Strategic Planning
What are strategic plans? How are they created? Are they worth producing? The sites below attempt to answer these questions.
The purpose of strategic planning is to encourage thinking about your organization's "big picture"-- its broad goals and priorities. Unfortunately, the emphasis on possessing a strategic plan has come into some disrepute in recent years since research has revealed that many of them are never implemented and that others prove to be useless in organizations faced with rapidly changing environments.
As a result, the modern approach emphasizes "strategic thinking" or "strategic management". It takes the position that there is value in regularly scanning the organization's external environment for significant changes and trying to understand the implications of these for the organization. There is no need to slavishly adhere to "the plan". It should exist only as a guideline and should change as the world changes.
You also have to remember that plans are essentially useless unless they can be implemented. That means they must connect closely with annual operational plans and budgets. If they don't, they will be ignored.
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"Developing Your Strategic Plan" by Carter McNamara. This is by far the most comprehensive overview of all aspects of strategic planning covering all stages of the process.Authenticity Consulting -
"Off the Shelf: How to Ensure that Your Strategic Plan Becomes a Valued Tool". A good review of the implementation process by non profit consultants, Brody, Weiser, Burns.Brody, Weiser and Burns -
A useful place to get general information about trends facing the whole non profit sector and detailed instructions on how to use this in planning can be found in a publication titled Philanthropy Tomorrow: A Planning Tool for Voluntary Organizations published by Imagine Canada.Imagine Canada -
InnoNet.Org is an extraordinary organization dedicated primarily to helping non profits to do a better job of evaluating their performance. It provides all sorts of tools and checklists for self assessment and among them is a planning tool called "Point-K". It is an online step-by-step guide to program planning but can be used equally well for organization-wide strategic planning. It is necessary to register for this service but it is free.Innovation Network -
Excellent booklet on developing business plans to bring strategic plans to life.Alliance for Nonprofit Managaement