What is a strategic planning committee? A complete guide for nonprofits
While an organization’s staff is focused on the here and now, a nonprofit board is always looking ahead — or at least it should be. Detecting opportunities and challenges on the horizon is one of the most valuable skills a nonprofit board member can contribute.
When harnessed in a team, that foresight can be used by the organization’s strategic planning committee — a team that every nonprofit should consider creating.
So, what is a strategic planning committee and how does it benefit your nonprofit? Let’s take a look at this important group and how technology can help support its work.
What is nonprofit strategic planning?
Strategic planning first clarifies and solidifies an organization’s purpose and mission. Clarifying the purpose is especially important for charitable or mission-driven organizations, which are legally required to operate according to their purpose and to benefit the public accordingly.
Then, participants in the process look ahead: 12 months, three years, five years. The board, as part of its fiduciary responsibilities, provides the direction that sustains the organization for the upcoming these short- and longer-term periods..
This strategizing is critical, but it’s not always a priority. In a piece for the Harvard Business Review, consultant Alan Cantor wrote, “Boards need to keep strategy front and center in everything they do.” But that can be difficult when operations absorb much of the board’s meeting time.
“Boards need to keep strategy front and center in everything they do.” – Alan Cantor, consultant.
Board size may influence the value of a distinct strategic planning committee. The average size of a corporate board is about nine members and the average size of a nonprofit board is about 17 members. Boards that have larger numbers of members may be too large to provide the necessary focus for forming important strategic directions. Smaller groups have the time to vet issues thoroughly and come to conclusions quickly.
So board size and members’ available time may dictate whether a standalone strategic planning committee makes sense for your organization.
Choosing to implement a strategic planning committee
Boards that choose to delegate strategic planning have standing committees do the legwork on creating a strategic plan and bring a draft to the board for consideration. This process saves the board time because they have a base of information to use when asking questions and making requests for revisions.
If you’re setting up a committee for the first time, a quick internet search will yield lots of information on how the process works. For example, the American Hospital Association has published a sample charter.
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What do strategic planning committees do?
An effective strategic planning committee follows a thoughtful, detailed process to help guide the organization into coming years.
Identify issues
Generally, strategic planning committees will begin the process by identifying the big-picture issues they need to address. It’s also common to do an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — a SWOT analysis.
Evaluate opportunities and threats
Also helpful in strategic planning is looking at opportunities and threats, assessing customer satisfaction and demand and getting input from employees about their perceptions of strengths and weaknesses. These exercises will help the committee members to determine their starting point.
Develop strategies
The next phase of the process typically consists of developing the strategies. At this point, the strategic planning committee reviews the mission, vision and values statements to determine if they want to recommend any changes to the board.
Look to the future
Working together, the committee then develops the three- to five-year plan, along with a three-year financial projection. Using the SWOT analysis as a reference point, the committee should be able to set some solid priorities. The next part of strategic planning is to set some short- to midterm goals.
How the strategic planning committee sets and tracks goals
The previous work should simplify the process of goal-setting — for example, if the committee identifies market opportunities, goals may include making the connections necessary to realize those opportunities.
When setting goals, the strategic planning committee should follow these steps.
Set SMART goals
Any time an organization sets goals, it’s prudent to set SMART goals. The acronym SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable or attainable
- Realistic or reasonable
- Time measured
In other words, each goal should be specifically worded and be something that can be realistically achieved. Strategic planning committees should be able to put a timeframe on achieving the goals and should be able to measure the outcomes.
Develop useful measurements
The committee will also need to identify key performance indicators and plan to use them to track the board’s progress against their goals.
Budget
To ensure that there’s adequate funding to support the new objectives, the committee will need to develop a one-year budget for the short-term plan.
Delegate responsibility
The final step in this phase is to assign organizational goals to the responsible departments. They will then be able to get started planning their action steps so they’ll have much to report to the board at the designated periods.
Monitor performance
The steps listed above compose the bulk of the work that a strategic planning committee needs to do, but there is one final, important stage in the strategic planning process, and that entails monitoring the performance of the strategic plan.
Get approvals and buy-in
Upon finalization of the strategic plan, the committee should get a final approval from the board before pursuing implementation. The committee then needs to communicate the strategy to the whole organization, so that everyone feels invested in their responsibility and is contributing to the overall plan.
Tracking the strategic planning committee’s work
To keep strategic planning on track, the committee should be careful not to overlook creating a schedule for progress reviews. Most boards find that quarterly progress reports are sufficient for monitoring and follow-up. This gives the board a chance to review the strategic plan and to ask for modifications if they’re necessary. Taking these steps should ensure that boards are seeing specific and measurable progress in multiple areas.
At the end of the year, it’s time to review the committee’s achievements and success and schedule time to build on that success by conducting strategic planning for the next year.
How technology supports the strategic planning committee
A board management platform like BoardEffect can be an asset to the organization in all its strategic planning work.
In the earlier HBR piece, the author follows up his statement about the value of including strategic planning in everything the board does with an observation that this may require “overhauling how organizations put together their board agendas, which can be more disruptive than you might expect.” Flexibility can be a real struggle for organization boards, but BoardEffect allows for on-the-fly agenda building based on customizable templates.
The document library and easy user dashboards let board members find everything they need with a click or quick search, including progress reports related to the current strategic plan.
And secure workrooms create a convenient location for committee meetings, allowing contributors to meet from wherever they work.
At Diligent, we understand the value foresight brings to a nonprofit, and we’ve designed BoardEffect to be a flexible solution to support your efforts to see what’s ahead. Whatever shape your organization’s strategic planning takes, BoardEffect can be a valuable tool to collaborate, measure progress and document accomplishments.
