Field Guide to Nonprofit Strategic Planning and Facilitation

Includes numerous worksheets about all aspects of strategic planning that you can promptly download and use with each of your planners.

"The guidebook is awesome!"
-- Christie Hammes
Director, Strategic Development Services
MAP for Nonprofits, Inc.

Updates Included in This 4th Edition!

This 4th Edition published in July 2018 is your up-to-date resource for facilitating successful strategic planning. It includes many more guidelines and resources to:

This Fourth Edition includes numerous additions that keep the Field Guide up-to-date as well as suggestions from numerous readers over the years since the Third Edition. Major additions include:

Why Should You Buy This Strategic Planning Book?

  1. There are many books that tell you what content should end up being in your strategic plan. However, there are few books that also tell you how to get that content in your strategic plan. Our book tells you how to facilitate a group of planners to customize the right content for the nature and needs of your organization.
  2. If you struggle to generate the content to put into your Strategic Plan, then contact us and we will share advice about that content.

Focus of Guidebook

When members of nonprofit organizations struggle with their strategic planning process or their plan ends up not being useful at all, it is rarely because their planning process did not include state-of-the-art techniques in facilitation or the latest models in strategic planning. Rather, it is because their process 1) did not completely suit the nature and needs of the nonprofit and 2) did not thoroughly address all of the most critical, "core" aspects of strategic planning.

Guidelines in this guidebook are focused on customizing and implementing an organization- or program-wide, strategic planning process for a nonprofit organization. Guidelines will show you, step-by-step, how to conduct a very complete, simplified (not simplistic!) strategic planning process that is very realistic, flexible and suited to the nature of the typical nonprofit organization. Guidelines are useful to cultures that prefer highly rational approaches to planning or more naturalistic and unfolding (organic) approaches.

One of the best ways to ensure that the strategic planning process is highly effective is to ensure that facilitation of the process is highly effective as well. Therefore, this guidebook also provides complete, step-by-step techniques and tools for facilitating every aspect of nonprofit strategic planning -- one of the few strategic planning books, if any, to include that information for facilitators.

The book is organized so that the reader can use it to conduct a complete strategic planning process, or it can be used as a reference manual to address certain phases of planning when needed.

Content of Guidebook

PART I of the guidebook includes guidelines to help the reader gain clear understanding of the strategic planning process, including how it guides the direction, structure and operations of all facets of nonprofit organizations. Ultimately, from reading this section, the reader realizes the importance of customizing the strategic planning process to suit the nature and needs of the typical nonprofit organization.

PART II includes complete, step-by-step guidelines to customize a strategic planning process that is relevant, realistic and flexible. Guidelines make frequent reference to numerous practical tools and techniques spread throughout the guidebook. The planning process is divided into six overall phases, including:

  1. Preparing a thorough "plan for a plan" to customize your strategic planning process.
  2. Conducting realistic situational analyses, external and internal to the organization.
  3. Establishing consensus-driven strategic direction for the organization, including meaningful mission (and vision and/or values, if preferred), goals and strategies.
  4. Developing realistic and flexible implementation plans, including action plans, performance plans, staffing plans and an operating budget.
  5. Developing and communicating the strategic plan document, including thorough review and approval.
  6. Monitoring implementation and adjusting plans, including specific approaches and tools to track status of implementation, along with clearly making changes to plans as needed.

PART III is a Toolkit for the facilitator of the nonprofit strategic planning process, whether the facilitator is internal or external to the organization. Specific procedures are included for the most useful techniques used in facilitating nonprofit strategic planning. Guidelines suggest which technique to use and when. The techniques are referenced throughout the book, as well. The section ends with numerous guidelines and tips about how to address the most common challenges that can arise during facilitation of strategic planning.

Appendices include numerous resources for strategic planners, including:

You Can Use this Guidebook to Learn About:

Audiences

This guidebook will be extremely useful to you, whether:

This guidebook will also be extremely useful to you if you are:

  1. You are a service provider to nonprofits and wish to provide more qualified strategic planning facilitators to the nonprofits in your area.
  2. Member of a nonprofit who can't afford a strategic planning facilitator, but are willing to work through the process to customize your own strategic plan if you have a step-by-step resource.
  3. Someone who wants to learn how to facilitate strategic planning for nonprofits.
  4. Someone who doesn't already know a lot about nonprofits.

Our Other Useful Nonprofit Publications

Other Authors' Publications for Nonprofit Organizations

Our Nonprofit Strategic Planning Facilitation and Training

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