Strategic Planning

The most important deliverable and implementation tool you are required to develop as an organisation is your strategic plan. A strategic plan is a document that detailes your disciplined steps for arriving at key organisational decisions, priorities and agreeing on actions that will shape and guide your organisation on what, why, when and how to meet its vision and mission. A good strategic plan takes the vision and mission approved by the Board and translates it into an overarching plan that the Board must approve before implementation.

Too often we have seen many nonprofits running without a written strategic plan as the Founder or Executive Director seems to have it all written in his or her head. A written strategic plan is an important document that should be publicly available to all staff, beneficiaries and critical stakeholders. A written strategic plan serves the following purposes:

1. Serves as an accountability tool for measuring the organisations implementation of its vision and mission
2. A basis for which to develop annual organisational work plan and budget against which organisational progress can be measured.
3. Forms the basis for decisions to allocate and source for resources both financial and human.

What should be the life span of a strategic plan?
We encourage well established organisations to plan for at least 5 years. Small and medium sized organisations are advised to plan for 3 years. Smaller, newer or less financially secured organisations may find it more useful to have an annual work plan instead. Note that a strategic plan is a living document and should be revisited annually to reflect new developments that may have taken place over the years. See for a sample of NNNGO’s strategic plan.

10 Key steps to strategic planning and questions to consider
Step 1: Preparatory phase

• Which staff, volunteer, board member, beneficiaries will be involved in the process?
• What exact role will they play?
• How will our partner organisations, counterparts, members, beneficiaries contribute?
• Who outside of the organisation will take part and what external perspectives or experiences do we want them to bring into the process?
• What is the timetable for delivering the plan and how much time will each member of the team need to allocate to the process?
• Who will be responsible for doing the work relating to the desk research component (collecting relevant document) of the process?
• Who will be responsible for ensuring discussions and decisions taken are properly documented (written notes) Who will be responsible for providing administrative support for the planning process?

Step 2: Decide on the scope of work Start this step with discussions around what the organisation must do and other things that it must not do. This conversation must be driven by legal laws, own organisation policies/governing document, agreement with donors/partners or stakeholders.
You can use the following questions to shape the discussions:

• Why were we established as an organisation?
• What laws, policies, agreements, values, principles influence the way we operate?
• Are there external legislation and agreements that can affect our operations?
• How do this external legislation and agreements affect our operations?
• What internal rules and regulations influence our work as an organisation?
• What influence do stakeholders have on the service, programmes or activities of the organisation?
• What is possible and impossible for us to do given all of the above.

Step 3: External Scan

• What are the opportunities in the external environment that we can seize?
• What are the threats in the external environment that we need to overcome?
• Which groups of people are most affected by the issues we are working on?
• What are the social, economic, political, technological and environmental trends that make our beneficiaries vulnerable?
• What we already doing to address this as an organisation?
• What are other agencies and stakeholders doing to address these issues?

Note that this questions are best framed based on the organisations aims as outlined in its governing document and what it is legally bound to do given its mandate and scope of work identified in step 2.

Step 4: Internal Review

• What are the strengths of the organisation that can help it to overcome the threats?
• What weaknesses in the organisation need to be addressed to seize the opportunities?
• What makes our organisation unique?
• What main lessons can be learnt from our implementation of current or past programmes?
• What are the organisations biggest achievements since it was formed?
• What areas need improvement?
• What are the main lessons learned since the organisation was founded?

A SWOC analysis (strength, weakness, opportunities, constraints) can help in achieving this.

Step 5: Identifying strategic issues
Activities from steps 1 to 4 help to arrive at what strategic issues the organisation should focus on as by the time these steps are completed attention would already be focusing on the real important issues, major choices facing the organisation, areas needing change and insights about how to resolve them.

Strategic issues are best written or framed as questions as this will highlight areas where the organisation needs to make choices and decisions. The aim, scope of work, external and internal environment scan and the results of the SWOC analysis will help shape the strategic issues.

