Strategic Planning in Nonprofit Leadership: Setting Goals And Achieving Impact

A strategic plan provides a clear process of determining, documenting, and establishing the direction of a nonprofit organization.

Strategic planning for nonprofit organizations like yours is crucial, allowing you to assess where your nonprofit is at now and where you want it to go. It allows your nonprofit decision-makers to see the big picture and make the desired impact on your community.

Let’s find out more about this important process and what it can do for your nonprofit.

What Is a Strategic Plan for Nonprofits?

A strategic plan for nonprofits is a full process that allows leadership to identify key elements on a well-defined map that helps organizations define their goals for their organization and their community. It asks your nonprofit leaders to create or define goals and objectives and empowers them to make the necessary decisions to achieve them.

The Top 5 Steps for Implementing a Strategic Plan

Like all nonprofit leadership, your goal is to serve your community. It is more challenging to do so without a solid, strategic plan to guide you and your devoted team. There are some steps you can take to develop and implement a strategic plan that helps everyone in your organization stay on track to successfully support your mission.

Let’s look at the following five steps that you can use to implement a strategic plan.

1. Complete a SWOT analysis and set goals

The first step in developing and implementing a strategic plan is setting clear goals and defining the variables that help you achieve them. A SWOT is a basic technique used by all types of businesses, including nonprofit organizations, to identify processes in an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, risks and threats to your organization. Many nonprofits rely on it to help with personnel evaluations and marketing campaign planning, in addition to standard organization-wide strategic planning.

2. Set SMART objectives

SMART objectives can be powerful tools in helping support your mission, providing landmarks to help you achieve your larger goals.

Here is what SMART objectives are and what they allow you to do:

Specific — Target a specific area for analysis and improvement
Measurable — Quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress
Assignable — Specify who will do it and delegate
Realistic — State what results can realistically be achieved given available resources
Time-based — Specify the timeline for achieving results

For example, SMART goals are essential in helping nonprofits manage fundraising events and seasons, letting everyone know where your nonprofit is in terms of financial goals.

3. Establish specific tactics to support each objective

The tactics you and your team use provide help to achieve the smaller, more specific tasks that your team members achieve your nonprofit’s overarching goals, focusing on the mission, budget and SMART initiatives.

4. Reevaluate information

Strategic planning isn’t necessarily static — factors will change over time. It’s important to adjust your goals and objectives as you move through the process.

5. Keep the plan dynamic to scale with your organization

As mentioned above, circumstances change. That makes it important to keep your plan dynamic and scalable. For example, you might achieve some goals sooner than others, allowing you to redirect to hit new benchmarks on an adjusted timeline.

6. UST is here to offer support along the way.

We offer a variety of resources and tools to help your nonprofit organization on it’s journey to building a strategic plan that supports your ever-growing and evolving leadership team.

If you’re looking for a cost effective workforce solution for your nonprofit, submit a FREE Cost Analysis and one of our consultants will be in touch with you.

SOURCES

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0612/the-importance-of-strategic-planning.aspx

https://nonprofithub.org/why-most-swot-analyses-stink-2/