Strategic Planning. Strategic planning is a management tool that is used to help an organization do a better job - to focus its energy, to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. Strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. (Adapted from Bryson's Strategic Planning in Public and Nonprofit Organizations)

Strategic planning involves preparing the best way to respond to the circumstances of the organization's environment, whether or not those circumstances are known in advance; nonprofits often must respond to dynamic and even hostile environments. Being strategic means being clear about the organization's objectives, being aware of the organization's resources, and incorporating both into being consciously responsive to a dynamic environment.

In a strategic plan, the organization intentionally sets goals (i.e., chooses a desired future) and develops an approach to achieving those goals. The organization must raise questions that help it examine experience, test assumptions, gather and incorporate information about the present, and anticipate the environment in which the organization will be working in the future. Choices must then be made in order to answer the sequence of questions mentioned above. Some organizational decisions and actions will be determined to be more important than others.

There are many other variations of strategic planning methods, from short duration, self-guided approaches to more complex and lengthier models. 

A strategic planning process used by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence involves the consultant meeting with the board and leadership team in two three-four hour sessions to review the mission and vision, the board and Executive Director responsibilities, committee descriptions, and finally the lines of business and success measures for the organization. This work results in a plan which is used continuously to monitor both the ongoing work as well as the planning work on a quarterly basis and is updated annually. For more information, contact CNE at center@cfnpe.org.