In framing the issues, the following questions will need to be answered:

• Can the organisation justify why this is a burning issue?
• Is the organisation able to do anything about it?
• Will the organisation make significant impact by addressing the issue?
• What implications do the issue have on the organisations finance and human resources?
• Will the issue still be relevant in the next 2 years?
• What are the consequence if this issue is not addressed?

For example an organisation working on family planning has noticed an increase on the number of people not able to access family planning in communities across their state of operation. A trends analysis suggests that this is likely to increase given the budgetary allocations to family planning by the State in the last 3 years. The organisation already supports 2 communities out of about 700. Opportunities to expand their support to other parts of the state are constrained by funding and adequate human resources.

Strategic issue: Given our existence in the 2 communities out of 700 and our dwindling funding situation including lack of human capacity, should the organisation develop its work further to be able to expand to at least 100 communities?

Step 6: Defining Strategic Aim
By now you would already have a long list of strategic issues, it is important to start narrowing them down at this stage to three or four. The following strategic questions will help in achieving this.

• How can the strategic issues be merged?
• Which of the issues should we prioritise?

In the end you want a list of issues that are still relevant in the next three to five years ahead stated while accurately stating what the organisation wants to do and how it intends to do this during this time.

Using the strategic issue in Step 6 to form an aim, we could frame a strategic aim like this: To improve access to family planning services among 100 communities in XYZ State, working in partnership with the local CBOs and the State Government.

Step 7: Define the strategies
Strategies are the “roads” the organisation plans to take as it works towards achieving the strategic aim identified in step 6. It defines the big picture and priorities over the coming three to five years. Key questions to be considered are outlined below:

• What is the most appropriate path to pursue in addressing the identified strategic aims?
• What methods (approaches) would be used for realising each of the strategic aims?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of these methods?
• What method or combination of methods would we use in realising each strategic aim?
• Whom will we collaborate with?
• Who will be our partner or counterpart in realising our strategic aims?

An example of strategy to help realise the strategic aim in step 6 could be:

Strategic aim:
To improve access to family planning services among 100 communities in XYZ State working in partnership with the local CBOs and the state government.
Strategies

• Undertake in-depth needs assessment of family planning needs in the 100 communities where the organisation will be working.
• Secure commitment of the State to allocate more funding
• Fund community family health services in 100 communities across the state
• Provide capacity building to healthcare professionals in communities where the organisation has interventions
• Secure additional funds to expand from the present 2 communities to 100 new communities.

Step 8: Identify resource needs
As soon as the strategies are identified for each of the three or four strategic aims or priorities, working out what the human and financial elements needed to achieve the plan over a three to five year period is an imperative. These serve as a strong foundation for the development of an internal capacity plan (step 9) and costing of the strategic plan (step 10).
Key questions to consider for the financial resources element are:

• What financial resources do we currently have and for which aspect of the plan?
• Where do these resources come from(local/international donor, government, international agencies)?
• Are there new funders that can be approached?
• What new sources of funding can be explored?
• How can we be resourceful in our approach to funding the plan?

Key human resources questions to be raised include:

• What skills and experience are currently available to the organisation in realising the strategies?
• What are the skill and experience gaps that exist within the organisation?
• How can we fill these gaps?
• Do we have the right balance and mix within our management (finance and administration) and programme staff (advocacy, communication, project, capacity building etc.)?

Step 9: Internal Capacity Building Plan
The internal capacity building plan helps to specify which areas the organisation needs capacity and how this will be addressed. Usually the capacity gaps would have emerged from discussions during the SWOC and possibly when discussing strategies to achieve a specific aim. Where it happens the issue of capacity is mentioned under a strategic aim, it is important to ensure that it is linked directly to that aim and not separately.

Step 10: Costing the Strategic Plan
At this stage this is where issues around budgeting come in. This step focuses on the amount of money needed to implement the strategic plan. Here the inputs required for each strategy in terms of people, equipment, services and materials are identified and costed. Costs can be categorised into recurrent office costs, management costs and direct programme costs (e.g. workshops, research and advocacy costs etc). The organisations income needs to be assessed to identify existing funds or pledged and gaps or new areas that are not funded. The gaps in funding should be translated into a fundraising strategy.