Turn strategic planning into mission growth

Dani Cluff: Perfect. We will give it just a second as everyone gets in.

Here we go. Well, welcome everybody and good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us. I know this can be a chaotic time of year for a lot of people — summer break, getting ready for fall giving season — so I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedules to join us. We’ve got Marie Palacios joining us from Funding for Good today, and I’m super excited to have her with us. Marie was wondering if you can drop in the chat as we go through our intro today — where you’re joining from, and what you’d like to take away from today.

I’ll just go quick and get through our intro so we can get to the real content for the day, but my name is Dani Cluff. I’m our partner marketing manager over at Bloomerang, and I’m joining today from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I’ll let Marie share a little more about where she’s joining from when she gets to her intro, but a couple of housekeeping notes for today: we are recording today’s session, so you’ll receive that recording after the webinar. You’ll also get the slides, as well as a few resources that Marie’s going to reference during her presentation. We’ve got the chat, where you can chat with Marie and me as well as your peers on the webinar — you can ask questions there, but I do recommend adding those to our Q&A area so we can better keep track of them as we work through the webinar.

If you’re not familiar with Bloomerang, we are a giving platform built for purpose, created to help nonprofits build stronger relationships and grow their impact. If that’s something you’re interested in learning more about, and how we can help your organization, we’re going to launch a poll at the end of today’s webinar where you can opt in to learn more from Marie and Funding for Good and the work they’re doing, or from Bloomerang and the work we do.

And then, of course, our wonderful speaker for today, Marie Palacios. Thank you so much, Marie, for joining us and taking time out of your busy schedule and all you’ve got going on to share more about what you’re doing.

Marie Palacios: My pleasure. Thanks for having us. We always love to be online with Bloomerang. We saw some of your reps at a fundraising conference in Virginia last week, and Bloomerang is always everywhere we go, so we’re always happy to be in the same space.

All right. Any other housekeeping before we jump in?

Dani Cluff: I think that’s everything. I’ll let you take it over.

Marie Palacios: Wonderful. Well, afternoon, everyone. It is my pleasure to spend the next hour with you and converse about all things strategic planning. I’m going to share my slide here. You should see it on the screen — Dani will let me know if it’s not.

I’ve been checking out the chat box, and it looks like we have representation from all over the country, which is exciting. I saw a few neighbors from down the road — I’m in Western North Carolina, in Morganton. So those of you in the Gastonia and Charlotte area, we’re not too far apart. I always love to see local groups as well as others joining from all over the country.

So today we’re talking about where strategic planning and fundraising meet. I know Bloomerang has marketed this as turning strategic planning into mission growth, and that’s exactly what happens when you partner strategic planning and fundraising initiatives. The way we like to work here at Funding for Good is to make sure that every time we’re in front of a group, everyone gets something they can take away and use today. We do not do a fifty-minute pitch and ten minutes of content — that’s not who we are. We’ve been in your seat.

I have been in the nonprofit sector for over two decades. I started as a volunteer, then became the founder of one of North Carolina’s largest after-school programs for bilingual children, K through 12. I became an executive director, worked in grassroots communities and community organizing — everything from education to public archaeology — and have been consulting full time since. Mandy Pierce, owner of Funding for Good, and I have been partnering in some way for 24 years now, and one of my favorite things to do with organizations nationwide is strategic planning, so today is a particular interest of mine.

Now, an hour isn’t a long time, especially since I’ll be pausing for questions. At any point during today’s session, if you have questions, look for the Q&A box — there is one. Any comments — if you’re sharing resources with your colleagues, or affirming something like “that’s great” or “I’d like a little more on that” — that’s what the chat box is for. There are over 1,700 people registered; we don’t know how many will show up live versus watch the replay. Dani will be checking the chat box and will let me know if I miss a question, but if you have a pressing question, pop it in the Q&A. Every few slides I’ll stop to check that, so we don’t have to wait until the end of the session, and we’ll address things as we go.

I’ll try to wrap up a minute or two early so I can catch any final questions and make sure I’ve connected you with at least something you can take away and use today. Pop into the chat box and let me know what you’re hoping to take away and use today, because if it’s not something I’m covering, I definitely want to point you in the right direction. So let’s get started.

As I mentioned, my name is Marie Palacios. Mandy Pierce is the one on the screen with the shorter hair, and we work with nonprofits, for-profits, and government entities nationwide. I’ve been in three states in the last two weeks — teaching at fundraising conferences, facilitating strategic planning for multiple groups — and I’ll be in Pennsylvania, Alaska, and a few other states over the coming months, so I’m probably in some of your neck of the woods. I’ll be in Missouri as well.

We get to see a lot when we’re traveling across the country and working with diverse leaders and nonprofits — a lot of things that work well, and a lot of things that can be improved — and some of those things show up in our trainings. So I’d love to know, in one word, what is your strategic planning experience? Is it minimal? Is it expansive? Is it vast? Is it exhausting? What’s a word that describes your strategic planning experience? That gives me a pulse check of who’s in the room and what that experience has been.

Minimal, novice, limited — okay. Limited, okay. Modern, expansive, excellent, overwhelming — all right, so we have a little bit of all of that on backgrounds.

We promised, as part of our collaboration with Bloomerang, to make sure you got some free resources. I’m putting in the chat box that Funding for Good has a free training coming up on August 6 on strategic planning — how to get started. So if you’re here today thinking, “wait, we need to know more about strategic planning basics,” this is a good first step. We have lots of other trainings on the topic, but that one’s coming up and it’s free. If you can’t join live, you can always access the replay. Dani has links as well — if you feel like you need support after this call, you can book a call with me, or you can access our free strategic planning quick guide. She’ll put those links in the chat box, so if you want Funding for Good’s free quick guide, just click on that and it’ll take you right there.

