By Sabrina Houser
Where is your organization’s strategic plan and how are you using it in your day-to-day operations? You know the strategic plan we’re referring to: the 3-5 year plan that took many, many person hours to develop, refine and write. The one that brought together staff, board, and stakeholders to articulate a common vision and a path forward toward that vision.
Is it sitting on a shelf in your office in a nicely tabbed binder never to be seen again until you need space on the shelf for something else? This, unfortunately, is the fate of many strategic plans. It is something of an in-joke in the nonprofit sector that the fate of most strategic plans, despite the effort that went into their creation, is to gather dust on a shelf in the office until it is time to develop a new strategic plan to replace it.
When done with purpose, strategic planning is an invigorating, energizing and community building process. It is an inherently motivating and hopeful activity to connect goals and objectives to a shared vision for your organization. Everyone involved feels a sense of accomplishment and shared purpose when the plan is complete.
The truth is that your strategic plan is not an end product: it is a starting point. It is the beginning of your organization’s journey toward the shared vision that has been created. Unfortunately, because staff, Board and the Strategic Planning committee feel their work is finished after the strategic plan is written, the implementation of the completed plan is often left as solely the Executive Director’s responsibility. With no clear plan for implementation, this feels overwhelming. Lack of clarity about authority and coordination of communication and accountability are a death knell for even the most well-developed strategic plan.
Is it any wonder that many strategic plans go on the shelf?
The solution is to develop an action plan as the final step in the strategic planning process. Once your strategic plan is written, and goals have been agreed upon and adopted, that next step is to build an action plan.
How To Build and Action Plan
1. Break each goal down into actionable steps.
2. Identify the measurable outcome of each step. The acronym SMART is useful here. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timebound.
3. Identify who/what group is responsible for each step. This ensures someone is accountable for each initiative or measure, so nothing falls to the wayside.
4. Place a deadline for completion of each step.
Here is an example of a broad goal and three potential action steps:
Goal: All Board members are engaged in fundraising
Action Item: Revise existing Board training to include fundraising responsibilities
Responsible: Development Committee
Timeline: End of Q3 2024
Action Item: Create Individual board member annual fundraising plan template
Responsible: Development Committee Chair, Executive Director
Timeline: End of Q2 2024
Action Item: Each Board Member complete individual annual plan
Responsible: Board Members, Board Chair, Executive Director
Timeline: End of Q4 2024
Your action plan should be clear and laid out in a manner that makes it easy to identify who is responsible for each action item and the associated timeline for each. Excel or Google Sheets are an excellent format for your action plan. There are many templates available online, as well.
An additional best practice is to integrate your action plan into the agenda for each Board meeting.
We are a firm believer in the consent agenda. A consent agenda is an opportunity to collapse much of what we use our time in meetings into a very brief approval process. Minutes, financials, reports, and the like can all be approved at the same time with little or no discussion.
Prioritize the first part of the meeting for strategic matters. Rather than an Executive Director Report, create an ED and Executive Team Report on Strategic Priorities and align it to Strategic Plan deliverables. Check in on progress of action items in your strategic plan action plan. This keeps the goals and objectives of your strategic plan top of mind, promotes accountability, and ensures that barriers to completion are identified, and solutions or adjustments discussed.
These two things: an action plan and integrating your action plan into regular Board meetings can help ensure that your strategic plan becomes the driver for organizational growth and increased impact that it was meant to be, rather than a dusty volume on an office shelf.