Board Planning: The Annual Agenda

A board does critical work for their organization, yet many spend little time planning ahead. Sarah and I believe that every board should spend time each year planning for their work together. An organization’s staff does annual work planning, the board should too. An annual plan outlines what a group wants to accomplish in the

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Refreshing Your Strategic Plan? Five Questions to Ask Before You Begin

Your strategic plan is coming to an end and you are facing the prospect of creating a new one. After initial discussions, you find that some board or staff think that the expiring strategic plan is still relevant and why not refresh it instead of starting again? Sound familiar? Sound tempting? Here are the questions we ask to help an organization decide if refreshing their expiring strategic plan is the right course of action.

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Strategic Layers in Planning

It is easy to get confused or distracted by all the jargon used in strategic planning: goals, tactics, strategies, directions, objectives, issues, activities, etc. No matter what terms you use, the information in a nonprofit strategic plan is often organized in layers. Understanding the purpose of these layers reduces the importance of their names, clarifies

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Keeping Your Strategic Plan Alive

  Have you ever had a strategic plan that ended up in a folder on a shelf somewhere? Three years later you had to wipe away a layer of dust to remember what it said? Or perhaps you worry your strategic plan will end up there and wonder if it’s worth the significant investment of

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