“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” When said like that, it’s pretty cut and dried. But the reality for many nonprofit organizations is quite different. While they understand the importance of strategic planning they run up against challenges in initiating the process or implementing the plan. A strategic planning consultant and three organizations – ranging in size from one staff member to a team of 180 – share the positives they’ve learned about strategic planning and how to overcome some of the pitfalls.

Many of the challenges are tied to the daily realities of running a nonprofit. “The day-to-day operations can take you away from long-term planning. You have emergencies, urgent matters,” says Margaret Stanowski, executive director of Operation Springboard. “We’re dealing with at-risk youth and adults so [we] are often dealing with crisis. You have to manage that against your commitment to planning.”

Day-to-day realities get in the way

It was, in fact, the day-to-day realities that kept the GoodLife Kids Foundation from thinking about strategic planning. For the first five years of the foundation’s existence, they had just one part-time staff person and only so much could be accomplished. Then in August 2004, Lisa Burrows started as the organization’s first full-time executive director and it made sense to embark on a strategic planning process. “It was very clear to me and to the board that this was the necessary next step,” explains Burrows. “We wanted to be fiscally responsible to our donors and we wanted direction for what we needed to be for our community.” The GoodLife Kids Foundation strategic plan started with the development of their first ever mission statement and then laid out a two-year process for what they would accomplish.

Of course, even once you are ready to start a strategic planning process, day-to-day realities can still interfere. Ron Robinson, president of ABARIS Consulting Inc., finds that it is often difficult for organizations to get beyond operational thinking. He says, “Everyone is comfortable there but we need to go a level up.” He recommends taking the discussion outside of the office to a neutral site. He also vouches for the value of hiring an outside facilitator not connected to the organization or the cause. When looking for someone to help with the strategy, he notes that organizations often look for a consultant who has a level of knowledge of their specific cause. The belief is that to build the strategy, the consultant needs to know the details of the business. But Robinson cautions, “That has a tendency to bring you down to an operational level. It also makes it harder to ask the ‘stupid question’ and to challenge the paradigm about how the organization works and how work should be done.”

Lack of time and resources

Another day-to-day reality is lack of time. Strategic planning requires time for the facilitated discussion, but also the time to pull together the information needed to make decisions. Robinson encourages organizations to spend the time and dig to figure out what information they need, how they will get it, and how they will analyze it – all before even sitting down for the strategic planning discussion.

In the case of the Canadian Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists, a member-driven professional association, a lot of time goes into collecting the background information. Executive director Ondina Love explains that every three years they develop a strategic plan and the process starts with a survey of their 5,000 members to identify priority activities.

Love’s strategy makes good sense, but conducting a member survey takes not only time but resources – resources that are often scarce in the nonprofit world. Organizations either need to build resource development into the plan or they need to be very focused and realize that there will always be many things that could be done, but they can’t all be accomplished. In fact, strategic planning is sometimes more about making decisions about what is not going to be done…or at least not in the first year. Love points out that the plan is a living document and things change. That means organizations may have to adapt, but she advises that if something is going to be added to the plan, then something else needs to be dropped.

Buying into the process and the plan

Depending on how much effort has gone into the planning, some will view it only as the board’s role and responsibility. Other organizations are far more inclusive and want to build support with other stakeholders. In Robinson’s experience, generally speaking the organizations that do a lot of fundraising are very good at building support for their plan because they understand the need for donors to buy into it.

The board must also be committed to the process because it will take time over and above their regular board commitment. Love has found it useful to have board-approved policies in place about the strategic planning process. “If you have them in place (for instance, how often to undergo a strategic planning process, what goes into it, etc.), then the board will have input into the design and be more confident with the outcome.” In the case of GoodLife Kids Foundation, before embarking on the strategic planning process Burrows spent time building support with the one or two board members who she knew from previous conversations were on side and supportive of starting a strategic planning process.

Hiring the right consultant for your organization

Finally, should the plan be developed in-house or in conjunction with an external consultant – and what advice is there for choosing the right consultant, if that is the route chosen? All of Operation Springboard’s previous plans were primarily done in-house, but in undertaking their 2005-2010 plan – the most comprehensive to date – they went with an external consultant. Says Stanowski, if you want to establish general direction for your agency, an executive director should be able to know the environment, know the emerging trends, etc. to develop an in-house plan. But in undertaking a comprehensive plan with many external stakeholders, she felt it made sense for her organization to go with an external consultant.

“A lot of consultants have strategic planning on their CV,” comments Stanowski. “We looked for a high energy level, someone who was tenacious. They needed very engaging qualities and our consultant was able to get people excited about the plan and also to convey – in speaking to her confidentially – that their voice would be heard.” Love notes that it is critical that the consultant’s style fit with the culture of the organization. It is important to check references to get a sense of whether the facilitator would work well with your organization.

No two ways about it, strategic planning requires support, time and resources. Nevertheless, Burrows, Love, Robinson and Stanowski are all firm believers that the positives far outweigh the pitfalls.

Louise Chatterton Luchuk is a freelance writer and consultant who combines her love of writing with experience at the local, provincial and national levels of volunteer-involving organizations. For more information, visit www.luchuk.com.