe the impact of trust. He said that when trust is high, speed increases, and costs decrease. The inverse is also true: when trust is low, speed decreases, and costs increase. Stating this as an equation: A good application of this formula is what happened to our experience in airports after 9/11. As a result of decreased trust, it took longer to get through the terminal and cost more due to the increased security. Can you think of ways that you can apply this formula to your personal and professional relationships?