We kicked off a strategic planning effort with a new client recently. A staff member, curious about why he was in the room and on the strategic planning team, asked a familiar question: “Why are we doing strategic planning?” Behind the question was the tension of an overcommitted worker wondering what this big new chunk of extra work would actually do for his organization.
Nonprofit organizations undertake strategic plans for many reasons, positive and negative. We see new leaders come through our door eager to change their organizations for the better…and leaders who have lost funding and need to retrench strategically. Calls come from board chairs who want faster results, or top staff who feel their effort is becoming less relevant in the changing world around them. The genesis for every strategic planning effort has some level of both pain and opportunity wrapped into it.
No matter what the genesis for the process, there is a universal answer to that “why?”: If you don’t drive, someone or something else will do so. If you don’t set a course — imperfect though it may be — you will not get to where you want to be. As all-consuming as an organization’s day-to-day activities may be, leadership must make the effort to periodically look over the horizon. I won’t get too sailorly, but that look over the horizon helps an organization see what change is happening in their operating environment (the good and the bad), where they are in reaching their organizational goals, and how they might want to adjust course to get there more efficiently or effectively.
As to the “how” of approaching strategic planning? At the end of that meeting, the same person pointed out an excellent approach to any strategic planning process: “We should have courage, you know, courage to say yes and to say no. And we should take some risks.”
Point taken.
We are working with several organizations that have some sort of membership model. One is a private school, another an association with several tiers of membership, a third is an advocacy group reliant on a subscription model. For all of these organizations, a challenge looms: Paid annual “memberships” are dropping steadily. Part of this is generational: Millennials are not habitually joiners. The spirit of annual membership in a nonprofit is stronger in Boomers and GenXers. Whatever the bundle of causes, the mindset of those willing to “join” to cover high fixed costs of institutions like private schools, museums or theaters is a waning phenomenon. And those willing to “join” to support advocacy efforts or public goods like NPR? No better.
One of the most important parts of telling these untold stories is finding people who can tell them, and providing them with the resources to do so. Organizations naturally build institutional memory over the years, through the collective experience of the individuals engaged in them. It is already there, we only need ask. Yet, documenting this knowledge is widely considered a luxury, a box to be checked off in an exit interview. Institutional memory is particularly vulnerable during periods of transition, with restructuring and changes in staff. The clock is always ticking.