So thank you for taking the time to answer. We have lots and lots to cover today — there’s a duplicate on the slide, so go ahead and ignore that. Sometimes when things get uploaded, the format gets messed up. But we’re going to cover why donors request a copy of your strategic plan, how it’s the greatest tool in your toolkit, what content your donors are looking for, terms that increase your chances of funding, why they’re willing to fund it — there’s the duplicate again — and where to access a variety of free tools and templates to help your organization grow for good. So in the chat box, I just gave you a resource for the free upcoming training, and we’ll share lots of tips and tools there, and Dani will share that free download for the quick guide.

As we get started today, we need to think about what strategic planning is and how it impacts our work. I like to say that strategic planning needs to be looked at on different levels, and I always give this example. Every year I lead two, three, four groups down to Guatemala. I started doing it through a ministry, and I continue to do it independently today, with both non-faith and faith-based organizations and groups — the idea is to connect people to the beautiful culture and people of Guatemala.

A year in advance, I’m putting out a call saying, “I’m leading a group down” — true story — January 4, 2027, and we’re going to leave a North Carolina airport that day. We’ll arrive in Guatemala City, then travel an hour and a half over to Antigua, Guatemala, one of the most beautiful ancient cities in Guatemala. The next day we head into communities where we’ll do service work and volunteer work, meet people, and engage in culture sharing. Then, on that next Monday or Tuesday, we head up to the beautiful Lake Atitlán — voted one of the most beautiful lakes in the world — where we’ll engage with the Mayan people, eat in people’s homes, do cooking classes, and then head back to Antigua, Guatemala, where we’ll debrief, rest, reflect, and head back to North Carolina.

Now, do you know where we’re going to be every day? Because my itinerary has day one: we arrive, travel to Guatemala City, have a cultural dinner; day two: we’re doing this. You know, based on that far-out picture, what we’re going to be doing and what the dates are — but do you know exactly where you’re going to be staying? Do you know the name of the driver? Do you know what you’re having for dinner at that coffee farmer’s house? Not yet, because we’re not there yet.

What we do is, once we know who’s coming on the trip — my January 2027 trip is now almost full, I’ve got the team together, and next week we’re meeting together — I look at the passion, the mobility, the adventure level of the group, and then I customize. I might find that this group doesn’t want to build houses for volunteers, and instead wants to work in a local school, or do X, Y, or Z. So while we said we’re going to do service work, once we know who the team is and what their passions and expertise are, I can begin to flesh that out.

Then, as we get closer to the trip, we say, “this is where you’re staying, these are your roommates.” Then, “here are our drivers, here are our meal plans.” And by the time we’re on the trip, I’m saying, “hey, get breakfast by seven o’clock.” That’s what strategic planning done well should look like. Your master plan should be that overview, but it’s based on our realities today, and the realities around us change constantly. The world changes, the economy changes, our teams change with transition. So we have the big picture, and that’s the destination — we’re going to Guatemala, we’re going to California, we’re going to New York, wherever we’re going. But the stops along the way, and the speed at which we travel, often have to be adapted so we can leverage the funding we need and the team, volunteers, or buy-in we need. So I want you to think about strategic planning through that trip mentality: as you leverage your strategic plan to get volunteers, donors, and people engaged, you need to share the destination and let them know that the way you get there — some of the stops along the way — will shift, to make sure you’re being the best steward of your resources.

So what is a strategic plan? We like to say a strategic plan is both a process and a product that defines where your organization is and where you want to be. It confirms what success looks like in measurable terms, and it offers a roadmap for how you want to get there. It is not business as usual, a standalone development plan, or a multi-year implementation plan — though it does inform those things.

So, business as usual — all the things you do that keep your mission alive — you probably already have an operating budget for that. Then an organization positioning itself for success and sustainability also has capacity building, which is where strategic planning comes in. You go through a strategic planning process, agree on initiatives, and then put in budget line items. Your business-as-usual and your capacity-building initiatives get merged into your annual operating budget, and that becomes your operating budget, which then informs your development plan — your fundraising plan — as business as usual plus capacity building.

Many people forget to put capacity building into their annual operating budget. Then, when you go to a donor and say, “we’d like funding to do a strategic plan, or to implement this portion of our plan,” they say, “it’s not in your budget.” If it’s not important enough for you to write down, it’s not important enough for them to write a check for. Now, I know that if you’re an organization operating on a shoestring budget — or a dental-floss budget, however thin your thread is — it’s very hard to put capacity-building initiatives into your budget without feeling overwhelmed.

What I used to do as an executive director was have what I called my “bare bones” budget, and then the “meat” — the capacity I wanted to build. My bare-bones budget was everything business as usual, but all my capacity-building items were in there with an asterisk. That let my board know — and let me know — these are things that will better position us for success. The board could see those items, but if they didn’t happen, we needed to address it, because that would impact our ability to move forward, even though we could still sustain day-to-day operations. So you can do the bare bones, you can do the asterisk, but you need to make sure your capacity-building initiatives are in the budget. When we work with clients, after we come up with a plan, we map it out into a year, break it down by quarter, and give them a budgeting sheet so they can calculate what these capacity-building initiatives will cost and write them into grants and conversations with donors.

Now, there are four questions we’re going to answer, and I’ll show you the way I answer them: Where are we now? Where do we want to be at specific points in the future? What might block us? How do we get there? You can answer them in whatever order you want, but I prefer to start with “where are we now,” because that’s our starting line.

If I told you I could run out of my house and touch the mailbox in thirty seconds and be back, that might sound good, but none of you can judge that because you don’t know my position relative to the mailbox. I could tell you it’s not realistic, but you wouldn’t know that, because you don’t know where I’m starting. In the same way, your organization may assume that everyone on your team agrees on where you’re starting, or that your donors know where you’re starting — and that’s a false assumption.

