Nonprofit Strategic Planning on a Shoestring workshop feb 6 2013

Strategic Planning
on a ShoestringDeKalb County
Nonprofit Partnership
Alicia Schatteman
February 6, 2013

Workshop Goals
• What are you goals for this workshop?
• What key things do you want to make sure we
talk about today?
• What do you want to walk away with today?

Statistics
• Just over half of all municipal governments
have a current strategic plan
• About 20% of all nonprofits have one

Top 10 Strategic Planning Tips
1. Know what you’re talking about
2. Know what your goal for planning is
3. Know what strategic planning will NOT do
4. Strategic planning flows from mission
5. Share your strategic planning work with others
6. Focus, focus, focus
7. Trade assistance with other organizations (Jea Nae
Remala)
8. You need to know where you are now to know where
you want to go
9. Need to move goals to action plans
10. Tie goals to budgets and performance

1.Know what you’re talking
about
2. Know what your goal for planning is
7. Trade assistance with other organizations (Jea Nae Remala)
8. You need to know where you are now to know where you want to go

1. Know what you’re talking
about
Strategic Planning vs. Strategic Plans
•Process to establish priorities on what you will
accomplish in the future
• Forces you to make choices on what you will do
and what you will not do
• Pulls the entire organization together around a
single game plan for execution
• Broad outline on where resources will get allocated
“A disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide
what an organization (or other entity) is, what is does, and why it does it.”
Bryson, 2004, p. 6.

2.Know what the purpose of
planning is

2. Know what the purpose of
planning is
Possible goals of strategic planning:
• make the Board happy
• meet accreditation deadline
• check the box on a funding application
• want to improve your organizational performance
• want to move the organization to longer-term
thinking rather than focus on short-term demands
• Effectively communicate to staff and other
stakeholders about organization’s goals
Maybe all of the above!

A Good Strategic Plan should
. . .
• Address critical performance issues
• Create the right balance between what the
organization is capable of doing vs. what the
organization would like to do
• Cover a sufficient time period to close the
performance gap (3-5 years reasonable time)
• Visionary – convey a desired future end state
• Flexible – allow and accommodate change
• Guide decision-making at lower levels –
operational, tactical, individual

2. Know what the purpose of planning is
3.Know what strategic planning
will NOT do

Strategic planning is not
• A substitute for strategic thinking, acting, and
learning
• A substitute for leadership

The Importance of Leadership
• Well-led and managed organizations are good at
dealing with both developmental and non-
developmental issues
• Good leadership at all levels is key, with
appropriate attention given to:
– Vision and goals
– Strategy formulation
– Strategic programming
– Process management and process
improvement

4. Strategic planning flows from
mission
8. You need to know where you are now to know where you want
to go

Mission
Vision
statement is a description of what success
would look like
Analyze your Mission
– Does the mission use correct, current language?
– Does the mission describe adequately who we serve?
(demographics)
– Does the mission describe adequately where we work?
(geographics)
– Does the mission show focus?
– Does the mission excite us?
– Can we get our mission down to 25 to 35 words?
– Do we need a vision associated with our mission?
– Do we need to write down a statement of values along with our
mission?
– Ask the staff to discuss not just the mission statement wording,
but what it means to them.
– Meet with the board and staff, discuss your findings, and talk
about necessary changes.

5. Share your strategic planning work
with others

5. Share your SP stories with
others
• Needed to incorporate outcomes-based goals in new strategic
plan, meet requirements of accreditation organization and Board
• Strategic Planning committee was made up of six of the eight
senior staff; larger organizational committee was other senior
and middle managers
• Work began with the board in spring 2011

• Board identified 14 strategic issues
• Vetted by staff and prioritized
• Worked on converting strategic issues into
outcome goals, reduced to five
• Identified action steps, output measures and
outcome measures
• Continue to follow up to see how they were
doing on outcome goals; still needed support
to measure outputs and outcomes

Lessons
• Originally envisioned a new strategic plan in
place in six months; took much longer to
develop framework for identifying goals,
coming up with action steps, output and
outcome goals; had to change their timeline
• Goals cut across departments; need to figure
out where strategic organizational goals fit in
terms of management oversight and resource
allocation

6.Focus, focus, focus
to go

• They are the fundamental policy
choices or challenges facing the
organization.
• Focus on top 3-5 for a reasonable
chance of accomplishing them
What are strategic issues?

