Grow Your Program
Strategic planning for nonprofit organizations: A simple guide
Nonprofit directors make hundreds of choices on behalf of their organizations every day. Smart directors don’t make these decisions off the cuff. Instead, they’re guided by a strategic vision to ensure every choice moves the nonprofit closer to its goals.
Strategic planning for nonprofit organizations is a big job. It’s easy to feel like you don’t have time for long-range thinking when you’re dealing with daily challenges. But the most successful, scalable nonprofits have clear strategic plans that guide every aspect of their operation.
If your nonprofit doesn’t have one, or if you think the plan you have might not be robust enough to meet your needs, this guide will help. We’ll show you why strategic planning is essential for nonprofit organizations and offer a six-step guide for how to do it.
The difference between a strategic plan and a business plan
Your nonprofit may already have a business plan, so why do you need a strategic plan as well? The quick answer is that a nonprofit business plan meets a different need than a strategic plan. Business plans look at organizations as they are right now. It covers the short-term needs of the organization, and is often completed when the organization is founded.
Meanwhile, strategic plans lay out how the organization can grow and evolve over time. It sets the long term vision for the organization with strategies to achieve it. If you want to scale your nonprofit or meet a growing need, strategic planning is an essential task.
To be totally clear, your nonprofit mission statement and vision statement aren’t replacements for a strategic plan. These statements are usually short, aspirational, and public-facing. They talk a lot about what you hope to achieve, without the nitty-gritty details of how you’ll get there. By contrast, a strategic plan is all about the gritty details.
The benefits of strategic planning for nonprofit organizations
There are several key benefits to strategic planning:
Plan for growth and expansion. Nonprofits often have to meet complex needs with a small team and limited budget. Daily work is mostly focused on the challenges each day brings. Strategic planning gives you the opportunity to look ahead at what the organization hopes to achieve.
Unite everyone toward common goals. Daily challenges make it easy to get lost in the weeds. A clear strategic plan brings staff and volunteers together toward common goals.
Create reliable ways to track progress. Setting measures of progress is a key part of strategic planning for nonprofit organizations. This helps you check that you’re moving in the right direction, and makes impact reporting easier too!
Ensure resources are allocated appropriately. Efficiency helps nonprofits do more with less. Shared goals and strategies guide resource allocation so you can make the most of what you have.
6 Steps for developing a strategic plan for your nonprofit
Strategic planning for nonprofit organizations is similar to the process that businesses go through. The difference is that you have some unique stakeholders and a slightly different focus. While businesses are driven by profits, you’re focused on impacts.
The six-step process below will show you how to develop a strategic plan that positions your organization for growth and efficiency.
Step 1: Assess your current situation
Start by looking at your organization as it is today. Consider what is going well and where the organization may be struggling. You might want to use some business assessment tools like a SWOT analysis, which measures four aspects of an organization: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Example of SWOT Analysis for an arts and education nonprofit:
- Strengths: small but committed group of frequent students; high student satisfaction scores; proactive and engaged board
- Weaknesses: cumbersome class sign-up process; difficulty finding and keeping volunteers
- Opportunities: new grants are available for programs like ours; potential partnership with the new art store in town
- Threats: rent is increasing; donations are decreasing throughout the industry
When identifying your threats, be sure to take potential competition into account. It might be uncomfortable to think about competition in the context of nonprofits. There’s plenty of room to do good in most communities. Yet, most nonprofits face some form of competition.
Your theater may be competing with internet streamed movies and sporting events for entertainment dollars. Arts classes are competing with online course platforms and even Youtube tutorials. Part of your strategic plan should address how you differentiate yourself from these competitors.
To inform your analysis, you can collect patron and student feedback and gather insights from staff, volunteers and instructors. Take a hard look at your financial standing and how your organization is viewed by the community. Understanding is power when it comes to strategic planning.
Step 2: Outline your goals and objectives
In this step, consider what you would like your organization to achieve in the next three to five years. You might start by reviewing your mission and vision statements. Take into account the student and staff feedback you collected. Did it reveal opportunities for growth, or even a direction that sounds promising?
The majority of your goals should be SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. In other words, “grow our student list” isn’t a clear enough goal for your strategic vision. You’re better off with something like: “grow our active student list by 20% by 2030,” where active students are identified as students who have completed a class in the last six months.
Step 3: Identify current capabilities and gaps
Your capabilities could include resources, knowledge, skills, processes or systems that can help you reach your goals. Resources might be your beautiful theater or the charitable trust you benefit from. Having clear Standard Operating Procedures is a capability. So is a seamless class registration and payment processing system.
Gaps are those areas where you know the organization is lacking. If you’re thinking, “we may not be able to meet that goal if we don’t have x,” then x is a gap you need to fill.
Common gaps arts and education nonprofits might face are:
- Need more volunteers to support organizational growth
- No or inadequate standard operating procedures
- Need part-time staff to support marketing efforts
- Lack of truly useful software solutions
- Struggles with marketing and getting the word out about programs
- Funding shortfalls
(If you’re looking to fill a gap in your class marketing and registration process, CourseStorm might be the solution your organization needs.)
Step 4: Develop an action plan
Consider each of your goals and identify a few key actions you can realistically take that will move you toward them. Your first action items will most likely be things that help you fill the most critical gaps you identified during the previous step.
For example, if you want to increase overall enrollment, you might start by offering classes that are more tailored to your community.
The best actions help you achieve multiple goals. For example, you might partner with local businesses to help you expand your offerings and improve your connection with the community.
Your action plan should include a timeline for starting and completing each item as well as a list of the resources needed for each.
Step 5: Set measures and metrics
Each big-picture goal and action item should have a corresponding metric—a way to measure progress and know when you’ve hit your goal. If you can’t figure out a way to measure any particular goal, you might need to refine it a little more.
If your goal is to improve the student experience, you might set a metric that measures the number of complaints received. But a more thorough approach might be to share a satisfaction survey now, and then redo the survey in six months or a year after you’ve made some thoughtful changes to your process.
As you can see, there are often multiple ways to measure progress toward a goal. Take some time to pick a thoughtful and representative measure.
Avoid “vanity metrics” that look good on paper but don’t actually tell you much about your progress. For example, the number of flyers you post around town could impact whether people know about your program, but it doesn’t tell you much about the success of your marketing campaigns. A better measure might be the percentage increase in first-time students.
Step 6: Document and share your strategy with staff
Your strategic plan is most useful when it’s shared with everyone in the organization. Create a document that includes your goals, action plan, and metrics. Then circulate it to staff and volunteers. Don’t forget to share it with your teachers too!
Remember that it’s helpful to revisit your strategic plan often and show your team how their efforts align to that plan. There should be a cascading effect: Your strategic plan drives your short-term (and long-term) goals and objectives which drive day-to-day efforts and tactics. If your staff understands how their day-to-day links to a bigger plan, they’ll stay more focused and motivated!
Bonus: Your strategy for a thriving arts education program
If one of your strategic goals is to make your arts education program more profitable, learn how your program can thrive and become the key to growth and stability for your nonprofit.
Natasha Wahid
Natasha is a seasoned marketing leader with a curious mind and a passion for storytelling and community. A mission-driven person, Natasha has spent the majority of her career in industries that impact people, including HR and education technology. A firm believer in lifelong learning, Natasha is currently sharpening her roller skating skills and dusting off her Italian.