Everyone on your team is like a baseball player on the same field. You’re all catching and passing the same ball, but your position on the field is different, so your perspective on where you are financially, programmatically, and in community engagement is going to look different — not right or wrong, necessarily, just different, because your position on the field is different. So: where are we now financially? Where are we now programmatically? You have to be able to answer that to leverage dollars in a grant proposal, and you need to be able to answer it when you’re speaking to donors. Why not answer it as part of your strategic planning process, at multiple levels?

I like to answer this question at three different levels when strategic planning. You can do whatever you wish, but I find it helpful, when speaking to donors, to start with: where are we now internally as an organization? That’s our internal realities. How many of you have heard of a SWOT analysis? Let me know in the chat box.

I see a lot of people saying yes — lots of thumbs going up. Wow, y’all are very responsive, which I love. So a lot of people have heard of it.

So, for “where are we now” internally, we look at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. But I never end on threats — I’m on a personal campaign to make it “SWOT-A” instead, adding achievements, for a couple of reasons. Number one, as a facilitator, it’s not fun to end on a threat, and it’s not fun for my participants either. Number two, if we’re covering strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, we should also be able to name the achievements, because that’s our credibility score. If we have new board members on the team, we don’t want to end on threats — we want to end on something that shows our history of success. So join me in the movement: I’m trying to make SWOT-A the norm, because everything should end in achievements.

That’s the first “where are we now.” The second is: where are we now as a community? We need to know what our community needs in order to address those needs and issues. And finally: where are we as an industry? I’m reading your comments — there are lots of different types people use: SOAR analysis, gaps analysis. I do different scans depending on the organization; there are so many ways to do environmental scans, and your environmental scan can be internal or external. We have articles on Funding for Good’s website — you’ve probably heard of PESTLE, or STEEPLE. Get on our website, use the search icon, and put in “environmental scans” — you’ll find some quick tips there.

So: where are we now as an organization, where are we now as a community, and where are we now as an industry — that’s your market study. Some organizations hire us to do all three. Others say, “we’ve already got our finger on the pulse of the community because we’re grassroots.” Others say, “this new health study from the county just came out — that’s what we’re using.” You don’t always have to produce that work yourself. You can partner with colleagues in the community, or have someone research it and pull together the important pieces.

So, where are we now, and where do we want to be at specific points in the future? I invert these on the slide — it got a little wonky when we uploaded it — but you want to think about where you want to be long-term, your vision, and where you want to be short-term, three to five years, in measurable terms, with measurable success indicators. Where do you want to be in two years, one year? With our clients, we narrow it all the way down to where we want to be in one year and where we want to be each quarter.

Then we ask: what might block us? A lot of consultants leave this out, and a lot of organizations choose to ignore it, but if we plan our journey as if we live in an ideal world, we will always fall short, because we don’t live in an ideal world. If you have an important job interview or a meeting with a donor, are you going to say, “it takes me twelve minutes to get there, so I’ll leave exactly twelve minutes”? Some of us may — if you’re time-blind, more power to you — but then you walk in frantic. Best practice is to say, “I might hit all the red lights, I might hit road work, there might be an accident, or it’s raining” — so we plan for those detours.

Here in Western North Carolina, we went through Hurricane Helene two years ago, and I-40 between Western North Carolina and Tennessee is still closed in some places. So if my destination is California, and I’m traveling through I-40 from Western North Carolina into Tennessee, I acknowledge that I-40 has some detours. I have to decide: am I going to add more time to my trip to address that detour? Am I going to go around, fly, or find some alternative form of transportation? But if I plan that way, and let my passengers know what to expect, there isn’t the frustration and anger. When we fail to let our teammates, donors, and community know about the detours we expect, we create frustration, and it makes us look less credible when we’re reporting to donors that we were delayed, because we didn’t prepare them for those delays.

So, what might block us — and finally, the question I like to answer for our strategic planning and donor fundraising process: how do we get there? That can change, because, again, detours happen. When I’m working with clients, I use a three-column chart: the first column is current realities — where are we now. The far column says where we want to be, in year two or three. The middle column is year one — how we want to get there.

I like to say current realities is one side of the river, the two-to-three-year goals are the other side of the river, and the one-year goals are how we’re going to get across. What happens with strategic plans that fail, and where people aren’t reporting success to their donors, is they treat those middle-column items as fixed: we said we’re going to do this — did we do it or not? If we didn’t, it’s a red mark against our credibility. I look at them instead as stepping stones. If a stepping stone gets washed away, are we going to wade through the river, kayak across it, zipline across it? How else are we going to get across? So instead of saying we failed, I ask: did we come up with an alternative way? I mark it, reframe it, and then I’m able to tell my donors, “our initial strategy wasn’t as viable, and it wasn’t the best use of our resources — we found an alternative route, and we’re continuing toward our destination.” That’s language you can share with your donors, because if we don’t set realistic expectations, it’s going to be hard to get them to want to fund our capacity-building initiatives.

So why is a strategic plan important? I like to say that running a nonprofit — or any organization — without a strategic plan is like running a three-legged race without a finish line. How many of you, in elementary school, had to be tied to a friend in PE class and ended up eating a little too much dirt as you ran across the ball field? Did anyone ever do that?

Elka asked how achievements can be listed for a brand-new startup — you can speak to the achievements of the individuals starting it, using their professional successes. Love that. Oh, Eric Bilman, good to see you online — how are you, my friend?

