Inclusive Nonprofit Strategic Planning: How to include all stakeholders
In the ever-evolving landscape of nonprofit organizations, inclusive strategic planning is not just a best practice—it's a necessity. The strength of a nonprofit lies in its collective effort, embracing the voices and perspectives of all stakeholders. Traditional top-down approaches often miss the mark by excluding crucial insights from those who drive and benefit from the mission. In this article, I explore why it's so important to create a comprehensive strategic planning process that brings together executive leaders, board members, staff, volunteers, donors, and the communities served. By fostering an inclusive environment, nonprofits can develop dynamic, responsive, and effective strategies that truly reflect and serve their diverse communities. Let’s delve into how your organization can harness this inclusive approach to not only build a robust strategic plan but also cultivate a shared vision for sustained impact and success.
What is strategic planning for nonprofit organizations?
Strategic planning for nonprofit organizations is a process to assess where you are currently as an organization, envision a positive future and identify steps to move you from where you are to where you want to go. Strategic planning is more than just a retreat to define the mission, it's a comprehensive process that often takes months to gather data from multiple sources and move through a decision-making process to prioritize the nonprofit's goals and action steps. A key consideration is who to include at each stage in the process - from task force to focus group to retreat.
Why the traditional top down nonprofit strategic planning process doesn’t work
Traditionally strategic planning has been seen as solely the job of the board and the senior leadership of the organization. This model is borrowed from the for profit sector. But this assumes an owner of the organization. No one owns a nonprofit – it is a collective endeavor. When decision-making is held at the top of the organization, there are many missed opportunities and risks. You miss the perspective of important people who are all working together to move your mission and your organization forward. You risk lacking buy in to a vision created by a select few. Without buy in, implementation can then be really challenging. Therefore, I advocate for an inclusive process that includes all your important stakeholders, including the communities and individuals that the nonprofit serves.
What is Inclusive nonprofit strategic planning?
When engaged in an inclusive nonprofit strategic planning process groups must be very intentional about who is brought into the process at what stage. It harnesses the energy of different groups of people who are important to moving your mission forward at each stage of the process.
While both the senior staff leadership group and the board have a role, being more inclusive increases your likelihood of buy in to the ultimate plan as well as benefiting from a wider range of perspectives and lived experience. Leaving people out of the planning process leaves their wisdom and ideas out of the process as well. Leaders may fear a cacophony of voices and opinions if many people are included. Including everyone in the process does not actually mean that everyone will be in every step. Let’s consider who the typical stakeholder groups are and how they are involved in the strategic planning process.
Typical stakeholder groups include both internal and external stakeholders. Internal stakeholders will often include a strategic planning task force, your board, staff, volunteers and those you serve. External stakeholders could include partner organizations, government leaders and policy makers, donors and other community voices. Every organization will be different yet these are often the common categories of stakeholders.
Strategic planning task force or committee: what is its purpose?
The purpose of the nonprofit strategic planning task force is to steward the process. Its job is NOT to make all the decisions about what goes into the plan but to advise on how to adapt the strategic planning process to the specifics of the organization.
Forming your strategic planning task force
Your strategic planning committee or task force should include people empowered to make decisions on behalf of the organization, including staff and board leadership as well as people who hold informal power within your organization. They are the people who others look to for direction. This nonprofit strategic planning task force is ideally relatively small – up to five people – for effective decision making.
What is the job of the strategic planning task force?
Some tasks of this group are:
• Identifying the exact stakeholders you will involve and how,
• Deciding what to focus on at the retreat and/or planning sessions,
• Refining drafts produced by larger group processes, and ultimately finalizing the plan.
Often strategic planning committees hire strategic planning consultants like myself to guide them through this process and work closely to identify all the relevant stakeholders to bring to the table.
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Educating your nonprofit about the task force role
Make sure everyone knows the purpose of the strategic planning task force. When you are clear with the larger system about the purpose of this group – to make process decisions rather than plan content decisions – it can address the push to make this a larger group that often stems from the anxiety that an individual will not have influence on the outcomes of the plan without being on this planning group.
Because more traditional strategic planning often uses this group to make directional decisions, addressing this transparently is important as many may have experience from other situations of feeling left out of the process.
How internal stakeholders should be involved in the strategic planning process
Nonprofit Executive Director and leadership team
When I am working with a client nonprofit organization on supporting their strategic planning process, my primary contact is usually the nonprofit organization’s CEO or Executive Director. Together we guide the process. We make decisions together about how to structure the project and work together to refine products of larger group meetings. This process often includes checking in with the leadership team at key points.
Board of Directors
The nonprofit organization’s board of directors, in their governance role, has the fiduciary responsibility to ensure that strategic plans align with the organization’s mission and values. They are critical to the process, yet a plan will be stronger when staff are included in the process as well.
Nonprofit Staff Members
Involve staff from all levels of the organization to gain their insights on operational realities and challenges. This will include involving staff in your listening tour or data gathering phase as well as during the retreat or planning sessions themselves. Each staff person brings unique insight into the various aspects of how your organization works to further its mission and vision. Data gathering may include 1-1 interviews, focus groups and surveys. For very large organizations, including representatives of your teams or departments may be a more practical option for the planning sessions themselves.