• They are something the organization can
do something about, although it may not
be easy
• They typically are:
– Boundary crossing
– Resource intensive
– Politically loaded
– Highly consequential

• In general, it is useful to think that issues (and
ideas) drive politics. They strongly influence:
– How people interpret their interests
– How people assess costs and benefits of
proposed strategies
– The nature of winning and losing arguments
• Much of the front end of a strategic planning
process is designed to keep people from jumping
to conclusions about what the issues are.

Strategic Planning Model
A B C D E
• Environmental Scan
Assessment
• Background
Information
• SituationalAnalysis
• SWOT – Strength’s,
Weaknesses,
Opportunities,
Threats
• Situation – Past,
Present and Future
• Significant Issues
• Align / Fit with
Capabilities
• Mission & Vision
• Values / Guiding
Principles
• Major Goals
• Specific Objectives
• Performance
Measurement
• Targets / Standards of
Performance
• Initiatives and
Projects
Baseline Components
• Performance
Management
• Review Progress –
Balanced Scorecard
• Take Corrective
Actions
Down to Specifics Evaluate
Where we are Where we want to be How we will do it How are we doing
• Gaps • Action Plans • Feedback upstream –
revise plans

Elements of Strategic
PlanningPhase
• Internal/External
Assessment
• Mission and Vision
• Goals and Objectives
• Action Plans
• Performance
Measurement
• Monitoring and
Tracking
Activity
• SWOT analysis
• Board retreat
• Goals/Action plans
• Performance
measurement
• Implementation
• Reporting and feedback
24

Major Components of the Strategic
Plan
Components
Mission
Vision
Goals
Objectives
Measures
Why we exist
What we want to be
Indicators and
Monitors of success
Desired level of performance
and timelines
Planned Actions to
Achieve Objectives
O1 O2
AI1 AI2 AI3
M1 M2 M3
T1 T1 T1
Specific outcomes expressed in
measurable terms (NOT activities)
Strategic Plan
Action Plans
Evaluate Progress
Targets
Initiatives
What we must achieve to be successful

7. Trade assistance with other
organizations (Jea Nae Remala)

7. Trade services with other
organizations

Stakeholder Analysis
• “A stakeholder is any person, group or
organization that can place a claim on an
organization’s attention, resources, or
output, or is affected by that output.”
John M. Bryson, Strategic Planning for Public and
Nonprofit Organizations, Revised Edition (San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005, p. 35).

Strength’s Assessment
• Strength’s – Those things that you do well, the
high value or performance points
• Strengths can be tangible: Loyal customers,
efficient distribution channels, very high quality
products, excellent financial condition
• Strengths can be intangible: Good leadership,
strategic insights, customer intelligence, solid
reputation, high skilled workforce
• Often considered “Core Competencies” – Best
leverage points for growth without draining your
resources

Weaknesses Assessment
• Weaknesses – Those things that prevent you from
doing what you really need to do
• Since weaknesses are internal, they are within
your control
• Weaknesses include: Bad leadership, unskilled
workforce, insufficient resources, poor product
quality, slow distribution and delivery channels,
outdated technologies, lack of planning, . . .

Opportunities Assessment
• Opportunities – Potential areas for growth and
higher performance
• External in nature – marketplace, unhappy
customers with competitor’s, better economic
conditions, more open trading policies, . .
• Internal opportunities should be classified as
Strength’s
• Timing may be important for capitalizing on
opportunities

Threats Assessment
• Threats – Challenges confronting the organization,
external in nature
• Threats can take a wide range – bad press
coverage, shifts in consumer behavior, substitute
products, new regulations, . . .
• May be useful to classify or assign probabilities to
threats
• The more accurate you are in identifying threats,
the better position you are for dealing with the
“sudden ripples” of change

Individual Exercise
• Thinking about your organization, write down
3-5 most important strengths and most
important weaknesses
• Then if you could change anything or things
about your organization, what would it/they
be?

Strategic goals should
• Build on strengths -- and especially
“distinctive competencies”
• Take advantage of opportunities
• Minimize or overcome weaknesses and
challenges or threats
• Further the mission
• Meet the mandates
• Create public value

8. You need to know where you are
now to know where you want to go

8. You need to know where you
are now to know where you
want to go• Why measure your results?
• Measuring your progress against your goals
• Making sure goals line up with mission/vision
• How and what do you measure now?
• Baseline information
• Administrative data, secondary data and primary
data collection
• What do you need to measure?
• Gaps in data/knowledge
• How do you get this information