Okay, so many of you actually went through those three-legged races. I had to go through that — I was tied to my brother’s best friend, who was tall, lanky, and impatient. I was looking around thinking, “well, where’s the finish line?” We were on the pitcher’s mound — there are lots of bases out there, so which one am I running to? The whistle would blow, and he’d take off running, and I’d eat dirt. I remember being so frustrated — I don’t know what we’re doing, he’s too fast, he’s impatient.

Then my brother asked to be paired with me. He said, “why don’t we team up?” I said, “that’s great.” My brother was very patient and a little shorter, and he would stop and say, “Marie, do you see the finish line? Do you see second base, third base — that’s the finish line.” “Do you see the finish line?” “Yes, that’s where we’re going, that’s the destination.” He said, “if I slow down and you speed up just a little, we’ll get there faster.” He acknowledged that we both needed to agree we saw the same finish line, and that sometimes slowing down allows us to speed up. That’s become a guiding principle for me in strategic planning throughout my life, because I see so many organizations with brilliant, amazing individuals who are all pulling in different directions — looking at finish lines differently because their perspective on the field is different.

They’re looking through the financial lens, the programmatic lens, the needs lens, and we have to come together as a team, acknowledge the different positions and perspectives, and agree: this is what we’re considering the finish line. By having a strategic plan, you’re confirming a shared vision, promoting your development plans, and you’re able to evaluate whether you were successful or not — and you’re making sure donors know that you are a worthy, safe, and timely investment.

So a couple of things to note, and then I’ll pause for questions — please put them in the Q&A box. I get this question all the time: what’s the best way to do strategic planning? One size does not fit all, any more than one strategic planning consultant fits all. An intentional planning process can double your chances of success, but nearly 70 percent of plans do fail. There’s no single industry-standard model, though best-practice models share very common characteristics. When I looked at best-practice models — Harvard Business School, Berkeley, the Institute of Cultural Affairs, and other processes online — they were all answering those same four questions: where are we now, where do we want to be at specific points in the future, what might block us, how do we get there. Different techniques, same underlying process.

So there are evidence-based, best-practice models that increase your chances of success, and your facilitator can make or break that return on investment. I had a group tell me recently that their board opted for a friend of the board who said they could do it cheaply, claiming they’d participated in lots of strategic planning processes and could do it for $9,000. They paid, and didn’t get a functional work product — now they’re having to pay to do it again. So think about how the process is being facilitated, because sometimes strategic planning processes aren’t best practice at all, and it doesn’t matter how well-formatted the finished product is if it doesn’t get buy-in.

Last week I was in Virginia teaching at the Virginia Institute for Fundraising Conference, and I asked, “how many of you in the room have a strategic plan?” Half the hands went up — about 49 percent of nonprofits nationwide have a plan. Then I asked, “how many of you went into a room with one or two people, wrote the plan, and presented it to your board and staff?” Half of those. That’s not going to be a successful plan, because too many positions on the field weren’t heard or represented — they don’t understand what’s going on, so it’s hard to get buy-in. We highly encourage plans that involve your board and staff, because those are more successful.

It should be a viable, living document, explained just like that road trip. Imagine your plan as a road trip, and you’re inviting your donors along, saying, “this is the destination — does that align with your passions and priorities?” Yes? Well, guess what’s coming up — I love trip planning. Right now I’m elbows-deep in planning the January trip to Guatemala, and I’m looking forward to this dynamic group of ladies — it’s a ladies-only trip this time; I did a multigenerational trip before. Every trip is different, but I bring people along for the ride they want to be on, and they’re okay pivoting as long as I let them know ahead of time — here’s plan A and plan B. Let your donors know that. Don’t be afraid to tell them things are changing. And your plan is only as strong as the people implementing it.

Donors want to see your strategic plan because they’re investors, and they want to see a return on investment in meaningful impact. If they’re supporting, say, the first position of a development director, they want to see that person producing income to create sustainability — but most donors supporting your mission are looking for ROI and meaningful impact. If you go to your local bank and ask for a business loan, they’re going to ask you a couple of quick questions.

What’s it for, a business plan, all that stuff — absolutely. First they’ll ask how much you need and why. Say you need $100,000 to expand the gutter side of your construction company — they’ll ask, what does that expansion look like? So, what do you want that $100,000 for? Where do you want to be? Show me your business plan. And you say, “I want ten crews on the road doing gutters, and these trailers,” and so on — they’ll say that sounds amazing, but then they’ll go back and ask, “where are you now?” Because they don’t know if that plan is viable until they see where you are now. If you say, “well, I don’t even own a construction company,” that’s a problem. But if you say, “oh no, we’ve got a crew, we’ve done this and that,” that shows capacity.

The next thing they’ll look at, besides what you need and why, is your current capacity, and then they’ll ask about your credit score. In the nonprofit sector, setting aside actual credit lines, your donors aren’t looking for your credit score — they’re looking for your credibility score. So when you go to donors and say, “will you fund this campaign, this new after-school program, this new animal shelter, this veterans support program” — whatever the amazing work you do is — they’re going to ask: what do you need, why, what’s the plan, where are you now, and what have you done in the past that makes me confident investing in you? Because they’re investors looking for an ROI in the form of meaningful impact. So your strategic plan should say what type of impact you expect in measurable terms — not just “we’re going to serve more people” or “we’re going to have greater leadership.” Donors need to know what you need, why, your current realities, and your credibility score.

Let me check the Q&A real quick — I see three questions. Someone shared how to get started in the strategic planning process — yes, there’s a link for that.

Lynn asked: should a strategic plan be created by staff or the nonprofit’s board of directors? Great question. The board of directors is legally required to have fiduciary roles — legal and ethical roles — and one of those is to provide direction and oversight. If they have staff, they’re trusting the staff for operational matters, but it’s still the board’s job to provide direction and oversight. Part of that direction is confirming a vision and mission statement, ideally with board and staff working together, but with the board making the final decision and ideally spearheading the strategic planning process. That doesn’t mean the board is getting into all the staff-level details — but our process requires board and staff to come together, because we believe that if you’re going to invest in a plan, you want to be set up for success.

