The 10-Step Process to Facilitate Strategic Planning for Nonprofits

You’ve started to get prepared in the past, but you always get caught up in 24/7 virtual fires.

Nonprofit Strategic Planning is a process you’ve heard before, but you aren’t sure exactly what it means.

What and how do you actually do set a process for strategic plans for nonprofits?

That’s why I am going to go over a process to set up your annual planning via a step-by-step outline.

However, if you want the full breakdown to learn the process in a comprehensive way, including tons of downloadable, then you may want to check out the Nonprofit Strategic Planning Master Course!

Who is the strategic planning process for?

Nonprofit Leaders: This is for you if:

• You are burned out of the same old fundraisers
• You always miss the deadline for that ‘perfect’ grant
• You are overwhelmed of putting out virtual fires everyday instead of focusing on GROWTH for your nonprofit

Freelance Consultants: This is for you if:

• You are a consultant and want an easy-to-learn and easy-to-customize service to help those nonprofits get more funding
• You want multiple streams of income
• You want to learn clear action steps in a simple way that will make you the expert

Most nonprofits just do not set time aside for a planning process.

That is a huge flaw as Benjamin Franklin said,

“Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.”

However, I get it. You don’t even know where to start.

Maybe you scrape together a few YouTube videos and a variety of downloadables and have a 200-page manual you might just get around to. Of course, we know that leads to overwhelm, confusion, and lack of true direction.

In this article you are going to learn:

• what all to include in your strategic planning,
• how to roll it out, and h
• ow it can benefit your nonprofit (or in the case of a freelance grant writer, the nonprofits you serve).

An Annual Strategic Planning Process helps to:

• eliminate overwhelm,
• burnout,
• and straying from mission.

It also helps to:

• increase sustainable income streams,
• advances mission,
• and in the case of freelance consultants adds another stream of income to your salary!

Annual Nonprofit Strategic Planning Process

#1: Define your mindset and schedule 

Most nonprofit leaders and freelance grant writers that I work with have a mindset that constantly hinders their success.  After years of working alongside successful nonprofits and freelance consultants, I’ve learned the mindsets they bring to the nonprofit arena.

Therefore, it is important to first simply put time aside to do your Strategic Planning Process.

A weekend day can be magical, or even an entire Thursday and Friday is better. If you can’t get everyone together for such a long period of time, then adding an hour to your weekly meeting to work on each of the different areas can be doable.

If you are freelance grant writer or nonprofit consultant, then you can facilitate a weekend (or weekday) intense strategic planning, or maybe meet with the board of directors at their monthly meetings for six months. There are different ways to work it in.

Some of you may groan at taking two days away from your nonprofit’s work, but believe me, you will get such exponential positive results from this that you will be sure to schedule this retreat in annually. Very happily.

Who to invite?

This really depends on the size of your organization.

You may choose to do this retreat with only your board of directors and executive staff, or you might be able to invite your entire staff.

I love having all staff, volunteers, etc. at strategic planning because it demonstrates that you want to hear everyone’s voice and they all have value.

#2: Conduct a SWOT Analysis

What if you were able to know every strength, weakness, opportunity, and threats of your nonprofit and know how to use your strengths to mitigate your threats? Or know how to use your opportunities to reduce your weaknesses?

1. brainstorm all the strengths of your nonprofit
2. brainstorm all the weaknesses
3. list all the opportunities a nonprofit has, but may not have secured yet
4. list all the potential threats that are external to a nonprofit that you don’t have control over

This exercise is super important in really examining a nonprofit organization.

For example, you may think that the morale of your staff is a strength, but someone else thinks it is a weakness. This can really magnify some interesting items and showcase what your nonprofit culture really is. Another thing you can do is then see how your strengths can mitigate any weaknesses, etc.

This is how you put your SWOT into Action. In the Nonprofit Strategic Planning Master Course, I show you exactly how to do this, with templates!

What is also another great outcome of a SWOT is that you also generate some interesting words. Just by brainstorming all these elements certain words may be repeated.

This leads to the next item is to determine your values. By utilizing some of the concepts and words within the SWOT this can also lead to implementing these words into your values and into your ….

#3: Create the Best Mission and Vision Statements 

Successful nonprofits have amazing mission and vision statements.

However, this is much harder than it sounds. But there is a formula.

