back | help | search | common searches | suggest a resource

Strategic Planning
For Organizations

Created by: Excerpted from Website

Source: Support Centre for Nonprofit Management

This Resource focuses on:

Resource Description:

What is strategic planning?

Also avialable to download in in Rich Text Format

Simply stated, strategic planning is a management tool, and like any management tool, it is used for one purpose only-to help an organization do a better job. Strategic planning can help an organization to focus its vision and priorities in response to a changing environment and to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals.

In short, strategic planning is a systematic process through which an organization agrees
on-and builds commitment among key stakeholders to-priorities which are essential to its mission and responsive to the operating environment.

The particular use for strategic planning is to sharpen organizational focus, so that all organizational resources are optimally utilized in service of the organization's mission.

Several key concepts in this definition reinforce the meaning and success of strategic planning:

o The process is strategic because it involves choosing how best to respond to the circumstances of a dynamic and sometimes hostile environment. All living plants respond to the environment, but as far as we know they do not choose how to respond. Nonprofit organizations have many choices in the face of changing client or customer needs, funding availability, competition, and other factors. Being strategic requires recognizing these choices and committing to one set of responses instead of another.

o Strategic planning is systematic in that it calls for following a process that is both focused and productive. The process raises a sequence of questions to help planners examine past experiences, test old assumptions, gather and incorporate new information about the present, and anticipate the environment in which the organization will be working in the future. The process also guides planners in continually looking at how the component programs and strategies fit with the vision, and vice versa.

o Strategic planning involves choosing specific priorities-making decisions about ends and means, in both the long term and the short term. Consensus on priorities must be reached at many levels, from the philosophical to the operational. While a strategic plan will stop short of the level of detail in an annual operating plan, it cannot be called a plan
if it does not articulate the major goals and the priority methods the organization selects. Long-term goals have implications for short-term action: the two must be congruent with one another for the plan to be valid and useful.

o Finally, the process is about building commitment. Systematically engaging key stakeholders, including clients and the community, in the process of identifying priorities allows disagreements to be engaged constructively and supports better communication and coordination. The process allows a broad consensus to be built, resulting in enhanced accountability throughout the organization. This commitment ensures that a strategic plan will actively be used for guidance and inspiration, instead of serving as a dust cover for a remote corner shelf.

The strategic planning process can be complex, challenging, and cumbersome at times, but it is always informed by the basic ideas outlined above and one can always return to these basics to make sure one's own strategic planning process is on the right track.




www.genie.org