Remember, I said 70 percent of plans can fail. I learned early on as a consultant that you can grow 50 percent faster with a plan, double your likelihood of success — all these statistics. But the 70-percent-failure statistic is what really intrigued me, because not every organization has the time, money, or energy to invest, so why are these plans failing? Part of it is that the right people weren’t in the room. You might say the staff should do it because they’re doing the work — but if staff can walk away or quit tomorrow, they’re not responsible for the direction, they’re responsible for implementation. And at the end of the day, who approves the budget? The board. So if the board isn’t rolling up their sleeves alongside staff to understand what staff is seeing and doing, how likely are they to want to fund everything in those budget requests?

As a former executive director, I absolutely wanted my board involved in strategic planning, because it oriented all of us to where we were as an organization — board, staff, and community perspectives, all part of that process. That doesn’t mean the board is in every single session; it means they’re involved in the appropriate sessions. So the board should be spearheading in the sense of prioritizing it, making sure it’s in the budget, and making sure staff, board, and community stakeholders are engaged. Staff operationalizes the plan — we help teams operationalize both a board plan and a staff plan that flow from the master plan.

Thomas asked: who should drive the strategic planning process, and who owns it? I touched on that — we like to assign no fewer than two plan monitors, one from staff and one from the board. It doesn’t have to be the board chair; look for someone on your board who’s responsive and organized, with a strong admin background. We set up quarterly review and reporting processes with our clients — whether they continue working with us or not — and give them templates so the board keeps its lane moving and staff keeps its pieces moving. In the master plan, if there are three goal areas, we map out the board’s role in ensuring core capacity, and we map out the board’s goals and the staff’s goals separately, with plan monitors making sure both sides are covering their responsibilities.

So how do we use a strategic plan to generate resources? Well, how do you get a business loan — you need a business plan. If you approach your board members like investors and say, “this is where we’re going, would you like to come along for the ride, let’s map this out together,” they’re more likely to support you. Many grants will ask for a copy of your plan — that’s something we’re seeing more and more in the grants world. How many of you have written a grant in the last year that required a strategic plan, or asked how your project aligns with your strategic plan, or asked for a copy of it outright? Let us know in the chat, because we’re seeing that more and more.

Rachel asked if this presentation will be emailed to attendees — our friend Dani from Bloomerang confirmed you’ll receive the recording, the electronic replay, and the slides as part of our partnership with Bloomerang.

Does an organization need a strategic plan separate from a business plan? They’re essentially the same thing — in the nonprofit sector we call it a strategic plan, in the for-profit world it’s a business plan. Some will say a strategic plan is the way you operationalize a business plan; either way, just think of them as the big plan for the little plans. It’s the plan that says, “we’re going to do this, this is the destination, these are the major milestones,” and then you have other strategic operational plans each year.

Our personal approach — I work with a lot of groups whose consultants map out every single year for three years in detail. We think that’s a futile exercise, because the world changes a lot in three years. So we do map out the two-to-three-year goals and the one-year goals, but we map out the first year in real detail. As we hit the second half of that first year, we start looking ahead: what did we say we’d accomplish? Did we do it? If not, how does that affect our steps into year two? Then we update year two. That lets you pivot and tell your donors, “we’re still on track, but here are the next steps.” When we tell donors every single step for a three-year period and then have to say, “just kidding, we’re not doing that,” it dings our credibility score. Give donors the major milestones, but hold your strategies and operational plans a little closer until you’re nearer to needing that engagement.

Someone asked whether AI should be excluded from the strategic planning process. I wouldn’t say AI should be excluded — I’d say it needs to be used in an ethical and productive way. AI can be a great tool for taking stakeholder feedback and identifying trends. Some of our clients collect feedback through surveys, run it through AI, and identify trends — but always get human eyes on it afterward. I see people use AI to create PowerPoint presentations or a public-facing version of their plan, and lots of other great uses — but I wouldn’t use AI to facilitate the process or come up with all your questions.

Many of you said government grants require a strategic plan — okay, some of you have seen that, others haven’t. So let’s consider how your strategic plan can be used to leverage donor dollars to grow your mission. If you have a plan in hand and you’re reviewing or updating it: what did we say we were going to do? Did we do it? If not, why not, and how does that change our next steps? That’s what you should be doing every quarter, at the board and staff level. Then you’re always donor-ready with a plan in hand, because if there’s a detour, you’re prepared.

We were working in Western North Carolina with several groups that got State Employees Credit Union grants. If you’re in North Carolina, State Employees Credit Union has mission-driven grants — and there are similar programs in other states, so look for your local State Employees Credit Union. They’ll fund around $40,000 over a two-year period for organizations that need to engage in strategic planning, capacity building, development planning, and similar work. Funding for Good happens to be one of their close partners, and we offer that service to some of their grantees.

Before Hurricane Helene, a lot of our clients were talking about wanting a development director, wanting to grow programs — and then half of our mountainside was wiped out. We really thought a lot of clients would say, “we just can’t engage in planning anymore, we need to focus on rebuilding.” But I’d say 99 percent of them came back and said, “this is when we need the plan the most — to communicate where we go from here.” When we created the first plan, and now we’re heading into year one or two, our current realities are totally different, and we need to communicate the new goals to our donors and community. So there’s never a bad time to strategic plan — you’re always going to need one. I have people say, “we just need to get through this” — but there’s no better day than today to begin planning.

