Strategic Planning: connecting fundraising and development to your mission

1. Strategic Planning: connecting fundraising and development to your mission • Connie K. Hawkins, Region 2 PTAC • Exceptional Children’s Assistance Center • ECAC 1

3. What is Strategic Planning?

4. What is Strategic Planning? • The process of determining: • What your organization intends to accomplish • How you will direct the organization & its resources

5. Simply put, strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next year or more and how it’s going to get there.

6. Strategic Planning involves fundamental choices about • The mission, goals, or vision your organization will pursue • Whom you will serve • The organization’s role in the community

7. And….. • The kinds of programming, services, or products you will offer • The resources needed to succeed • How you can best combine resources, programming and relationships to accomplish your organization's mission

9. As the Director, your first question should be “how healthy is your board?” • Do you need to do Board education & preparation prior to beginning the strategic planning process?

10. Is your board ready to effectively participate in developing the shared vision of your non profit’s future and the steps needed to get there? • Has your Board struggled with development responsibilities in the past?

11. is the confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic instinct to choke some idiot who desperately needs it!

12. Why Develop a Strategic Plan?

13. Benefits to developing a Strategic Plan • Improved results - • Studies have shown that vision, planning and goal setting positively influence organizational performance. • Momentum and focus - • Good strategic planning forces future thinking and can refocus and reenergize a wandering organization. • Problem solving - • Productive planning focus on the most critical problems, choices and opportunities.

14. Benefits continued • Teamwork, learning and commitment - • Strategic planning provides an excellent opportunity to build a sense of teamwork and commitment across the organization. • Communication and marketing - • A good strategic plan can be an effective communication and marketing tool. • Greater influence - • Strategic planning can help an organization influence its circumstances rather than only responding to problems. • Natural way to do business - • Planning can become a natural part of doing business.

15. Branding is a necessary component of Development and Fundraising. Strategic Planning can guide the creation of the “Brand.”

16. Limitations • Costs can outweigh benefits • Faulty assumptions about the future and the organization’s capabilities or poor group dynamics can lead to lousy plans • Intuition and creative muddling are sometimes superior to traditional planning • Organizations in crisis should generally tackle critical problems first • Strategic plans are useless if never implemented

17. I don’t know who it is, but the author of these “easy-to-assemble” instructions should be severely punished!

18. Developing a Vision • Strategic planning is developing a shared vision of your nonprofit's future, then determining the best way to make this vision occur.

19. Finding the Fit • How does an organization determine the best course for the future? One key is to find the fit among three forces – your mission, outside opportunities and capabilities.

20. Finding the Fit • Mission of your organization • What you intend to accomplis • Organization overall goal • Reason you exist

21. Finding the Fit • Opportunities or threats your organization faces • Related to the resources and needs of the people you serve • Other stakeholders • Competitors and allies • Other major forces (social, economic, political, or technological)

23. Finding the Fit • Your organization’s capabilities • Strengths and Weaknesses • Resources or competence that you nonprofit has or could develop

24. Strengths and Weaknesses • Capabilities • Resources Mission THE FIT What are you capable of doing? What do you hope to accomplish? • Opportunities and Threats • Needs of customers and other stakeholders • Competitors and allies • Social economic, political, and technological forces. What is needed and feasible in your service area?

25. How to Develop a Strategic Plan • Get Organized • Take Stock (Situation Analysis) • Set Direction • Refine and Adopt the Plan • Implement the Plan

26. Get Organized • Why you are planning and any concerns • Select a steering group or person to keep the planning on track • Determine if outside help is needed • Outline the planning process that fits your organization or your situation • Get commitment to proceed

27. Traditional Strategic Planning

28. Take Stock (Situation Analysis)(aka Present Level of Performance) • Pull together necessary background information • Review your nonprofit’s past, present and future situation • Identify key issues or choices • Environmental Scan • SWOT analysis

29. SWOT analysis • MUST also include questions designed to create brand • or Validate/Revise existing one

30. Strengths • What do we do best? • How do we want our target audiences to view us? • What distinguishes us from our competition?

31. Weaknesses • In what ways do we have trouble clearly explaining to people outside our field what we do? • How much does our board know about branding? • How effective will members be in promoting and protecting our brand?

32. Opportunities • Can we identify an expanding market for our products and services? • What is the current economic landscape of our community?

33. Threats • Are there external factors that would prohibit our organization from promoting our brand? • Who are our competitors? • How much do we know about them?

34. Review your SWOT analysis for Brand messaging opportunities • What have you learned about: • who you are • what you do • how you do it • and why anyone should care?

35. Determine what messages your audiences want or need to hear • Sometimes you learn what you might want to say about your organization is not what your audiences want to hear • Reframe • Evaluate

36. Create a “Messaging Package” • A message package includes such things as a: • Tagline • Mission statement • Positioning statement • Supporting statements • Logo

37. Focus Group • Before finalizing your message package, go back to your focus group • Get real reactions from real people to your messages • Make sure the messages mean what you think they mean to your audience

38. Set Direction • Develop a vision of your organization’s future including branding and development • Determine how to move the organization toward this future • Develop a first draft of the plan

39. Refine and Adopt the Plan • Board, staff and stakeholder review and refine the plan • Board adopts the plan

40. Board Members • Ask INDIVIDUALS to commit to supporting development and fundraising plans

41. Implement the Plan • “What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter.” • (Lykes Lines Shipping)

42. I have gone to get myself. If I return before I get back, hold me here because it is important I see myself when I get back before I get confused.

43. Implement the Plan • Implement the action steps • Monitor progress • Make adjustments • Periodically update the plan

45. I fully realize that I have not succeeded in answering all of your questions …Indeed, I feel I have not answered any of them completely. The answers I have found only serve to raise a whole new set of questions, which only lead to more problems, some of which we weren’t aware were problems. To sum it all up … In some ways, I feel we are as confused as ever, but I believe we are confused on a higher level, and about more important things.