What Exactly is a Strategic Plan?

At Just Possibilities, we talk a lot about the art and science of strategic planning and we are committed to helping social good organizations create strategic plans that are aligned to resources, integrate and reflect their organizational values, center the lived expertise of those closest to their work, and foster an organizational culture that keeps people whole. But before we talk about how to do this, let’s back up and talk about what exactly is a strategic plan.

What is a strategic plan?

Think of your strategic plan as a road map. Your organization’s strategic plan reflects where you are now and what you’ve learned and accomplished to get here. It also guides where you want to go, the strategies you can take to get there, and the resources, roles, and investments required for the journey ahead. 

A solid strategic plan incorporates the following five phases:

Phase I: Where are you currently?

It’s hard to know where you want to go if you don’t know where you are. Thoughtfully examining where your organization is, including your bright spots, challenges, opportunities, and resources is a key building block for creating a visionary, yet realistic strategic plan. You might hear this phase referred to as a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. This phase may include examining your mission and vision, or creating one if your organization is getting started. It is also a time to identify and reflect on your organization’s values and what you hold as sacred, including what you’re willing to do, and more importantly, not willing to do, to achieve your longer-term vision. 

Pro Tip: It is crucial to involve key stakeholders at every phase of your strategic planning process. Input from board members, donors, volunteers, and especially your front-line staff and the community your organization serves will provide you with realistic and honest feedback. How those closest to your work directly experience your mission, vision, and values might sometimes be hard to hear. Still, when it’s done right, it will realistically inform what is required to be successful in growing and sustaining your work. Meaningfully involving key stakeholders with lived expertise early in the strategic planning process will help you tremendously as you begin to implement your strategic plan.

Phase II: Where do you want to go?

Phase I of strategic planning lays the groundwork for understanding where your organization is and what those most impacted by your work need and want. Phase II helps shape where you want to go, which will look different for every organization. For example, you may want to go deeper in your mission by expanding your services or programs or building from direct service to advocacy and community organizing. Alternatively, your organization may wish to strategically partner with organizations already providing the expanded services, programs, or advocacy your community desires versus growing and building the internal resources to do this yourself. You might also decide to continue what you’re doing, but make sure you’re doing it well by focusing on the quality and depth of your programs or services. Or, you may decide to keep doing exactly what you’re doing, but do it for more people. 

There are no “right” or “wrong” answers, as long as your organization’s direction is based on what you learned in your Phase I analysis and reflects the lived expertise of those closest to and most impacted by your work. Centering those closest to the organization’s work and mission provides a realistic road map of what is needed and valued. If your strategy is based on what is needed and valued, you will find success and enthusiasm around where you want to go.

Once you know where your organization wants to go, your strategic plan should identify short-, medium-, and longer-term goals for accomplishing your vision. Generally, short-term goals are those your organization can realistically achieve with the given resources within the next six months; medium-term goals take 1 – 2 years; and longer-term goals over two years. However, this timeline will depend on your organization’s vision and resources and could be contracted or expanded based on the evolving external or political landscape within which your organization operates.

Phase III: What is needed to get there?

Once you know where you want to go, working alongside your stakeholders, you will identify the resources required to achieve your short-, medium-, and longer-term goals. This is an important part of the strategic planning process and a phase many organizations overlook or aren’t realistic about. 

Returning to our roadmap analogy, we wouldn’t begin a journey without first packing our bags or identifying our means of transportation. Identifying the resources required to make the strategic plan possible is much like this. During this phase, you will identify the resources necessary to achieve your goals, such as funding, technology, staffing, and communications,

If your work is relationship-based, people will be one of your most important resources. People include staff, volunteers, board members, community members, partners, and the people you serve and need to accomplish your goals. Be realistic about what human resources are required to keep your people whole and avoid burnout, and what resources and time are necessary to build and maintain the trust to accomplish your goals. Trust and relationship building often take more time than most organizations anticipate, plan for, or resource; the best source to realistically inform this is by asking, engaging, and listening to the people you want and need to accomplish your goals.

If you do not have the realistic resources to accomplish your goals, go back to your stakeholders and revise your goals together. Sustainable social change requires us to work differently and this won't happen by burning people out.

Phase IV: Putting Vision into Action (aka Implementation)

If you are entering this phase of strategic planning, congratulations! Studies from the Harvard Business School and UC Davis confirm that 67% of nonprofits stop or fail their strategic planning when it comes to implementing the plan. A lack of effective implementation and change management leads to even the most visionary strategic plans sitting on a shelf and collecting dust. It can also lead to an erosion of trust with your funders, staff, and the community. 

Implementing the day-to-day work to reach your organization’s goals is hard and requires patience and effective change management. You must take the time to ensure everyone involved in your organization understands the “why” behind the plan, where you are going, what needs to happen by when, and what success looks like. Each position within your organization also needs to understand their role and how they will be supported. This phase requires initial and ongoing training, communications, continued listening, and problem-solving.

Please don’t get discouraged. If you’ve authentically engaged those closest to the work during the above phases, this phase will be easier for you. This phase can also be assisted by tools such as MOCHA charts including this example from The Management Center, and simple Excel documents that help keep you and your team on track and united in your progress, learning, and implementation.  

Pro Tip: Incorporate time for effective change management within your strategic plan implementation timeline. This includes training, communication, conversations, and discussions. Many organizations want to move fast, but the time you take to ensure effective change management will be time well spent and will save you time and resources down the road.

Phase V: Learning and Evolving

Strategic plans are generally created to guide your organization's work over a three-year period. During these three years, one thing will be sure: there will be changes. As such, your strategic plan will also need to evolve. 

“Our world is changing rapidly, and while change is constant, the values that drive our work must remain steadfast.” ~ Just Possibilities

Strategic plans are meant to be living and breathing documents. Your strategic plan should include intentional pauses and reflection points. Build these pause points into your strategic plan implementation timeline. Use these pause points strategically to engage your stakeholders, especially those closest to and most impacted by your work, and identify what is working well, where you are encountering obstacles, and invite ideas in solving the problems or challenges. A values decision-making scorecard* can be a helpful tool during this phase, guiding your organization in navigating challenges and opportunities, while ensuring your decisions and pivots are aligned with your vision, strategy, resources, and values. Nonprofit Quarterly also offers this liberation-focused evaluation tool as a guide.

We hope this blog helped answer the question of what is a strategic plan. Please reach out and set up a no-cost, one-hour call to explore how to put the five phases of strategic planning in place for your organization. 

At Just Possibilities, we are passionate about guiding organizations in putting their values into action at every level of their work, from strategic plans and the annual operating budget to internal policies, service delivery, community engagement, and day-to-day decision-making. We work with organizations dedicated to the social good in their values and equity-based strategic planning, organizational assessments and recommendations, values decision-making scorecards*, and leadership and change management efforts. Sign up for our newsletters here.