I like to tell people that if you’re going to engage in a planning process, try to align it with your fiscal year. If your fiscal year runs January to December, you want your plan in hand in time to inform your budgeting process for that fiscal year. So if you finalize your budget in August or October for a January fiscal year, you need your strategic plan approved in August or September, so those dollars can be allocated and included in the budgeting process, and your plan launches on January 1 with your budget. That way you’re not amending your strategic plan mid-process and then telling donors, “just kidding, that wasn’t in the budget,” because you didn’t plan according to your fiscal year. So I encourage you to have a plan in hand in time to inform your budgeting process.

You’ll be able to promote clear, relevant content for capacity-building goals and grants. Our end product for clients — and yours should be too, if you’re working with someone who’s done strategic planning, however it’s presented — is that you should be able to say: this is where we are financially, this is where we are programmatically, this is where we are on leadership, this is where we want to be, this is what success looks like, this is what might block us, this is how we’ll get there. All of that content can be extracted and put into a capacity-building grant. Mandy and I are both development professionals, so our goals aren’t big, long narratives — we create a strategic plan that’s grant-worthy, with charts, graphs, and narratives, so a development director can extract from it immediately and write grants.

So think about how you’re formatting your plan. You can use a multi-year plan to drive proactive annual operating plans and fundraising campaigns — if you know you’re going to run a capital campaign, mapping that out in your plan is great. You want a donor-ready version of the plan to share, and you need to be able to track and report annual impact, because that shares your credibility score.

So what is a donor-ready version of the plan? It’s not the internal working document you’re all scratching up and doing the real work on — that’s amazing, and you want that — but you’ll have different versions of your plan because different things resonate with different audiences. The plan you share with clients won’t necessarily look the same as what you share with donors, because you’re extracting what’s of interest to each.

Here’s an example. My oldest daughter used to go to an after-school program at the local public school — it was not a five-star program, folks. Lovely people, but not five stars. One day I’m walking in and I see this framed display with five gold stars on the wall. I’m like, when did this happen? I go running over to sign my child out and see the five gold stars — it wasn’t a certification of five stars, it said, “Burke County Public Schools is reaching for the stars with our new strategic plan. Here are five ways we’re committed to making your child’s after-school experience even more impactful.” Isn’t that lovely? Each star described something — new transportation so kids aren’t stuck on the side of the road when the bus breaks down, a better teacher-student ratio, enrichment activities. It gave five ways my child’s experience would improve, and at the bottom it said, “if you’d like to learn more or engage with us to make these goals a reality, reach out.”

Well, lo and behold, I was the director of a public archaeology group at the time, with STEM programming and grant money to do it, and I needed a captive audience of fourth and eighth graders doing North Carolina history. So I called the school, and that became the beginning of a beautiful partnership. They knew they wanted people to take action, and they wanted parents to feel confident in the direction — but they also wanted people to take action. They asked themselves, “what do we want people to do?”

So when you’re putting out a public version of your strategic plan, here are the questions to consider — and if you already have a plan, look at it through this lens. What action do we want people to take, or what do we want them to experience or feel? Do we want to ensure trust or confidence, or is there a specific action? Then ask: who’s likely to do those things? In my school example, that was parents of a child in the after-school program, or a teacher at the school. Then: where are those people? In my case, at the sign-out sheet — I wasn’t going to read an email about their strategic plan, but I was signing my child out. So: how do I get their attention? Use something that will attract their attention — five gold stars, relevant to the school. Now that you have their attention, how do you inspire them to take action? Keep it short and sweet, with a clear call to action: learn more, engage, contact us.

When you build it backwards like that, you can create a donor version of your plan, and you can have different versions for different programs — one client-facing, one donor-facing. But if you don’t take the time to think through what you want people to feel or do, who’s likely to do that, where they are, how you get in front of them, how you get their attention, and how you inspire them to action, your plan isn’t being utilized. You need to track and share impact in a way that increases confidence, because content without context is meaningless — you’ll see more on that later.

When we think about donors, we need to remember they’re investors driven by purpose. They have personal interests and priorities, and we need to identify which of those matter to them. I’m Marie, lead consultant for Funding for Good today. When I’m at the dog park, I’m my rescue dog Mako’s mom. When I’m at the school, I’m the mother of my three daughters. When I’m in Guatemala, I’m the trip coordinator. In every position I’m in, I introduce myself differently. If I came here today and said, “hi, I’m Mako’s mom,” you’d think, “who’s Mako, and why is she in this room when we’re here for nonprofit development?” You’d tune out before the first sentence was over.

That’s why I encourage you to get to know your donors. Don’t just say, “this is what we’re doing” — ask, “what are you passionate about? What do you love to support?” Once you ask, you’ll know which of the ten things you’re doing is going to interest them most, and you lean into that. Your organization is like a multifaceted ring — every facet shines differently and catches the light differently, but it’s part of the whole. We feel like we have to present the whole organization and the whole plan to every donor. When that becomes word salad — I call it the “spray and pray” method — you throw everything out there and pray something sticks. It’s not the best strategy. What you need to do is figure out what donors are interested in, which facet of your plan best aligns with them, and present that carefully, as a dialogue and conversation.

Donors are looking for organizations they can trust to steward their resources — they’re not obligated to give, so think about who your donors are. It looks different for government entities versus foundations. Foundations want to build a relationship with you; they’re interested in talking about your strategic plan, and they’ll often connect you to other donors through donor-advised funds or other grantors, because it’s all about the relationship. Government entities are all about the bottom line — the goal, the budget, the timelines in your RFP, and that’s what you’re going to get. You’re not really building a relationship with government entities; you’re delivering measurable outcomes that align with the metrics they’ve provided. Foundations and businesses: relationships. Civic organizations: relationships. And you can figure out whether people give through grants, sponsorships, charitable gifts, or in-kind contributions, to determine where they’re most likely to support.