To develop a mission statement, you want to answer:

• What is your nonprofit doing today?
• For whom?
• What is the benefit?

For the vision statement, three questions to consider are:

• What do we want to do going forward?
• When do we want to do it?
• How do we want to do it?

In the course, I walk you through how to create the best mission and vision statements for your nonprofit (even if you already have one). This will ensure that your nonprofit (or the nonprofits you work with) are always on task with creating the right projects and reaching their mission.

Click here for more information on the Nonprofit Strategic Planning Course

#4: Define Your Target Demographic and Conduct a Simple Needs & Strengths Assessment 

Merely believing you know what your target demographic is, is not good enough.

You may think you serve a certain demographic, but it is important to really identify who or what this demographic is.

For example, is it all people who are in recovery? Or is 12 to 18-year-old youth in Cool City.

Narrowing down is not necessarily bad at all. Actually, it can be a really amazing thing as you can be very specific in your mission and in your projects. Once you get amazing at serving your specific target demographic you can branch out to reach the next highest demographic.

A Needs & Strengths Assessment can be as simple or as complex as you want.

You could start with a simple survey of your target demographic to ensure you are meeting specific needs or you get the information needed to start a project. You can also have focus groups to include more conversation.

This can be super beneficial not just for your strategic planning, but also when you are applying for grants, for corporate partnerships, to publish on your website, etc.!

Side Note: This can be a stand-alone service that you as a freelance grant writer can offer nonprofits. 

#5: Apply Resource Mapping to Increase Funding  

Tie it all together to create your custom Nonprofit Strategic Process Resource Mapping.

In order to really evaluate what is working you must track it.

List down every single monetary resource your nonprofit received last year. How much money did your nonprofit receive last year from products, services, grants, fundraising, and other?  From whom and for what purpose was the money used for?

Now look at in-kind resources: What types of in-kind goods, services, and manpower was donated to your nonprofit? From whom and for what purpose were the resources used for?

Now look at both and estimate what you want to receive in the next year, who is responsible for contacting each source, by what date, for how much, and how will you show appreciation?

Remember think of these resources as partners and make sure you show appreciation.

#6: Define Goals, Objectives, & Activities

Without a plan you will fail.

Having an overarching goal for your nonprofit (or each main area of your nonprofit: Fiscal, Operations, Manpower) you will have no direction. I’ll show you how to create goals, SMART objectives, and activities through timetables.

Identify the goal, the objectives and the activities needed to be completed to reach your mission and vision of your nonprofit.

Remember to task each activity out to someone and put a deadline. Then review the status of these steps at weekly meetings.

Click here for more information on the Nonprofit Strategic Planning Course

#7: Prioritize Your Nonprofit’s Projects

Now you can tie together everything you learned. No more chasing the money with projects that sizzle out as soon as the funding ends.

This step ensures that you create the BEST projects for your nonprofit to actually advance the mission of your nonprofit.

Look at each project and see how much money it will take, how many resources (including manpower), what the benefit will be, and if it aligns with your mission.

You can do this step for each project idea and then select the one that will take the fewest resources, impact your target demographic in the greatest way, and aligns with your mission the closest.

The Nonprofit Strategic Planning Master Course also provides you with a working excel budget!

#8: Conduct Contingency Planning & Create a Logic Model

Every successful nonprofit knows that contingencies are necessary! If something may not work, you identify it and create a solution and a sustainability plan. But how? That’s what I teach you in simple steps.

Plus, a logic model is a great resource to look at your projects in a snapshot view. But logic models can be SO overwhelming.

Make sure you look at what the challenges may be, what contingencies you will put in place, and your sustainability plan. So the challenge may be having too many people access your services, the contingency could be creating a waiting list or/and a priority list, and the sustainability plan could be that you will create life-time partners with a certain foundation to fund the project.

A logic model is creating a one-page graph that includes:

• input (or resources)
• outputs (activities)
• outcomes (short, medium, and long-term)

This is great as you will be able to show all resources required for the project, what the outputs or quantitative numbers will be (such as how many people served), and then the outcomes or behavior changes (such as a increase in sobriety among youth in Cool City).

As a bonus, grants often ask for logic models. You will always stand out among the competition knowing how to create a logic model.  

