STEP 4

Now that you've complemented your board with a mix of old and new members, and they're all asking "what's next," it's time to secure their commitment through the strategic planning and organizational development planning phase.

Most organizations skip this phase and wonder why their board is disengaged, why board members hardly show up, or why they fail to provide the support they need.

This is because people only commit to plans they were a part of creating. As we say in community development, people who plan together execute together. So by leaving board members out of the planning process, you automatically leave them out of the execution phase.

Strategic planning also provides a platform for board members to gain a sense of joint purpose and ownership. By sharing their ideas to shape the organization, they feel a sense of ownership that is needed to go all-in toward achieving the vision.

Also, by planning with board members, they get a complete understanding of the effort and resources needed to achieve the mission and vision of the organization. This helps them see the role they have to play to ensure the organization's success. It's often because board members don't fully understand what's needed that they stand in the founder's way, trying to micromanage them.

The strategic planning phase is also a great time to initiate fundraising for your organization. It provides the opportunity to identify your ideal donors, build a list of ideal donors, and create a fundraising development plan to raise money from them.

There is a three-phase process to the strategic planning cycle.

But before you start any of these stages, if you are a new organization, it's best to start with reaching out to the community. This will help you collect feedback, ideas, and suggestions from them before you start planning with your board. You not only gain community backing by doing this, but you also gain insight and data into the community's needs, which helps you better streamline your planning. You can collect this data by studying community research, running polls and surveys, organizing focus group discussions, or engaging stakeholders and people connected to the community.

The focus today will be on the plan you create with your board, so let's jump right into the three strategic planning phases.

1. The Pre-Planning Stage

This is where you get the ideas of the board members individually. This helps them think strategically about the organization before meeting to flesh out a formal plan.

You can do this by sending an email with specific questions to each board member to gather their input on different aspects of the organization. For example, you can ask them:

- "How do we market this organization and create more awareness about the work we do?"

- "Who do you think our perfect funders would be for this organization?"

- "What areas can we improve in our programs to deliver better results?"

You can also use this phase to map out your board members' relationships by asking them to pinpoint people within their network who fit your ideal funder profile.

After collecting the feedback and ideas from your board members, you must compile these ideas into a document to serve as a base for your planning stage. You should then send this compiled document out to all board members, inviting them to the official planning session.

You will find the email templates and questions you can use to initiate this process in the pre-planning template below.

2. The Planning Phase

This is where you lay the framework for your strategic plan based on the ideas shared in the pre-planning stage. The goal here is to build a high-level framework for each board member to build on during the post-planning stage. Your planning session shouldn't extend more than two hours.

During planning, you should review your organization's core profile, which includes your vision statement, mission statement, goals, objectives, and core values. As co-trustees, it is your responsibility to reaffirm that the mission and vision are still relevant and to help refine them if needed. You will also review your programs, events, and activities; marketing; partnerships; fundraising; infrastructure development and technology; and budgeting and finance management.

Your job as the leader is to facilitate this process, making sure everyone shares their ideas, the meeting stays on track, and the time frame is respected. You will find the facilitation guide in the template below.

The outcome of this phase should be a clear, high-level strategic direction for the organization. This is different from organizational development planning, which focuses more on the internal processes, structures, and culture needed to execute the strategic plan. For instance, the strategic plan might set a goal to raise $50,000, while the organizational development plan outlines the new roles, committees, and systems needed to make that goal a reality.

3. The Post-Planning Phase

This is the delegation and presentation phase. To end the planning phase, you must delegate the authority to oversee different aspects of the organization to each board member. The delegation is not to assign a task, but to delegate the leadership of a specific functional area. One board member can be delegated fundraising, another marketing, another programs, another financial management, another human resources, and so on.

The goal of delegation at this phase is to get board members to build a more detailed plan for their delegated area. This detailed plan should feature the goal to be achieved, the process of execution, the people needed to execute, the materials needed, a timeline of activities, and their specific role in leading this effort.

After developing their plan, each board member should send it out to every other board member to review before the final presentation meeting. A meeting should then be called for the presentation of their plans for board adoption. In that meeting, the board can critique the plans, ask for clarity, provide modifications, and at the end, adopt the plan for execution.

Your job as the founder is the final co-architect. You will take all the individual plans and put them into one comprehensive document, making it the organization's strategic and organizational development plan. This document should be cohesive, realistic, and have a detailed budget for execution.

For founders without resources to execute their plan, the presentation and adoption of the fundraising plan is the platform to move a motion to get the board to donate and raise money from their network. You will find a sample resource development plan and the script to initiate fundraising to fund that plan below.

With strategic planning done, your board members should now have the urge and eagerness to execute the mission. The next step will guide you through the process of execution and the role your board plays in driving that process.