So capacity building is simply strengthening the work you do — you’ll get the full definition in the replay, but broadly, anything that improves, enhances, grows, expands, or sustains your ability to fulfill your vision and mission counts as capacity building. So you need to reframe things you might be calling “just projects” or “operations.” Leadership development is capacity building. Marketing and community engagement is capacity building. Systems to increase efficiency, new software, new CRMs, updated infrastructure, partnership building, sustainability funding — all of that is capacity building, and there are grants out there for it.

Donors will fund your process because they know that if it’s done well, it positions you for sustainable growth. State Employees Credit Union in North Carolina is one of the first to say, “if you don’t have a strategic plan, we want you to use grant dollars to support that process,” because they know a well-done plan positions the organization better. They don’t want to invest in whims or dead ends — they want to see a strategic capacity-building initiative, with a clear vision, goals, and strategy, and a way for them to come along for the ride.

They’ll look at your plan and ask: do they understand the problem? Do they have a viable solution? Do donor and organization priorities align? What does success look like, and am I willing to invest in that? Is it realistic? What resources do they need, and am I willing to give that and play an impactful role? And if I give, can they sustain this beyond my contribution? So take a moment to consider those questions.

Let me check the chat box and the Q&A really quickly. An anonymous attendee asked: do you think a good strategic plan facilitator can also help shift culture issues related to communication and trust between staff, or does that need to happen before the other? Great question — and I understand wanting to stay anonymous asking it, because I want you to know you’re not alone; this isn’t unique to your organization. Many times organizations bring us in because they know there isn’t consensus. Our process is evidence-based and consensus-based, because — remember the three-legged race — people may have great intentions but still pull in different directions.

When we come in and model consensus-building processes, we find it does help. With one group we worked with recently, communication and cultural issues were a real challenge, so we put an immediate goal into the strategic plan: do an assessment of the org culture and address communication norms, because there weren’t really healthy norms in place. That became a Q1/Q2 goal. So there’s no right or wrong about whether you address it before or after — you want to start somewhere, and starting is better than never starting. Using a process with a neutral facilitator is a great way to go. We’re offering that free webinar on August 6 on getting started with strategic planning, and we’ll cover considerations for determining if a facilitator is a good fit.

Our process is really based on consensus building, which is why we tend to get clients who need a little extra support with that — nonprofits are full of passionate people who sometimes get their feelings hurt because their intent is good but gets misinterpreted. So I go into every conversation encouraging people to assume good intent. If someone says something like “that is bonkers” or “that was just horrible,” I look at them and say, “I’m going to assume good intent — tell me more, how did this happen, why did this happen,” and we address the issue, not the person. Our process norms are: you cannot attack a person, you must address the issue, and we always assume good intent.

I know what it’s like to be a young, fledgling executive director hiring people twice my age, because I knew I needed their wisdom, but also getting a lot of critiques along the way. It taught me that a lot of miscommunication came from people attributing intent behind my actions that wasn’t there. That’s something I carry into my professional consulting work, and I encourage you to do the same: always assume good intent, ask “tell me more,” and begin the conversation.

Let’s see — our strategic plans shouldn’t just look like a finish line. One reason plans fail is that they’re too granular; I also see plans fail because they’re too broad. Lauren mentioned that sometimes plans are very granular, made up of discrete individual tasks — those tend to fail quickly, because the moment that metric is no longer viable, it isn’t anchored to anything, and you end up throwing it away. The way we tackle strategic planning — and we teach a whole webinar on this — starts with anchoring everything to a vision.

We start with the vision and mission statement — what is your vision for the next three to five years, broadly? You can put metrics to it eventually, but at first it’s things like “we want robust operations,” “we want diversity in leadership.” Then we ask whether the specific, measurable goals align with each goal area — everything is anchored back to a goal area, and the goal area is anchored back to the vision. If your short-term vision is “I’m going to California” or “I’m going to Guatemala,” you know the destination, and if something happens — I-40 closes, a flight gets canceled — you don’t have to tell people you don’t know where you’re going. You’re still going to California; your mode of transportation and strategy might just change. So if your measurable, granular goals are anchored to a larger vision, you can always explain why you were doing something in the first place.

My recommendation, when you’re setting your goals, is to provide context using a “so that” structure: “we intend to do this, so that...” or “we intend to achieve this goal, so that...” That provides the meaning behind the goal, which you can explain to staff and to the board, and it makes it easier to adjust goals when things change.

A case for support — the donor-facing version of your plan — is usually something short and sweet that gets people’s attention and starts the conversation, sometimes with more technical detail behind it. Donors are certainly key stakeholders to understand, and this webinar, with Bloomerang, focuses on donor relationships — but our process, as I mentioned with the SWOT analysis, includes other stakeholders too: community members, community partners, staff, board, clients. We don’t want to operate in a vacuum, and I don’t give donors undue power to determine the organization’s direction simply because they’ve given the most. I’ve turned down donations, and my colleagues have too, when they didn’t align with our goals or values — the American Lung Association, for example, turns down donations from Big Tobacco, even when Big Tobacco offers to support a specific initiative. So donor input matters, but it isn’t the only thing that drives direction — though today’s webinar is specifically about where strategic planning and fundraising meet, so you should absolutely have stakeholder engagement processes as well.

Earlier I said content without context is meaningless. How many of you have an annual report that says, “we served this many people,” “we provided this many nights of lodging,” and so on? I had a client call and say, “we spayed and neutered 100 dogs.” I said, “so what?” She said, “weren’t you going to celebrate?” I said, “I don’t know what your goal was — if your goal was 100, yes, I’ll celebrate. If your goal was 50, we’re going to double-celebrate, because you doubled your success.” If you create annual or quarterly impact reports without anchoring them to your strategic plan — here’s our three-to-five-year vision, here’s how we’re getting there — people don’t know whether they’re supposed to celebrate or strategize about why you fell short.