Nonprofit Volunteers
Many organizations involve volunteers at all levels of their organization and they are integral to delivering programs and services. They have a distinct perspective on the organization – insiders in some aspects and outsiders in others. At a minimum be sure to Include volunteers in your data gathering phase. You may also want to consider whether you will invite volunteers beyond your board to your planning retreat/sessions.
People your nonprofit serves or supports: Who is your nonprofit designed to help?
Gathering input from those who participate in your programming can be a critical to the success of your planning process. Questions you ask could include:
What aspects of your programming are working?
Are they addressing the real need?
What other needs might you consider addressing?
What suggestions do they have for program tweaks?
Do they feel respected and included in the important aspects of your organization?
What do they value about your organization?
What barriers do they experience in accessing services?
Accessibility considerations and power dynamics
Consider accessibility needs to enable participation of those you serve whether it is language interpreters, stipends and offering food and child care during connection sessions.
Also consider the power dynamics inherent in the relationship and what you need to do to create a greater sense of psychological safety with those you are asking to provide feedback. This is true with each group of stakeholders, yet can be particularly important with this stakeholder group, depending on the exact services you offer. Hiring a nonprofit strategic planning consultant to support you in these efforts can help with these issues as the consultant is not part of your organization.
External Stakeholders that could also provide value in the nonprofit strategic planning process
External stakeholders are an important group to include in the data gathering process. The strategic planning task force will identify exactly who needs to be included and in what manner – whether inviting to a 1-1 interview, a focus group or engaging through a survey.
The subgroups of external stakeholders that are typically involved, include:
donors and funders,
partners and other related nonprofit organizations,
government leaders and policy makers, and
other community voices.
Other external groups to consider:
Strategic Planning Consultants
As a strategic planning consultant, I bring expertise in facilitating the planning process. In addition, I can provide an outside perspective on the organization, its strengths and challenges. Some consultants will claim that they bring an unbiased perspective. I would counter that we all enter every situation with our particular world view and biases. Yet I will not necessarily be operating within the same assumptions as those inside the organization. I can also bring experience from other comparable organizations to give a broader view, as well as what can be typical for an organization of your type and life stage.
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Field Experts and Futurists
Field experts and futurists can provide insights into trends and external factors that may impact the organization. Talking to these experts during your data gathering phase can be very helpful to widen your perspective and deepen your foresight as you plan.
Integrating Diverse Perspectives
Having gathered information, input and view points from a good representation of your internal and external stakeholders, all that information will now need to be synthesized into a set of themes. Pay attention to the areas of commonality as well as where there is a variety of opinion. Be mindful of the outliers – especially when they may bring an outlook less represented in your leadership circle. This step can be challenging and is another aspect that is particularly helpful to have outside support from a strategic planning consultant.
Who is involved in the strategic planning sessions?
Having formed your strategic planning task force, identified your stakeholders and gathered information from them and then synthesized that information, it is finally time to hold the planning sessions or retreat. Many people mistakenly think these meetings or retreat are what strategic planning is -- but as you can see it is just one step in the process.
Who will you invite to these planning sessions or retreat?
Internal stakeholders are the group that you will invite to be part of making meaning of the information gathered during the listening tour. Staff and the board at a minimum should be a part of the sessions. Exactly how many people can effectively be involved will depend on the skill and capacity of your facilitator(s). Larger groups can be effectively facilitated with larger facilitation teams and more technology support.
Expert facilitators, such as myself, will use a variety of individual, small and large group methods to ensure the conversation provides opportunity for all to engage and conversations are productive. These will also serve to cultivate a culture of openness where every participant feels valued and heard.
Balancing Input and Decision-making
No organization can do everything, nor should it. A process is not complete without discernment and decision making. The group will need to make decisions about what rises to the top in importance and ends up in the plan. In fact, not actually making any decisions is one of the big pitfalls of a poorly run strategic planning process. The group ends up with a plan that is really just a long wish list.
When you hire an expert strategic planning consultant as your facilitator, that person will have a variety of methods to help the group with decision making and prioritization. Some considerations are the impact of each idea, what might provide some easy wins, i.e. the “Big Easy” – something that is relatively easy but will have a big impact.
Other considerations include:
How closely aligned is this to our mission?
How will this proposal affect our reputation in the community?
What resources will be necessary to implement this idea?
How will this position us in the future?
Do we have the human and other resources necessary to implement this idea? If not, what will it take to gather those?
What might need further research before we make a final decision?
Effective nonprofit strategic planning process are a collective effort
The strategic planning process in nonprofit organizations demands a collective, inclusive effort, embracing a wide array of voices and perspectives. By engaging a diverse group of stakeholders—from executive leaders and board members to volunteers, donors, and those served by the organization—nonprofits can cultivate a comprehensive and inclusive planning process. This approach not only increases buy-in but also enriches the strategic plan with a variety of insights and lived experiences.
Remember, strategic planning is not just about decision-making; it's about building a shared vision that is reflective of the entire community it aims to serve. By carefully selecting who is involved and how they contribute, your nonprofit can develop a more effective, responsive, and dynamic strategic plan, paving the way for sustained impact and success.