Click here for more information on the Nonprofit Strategic Planning Course

#9: Develop Strategic Data Management Tracking

You may be working on a million projects, but what data are you collecting?

Is any of the tremendous effort that you put into running a nonprofit and running projects even being captured?

When you look back on last year do you really have a system that collects all the amazing things that your nonprofit has done?

Chances are, that is a big fat ‘no’. So many nonprofits I have worked with are doing amazing things, but never capture those amazing things! With this module, you WILL have a clear system (and excel sheets) to capture all the amazing things your nonprofit is doing.

This step creates data for your nonprofit that will help you WIN grants, create credibility with your beneficiaries and community, you can publish it on your website, have social media content, and get more corporate sponsors.

What you want to look at is the following:

• Why you are getting information?
• What are your project goal(s)
• What are your objectives/ data elements?
• What information do you desire?
• What data needs to be collected?
• Who collects the data?
• How will the data be collected?
• What is the frequency of the collection of data?
• Where will the data be stored?
• Why will this data be useful?
• Who will you share this data with?

I know this sounds like a lot, but it really is pretty simple.

An example could be:

• Why you are getting information? For grant purposes and to direct projects.
• What is your project goal? To increase sobriety among for youth, ages 12 to 18-years-old in Cool City.
• What is your objective / data element: Provide a residential center for youth, ages 12 to 18-years-old in Cool City who have co-occurring disorders or substance use disorders?
• What information do you desire? To collect information on the number of youths accessing the residential center, how many screening forms are filled out, how many youths maintain sobriety, number of services accessed, length of duration at center.
• What data needs to be collected? The number of youths accessing the residential center, how many screening forms are filled out, how many youths maintain sobriety, number of services accessed, length of duration at center.
• Who collects the data? The project director.
• How will the data be collected? Through the online software, rosters, and screening forms.
• What is the frequency of the collection of data? Weekly
• Where will the data be stored? An online locked software
• Why will this data be useful? To track budgets, used for grants and to gain other funding source partnerships, and to share with our community.
• Who will you share this data with? Funding sources, community coalitions, and on our website.

You can see how this really isn’t complicated when it is broken down. You can also see how being prepared with what you want for a project can really help strengthen it as your project director will know exactly what data is important and what to do, as well as help you secure grants and funding, and create credibility by showcasing what your nonprofit actually does.

#10: Schedule your nonprofit’s calendar

Do you actually have a calendar for the year?

Do you know when and why you are doing each and every activity?

Are you sure that each event won’t collide with another event in the community? Are your quarters broken up into steps to reach each goal?

Or, are you doing the same old fundraiser each year just because? Maybe you are missing that same grant deadline again this year (that you so promised yourself you wouldn’t miss this year!) because time got away from you.

It is vital to look at your entire year and to list out every activity, fundraiser, grant deadline, and event that your nonprofit will do. Next, identify the dates of any conflicting event, such as regional conference, competitor fundraiser event, or anything else. Make sure your scheduling doesn’t conflict with other things, or better yet, work with your competitors to create partnerships and leverage one another.

Once you have done this break everything down into quarters and make sure that you know what is due when, who will be responsible, and does it connect with your mission, resource mapping, projects, etc.

In this way you will be well on your way for the most productive year ever.

The Nonprofit Strategic Planning Course will ensure that you get all your ducks in a row and have the most effective and BEST year ever for your nonprofit.

To your Nonprofit’s Success!

Click here for more information on the Nonprofit Strategic Planning Course

• When you join The Nonprofit Strategic Planning Master Course you get access to the full course including:
• Limited Bonus. Strategic Planning Calendar Everything you need to change your planning forever.
• 47 video tutorial lessons. All accessible in our easy-to-use, fully mobile optimized custom learning platform.
• 21 Step-by-step checklists and worksheets. Customized to your productivity plan, we give you a walkthrough on every thing that needs to be done and when it needs to be done.
• Access to the Changemaker Private FB Group. Learn from others and have direct contact with Holly.
• Monthly Live Group Zoom Calls with Holly. This is a specialized group that only course members have access to.
• Certificate of Completion. You want to increase your credibility, right? This Certificate of Completion will be delivered to you once you finish the course!
• Lifetime Access. You have unlimited access to all of the material to take at your own pace and reference long into the future. Also, Holly always updates courses and adds new bonuses. You will always get access to any updates and new bonuses.

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