Shifting Perspectives
• Outcome thinking is a new way of thinking and a new
way of managing
• Shift in accent from activity to results
• The level of activity an organization may achieve is
no indication of impact; not just reporting what we
did
• Outcome thinking looks to bring about, measure, and
assess change; away from activity toward a focus on
results
• Services are not results, they are outputs
37

If the program is what we do, and the
output is the produce of what we
do, the outcome is what happens
because of that product.
38

How good is “good”?
• Need to decide what level of performance
defines success or what is your target?
– Minimum or acceptable level (basic performance
standards)
– Challenge level (not expected to be achieved right
away, sometimes performance standards of
excellence)
– Better than before (compared to the last period of
measurement)
39

Evaluating Outcomes:
Common Types of Change
– New knowledge
– Increased skills
– Changed attitudes, opinions, or values
– Changed motivation or aspirations
– Modified behavior
– Changed decisions
– Changed policies
– Changed conditions
40

Moving to Outcomes-Based Goals
Key Questions
A. What do you currently do
(activities/programs/services)?
B. Why do you do these things?
C. How do you know if you’re doing it well and how
do you currently measure this?
D. What are your performance expectations?
E. How could you measure these performance
expectations?
41

Goals Components
• Describes a future end-state – desired outcome
that is supportive of the mission and vision.
• Shapes the way ahead in actionable terms.
• Best applied where there are clear choices about
the future.
• Puts strategic focus into the organization – specific
ownership of the goal should be assigned to
someone within the organization.
• May not work well where things are changing fast
– goals tend to be long-term for environments that
have limited choices about the future.

Developing Goals Components
• Cascade from the top of the Strategic Plan –
Mission, Vision, Guiding Principles.
• Look at your strategic analysis – SWOT,
Environmental Scan, Past Performance, Gaps . .
• Limit to a critical few – such as five to eight goals.
• Broad participation in the development of goals:
Consensus from above – buy-in at the execution
level.
• Should drive higher levels of performance and
close a critical performance gap.

to go

9. Move goals to Action Plans
• The Action Plan identifies the specific steps that will be
taken to achieve the initiatives and strategic objectives
– where the rubber meets the road
• Each Initiative has a supporting Action Plan(s) attached
to it
• Action Plans are geared toward operations,
procedures, and processes
• They describe who does what, when it will be
completed, and how the organization knows when
steps are completed
• Like Initiatives, Action Plans require the monitoring of
progress on Objectives, for which measures are needed

Goals vs. Objectives
GOALS OBJECTIVES
Very short statement, few
words
Longer statement, more
descriptive
Broad in scope Narrow in scope
Directly relates to the Mission
Statement
Indirectly relates to the Mission
Statement
Covers long time period
(such as 3-5 years)
Covers short time period (such 1
year budget cycle)
Components

Objectives:
• Relevant - directly supports the goal
• Compels the organization into action
• Specific enough so we can quantify and measure the
results
• Simple and easy to understand
• Realistic and attainable
• Conveys responsibility and ownership
• Acceptable to those who must execute
• May need several objectives to meet a goal
Components

10.Tie goals to budgets and
performance

10. Tie goals to budgets and
performance
Down to
Specifics
• Assign action responsibility and set timelines –
Develop working plans and schedules that
have specific action steps
• Resource the project or initiative and
document in the form of detail budgets (may
require reallocation prior to execution)
• Monitor progress against milestones and
measurements
• Correct and revise action plans per
comparison of actual results against original
action plan

Link Budgets to Strategic
Plan
• The world’s best Strategic Plan will fail if it is
not adequately resourced through the
budgeting process
• Strategic Plans cannot succeed without
people, time, money, and other key
resources
• Aligning resources validates that initiatives
and action plans comprising the strategic
plan support the strategic objectives
Evaluate

Feedback and Monitoring
• How will you report your performance?
• To whom (internal and external audiences)?
• How frequently?
• How will you adjust your practices based on
the data received?
• Who will be responsible for the collection and
dissemination of data?
52

Teaching a 3 credit graduate course in Strategic
Planning for Public Service Organizations, May
15-July 3, 2013 from 5-10pm at NIU Naperville. A
student at large can take any of our graduate
courses without applying to the MPA program or
taking the GRE. Earned credits can count towards
a graduate certificate in Public Management or
the MPA program.
Information here:
http://www.grad.niu.edu/grad/apply/atlarge.shtml

Contact Information
Alicia Schatteman, Assistant Professor
Division of Public Administration
Northern Illinois University
IA 205
DeKalb, IL 60115
815-753-0942
aschatteman@niu.edu

Nonprofit Strategic Planning on a Shoestring workshop feb 6 2013

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