So, to build your credibility score with donors, say: “we proposed this in our strategic plan, so that we could accomplish this — now we’re accomplishing that, and look what comes next.” Use that “so that” model. And remember, when you’re putting things out into the world for fundraising, be creative in your language. Postage and paper for brochures becomes “marketing materials to increase awareness and engagement.” T-shirts, water bottles, incentives — the state never wanted to fund those for my after-school program, until I called them “team identity items to increase program visibility.” Vehicle, travel reimbursement, and maintenance becomes “transportation to increase program access and security.” I’ve given you a list of options to work through, and, as I said, your impact reporting needs to come through the lens of your strategic plan: what did we propose to do, did we fall short, meet, or exceed our goals, and what impact resulted from the generosity of donors?

Earlier I mentioned the top reasons plans fail — I’ve alluded to most of these already. First, the right people aren’t at the decision-making table. To the person who asked about including clients and stakeholders: absolutely, you need to think through who impacts your work or is impacted by it. We have a session on our shop page called “Engaging Stakeholders to Drive Decision-Making,” which our strategic planning clients can access, along with tools and templates for identifying stakeholders. If you don’t connect with the people who impact your work, or who are impacted by it, you’re planning in a void — so, who are those people? Clients, partners, donors, board members, staff members?

Facilitation failures — I’ve already spoken to that; there are process failures and technique failures. We work hard at Funding for Good to constantly improve on that. This is what I do — 95 to 98 percent of my time is strategic planning nationwide. Go to your local community foundations, your small business development centers through your local community college, and make those connections. If you’re not in a position to hire a facilitator, some of those resources are often available.

Other reasons plans fail: unrealistic goals, failure to establish accountability processes, and an inability to distill major goals into action and implementation — either plans are too broad or too narrow, and we have to bridge that gap.

All right, moving along, because we’re getting close to the end of our time. You can maximize the value of your strategic planning by engaging in comprehensive, evidence-based planning processes; investing time and energy to gather feedback from internal and external stakeholders; using quality professional facilitators to keep conversations focused and inclusive; and establishing processes to support ongoing accountability and long-term success.

If you feel like you need support with this, you can download our free Strategic Planning Quick Start Kit — it’s on the left of your screen — or give us a call. There’s a QR code as well, and all of this will come to you in the slide deck that Dani will send.

Someone asked about facilitation considerations. It’s impossible to be a neutral facilitator and an active participant at the same time — I never facilitate a process for an organization where I’m serving in a current leadership role, because I can’t do both. How will participants react to and engage with the facilitator? Some facilitators are so trusted that people defer to them or try to infer what the facilitator wants; others aren’t trusted and get automatic pushback. Does the facilitator — whether free, volunteer, or “voluntold” — use an evidence-based model? How will they customize the process for your maximum success? What do you need in a facilitator, and what are your deal-breakers? How will they engage with your leadership team, and who’s responsible for what? Do they have the skills to offer the capacity, support, and follow-up, and what’s the cost? Those are all considerations.

Do not write a grant for strategic planning until you’ve gotten approaches from facilitators. Someone reached out to me recently who had written a grant for strategic planning, wanted us to do the work, but hadn’t asked for our approach in advance — they knew our work, but didn’t put the right price in the grant, so it only got partially funded. Get approaches from consultants so you know exactly what you’re asking for. I send our approach to potential clients, and many have used that approach to write a grant that got fully funded.

So when you’re looking at a strategic planning process, get an approach. Your consultant might play the educator role — “this is what you should know about strategic planning” — the consultant role — “this is what I’d recommend you do” — the facilitator role — “what do you believe you should do” — or the coach role — “you can do it, I’m here to support you.” Evidence-based models are a gift, but every consultant packages and delivers them differently.

There are lots of ways to get it funded: local banks, capacity-building grants, your small business development center through your local community college — which sometimes offsets costs, as ours does here in North Carolina — matching funds, crowdfunding opportunities, and other discounts. But if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.

I hope I was able to address some of those things. I know we have two more questions, Dani — do I have time for those real quick?

Dani Cluff: Yeah, if you want to run through those — I also just launched the poll, but I’ll let you run through those questions real quick.

Marie Palacios: I can’t see them until you go through the poll — actually, I can. Let’s see, Q&A... yes, it just went off my screen. What are the graphs you mentioned, if your strategic plan is forward-facing over the coming years? We break out what we’re proposing to do — it’s not necessarily a data chart, but sometimes it’ll show “here’s where we are, here’s where we want to be,” as graphic images rather than a data graph.

I think I’ve already answered the others, so I think we’re good to go, unless someone has another question — but I appreciate all the energy in the chat box and the Q&A. I’m available by call or email should you need anything at all. If you’ve got something you can take away and use today, let me know in the chat box what that was. You can go to fundingforgood.org and use the free resources I’ve provided. If you look up our upcoming events on fundingforgood.org, you can also see the upcoming free strategic planning session, as well as many others.

Dani Cluff: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Marie. I know that was a jam-packed hour, so I hope everyone got something good they can take away today. As a reminder, those slides and the links Marie shared today will be sent to you in a follow-up email this afternoon. But a huge thank-you again to all of you for joining us. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day, and thank you again, Marie. Any last words before we wrap things up for the day?

Marie Palacios: No, there’s just no better time to get planning, or to follow up on your strategic plan, today — and we’re happy to support. Thank you to Bloomerang for having us online today.

Dani Cluff: Absolutely. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye, everyone.