Food For Thought

When you begin the process of strategic planning, visioning comes first. When visioning the change, ask yourself, “What is our preferred future?”

The intent of the Mission Statement should be the first consideration for any employee who is evaluating a strategic decision.

The Mission Statement should have a grand scale, be socially meaningful and be measurable.

Your mission statement is a statement of purpose and function.

Funders want to buy social and economic benefits, not boxes and wires. Projects that involve technology should sell the strategic benefit, not the toolset. 

There is real work that needs to be done in terms of consolidating recruitment practices.  There are many talented individuals in social service fields that have transferable skills that if we pooled our search resources or databanks, or HR supports we could make recruitment an easier process.  Charity Village is a good example of a website for people interested in the not for profit or socially conscious career path.

Programs are not funded or delivered in a vacuum.  Legislation, public policy, public perception and attitude, media coverage, political process and political will, funding priorities, and the availability of funds, are just some of the systemic factors that play a role in determining which programs are funded, the extent to which they are funded, and to some degree, how they are allowed to function.  It is important to “be in the loop” in any decision-influencing or decision-making process. 

Some of the most compelling communication campaigns are those that tell real-life stories of people who have been served through community programs. Document your own success stories and use them as much as possible to communicate the value of what you do (your mission). For an even more powerful message, connect the story to the thousands of people in your community that you serve. Use numbers and statistics to back up anecdotes.

Like in every path, planning is critical. As the old saying goes: “If you fail to plan, you should plan to fail.”

You must never undertake communication activities, whether they be media relations, advertising new service offerings, promotions, or e-bulletins, without having a well thought through strategic communications plan.

You need to do your market research, understand your brand identity, have thoroughly tested messaging, and well-designed communications messages.

Communications Planning (pdf)

Thinking about pricing represents a culture change within and outside a non-profit organization.  This can cause tensions – you need to respond to the community, realize where you are gaining financially and politically: some things you can give away, some things you may want to sell due to time and money invested, or an opportunity for revenue generation to support other parts of your operation.

Financially vibrant organizations do not limit their thinking to good stewardship and financial management. They go further and reflect on how their resourcing model and program model fit together and connect to their values about the work they do and the people they ask to help to do it.  It is a more systemic approach to creating an integrated vision of how money works to create value in communities. From this perspective, a financial statement is just a check-in with the financial roadmap and a proposal is a means to a collaborative relationship with someone else’s money, rather than a stopgap to keep the program going for a little while longer.

Build relational capacity in your organization, so that your agency will be “partnership ready” should the opportunity arise on short notice.  Network on an ongoing basis among agencies in your own and other sectors to form relationships that may lead you to potential partners that you would otherwise not be familiar with.

A funding transaction is a relationship.  Funders have needs too.  It is only through conversation about what is planned and how agency and funder might seize the opportunity can the proposal writer actually get the right details in. 

In the process of integrating programs, it is crucial to be aware of the capacity of staff and resources to handle increased and diverse responsibilities.  There is a point where the efficiencies and effectiveness of program integration is nullified by over-extension of resources and the overwhelming of staff. A commitment to ongoing monitoring and program evaluation is necessary, and it is also important to encourage and respond to staff input and have them directly involved in program design. The primary driver of program design must be quality and impact of programs, not cost savings.

Often agencies become too reliant on a strategic plan.  It is important to set clear intentions and to have an idea of where you want to go, but don’t get too tied to the results.  There are too many things that we have no control over.  Only try to control what you can control and do that well.

Program evaluation can be integrated into strategic planning in a number of ways.  For example, program evaluation can shed light on how well an organization responds to challenge; how quickly it can solve a problem; how well its various program components work, and how well its team works as a whole.  One could also evaluate how well the organization’s financial model fits with the current environment and with its work.

Research on financial vibrancy shows that in financially vibrant organizations the understanding of who “everyone” was got much bigger.  Financially vibrant organizations think about planning not just with themselves (i.e., the standard group of inside players), but with a host of other players.  In other words, they are able to think in very broad terms about who their stakeholders are. 

One of the things this means is: if you work with the same stakeholders all the time, you likely have access to the usual pots of resources. It is only when you discover how to find common ground with new partners – i.e., new stakeholders – that you are likely to uncover unusual (and new) sources of revenue.

If you have a bigger Board, is everyone really engaged?  Is it better to have a smaller Board of all fully-engaged people, or a bigger Board that may be more representative of the community, but in which not all are contributing?

Old-fashioned governance systems need to transform themselves from a static fiduciary-based model to a strong, team-based ‘generative’ model.

What is a ‘generative’ model?  From the point of view of enhancing financial vibrancy, a generative model of governance/leadership is one that produces consistent excellence in operations and also a steady stream of new ideas for products/services.  This includes a dedicated research and development function in all roles on the Board as well as among Managers and Staff.