Five Critical Flaws in Traditional Nonprofit Strategic Planning and How You Can Avoid Them
Building a nonprofit organization takes a special kind of commitment. As a non-profit leader, you have dedicated your heart and soul to alleviating poverty and uplifting communities in need. You see the souls that the world often overlooks and the pain and suffering experienced by those in need. Moved by your inability to stand idly by, you built an organization that offers a lifeline to those facing tough times.
At DC Design, through our near decade long experience working side-by-side with nonprofit leaders focused on uplifting Black, brown and low-income communities, we’ve heard time and again that despite having a radical vision, unwavering commitment and putting in tireless effort, most leaders feel that something is still missing. They feel a gap between the reality of what their current initiatives are producing and the level of transformational change they believe is possible. They see the potential, but are unable to actualize the level of impact they wish to create that can truly move the needle for the populations they serve.
As a social impact strategy organization, DC Design specializes in helping poverty-focused nonprofits reach their highest potential. We believe that by helping enough of these passionate leaders break through their current limits, we have a real shot at ending generational poverty in America, and uplifting Black, brown and low-income communities.
Throughout the course of our near decade of experience working side by side with nonprofit leaders, we’ve identified a common culprit leading to lack-luster results: Ineffective strategic planning.
In the quiet conversations we’ve had with nonprofits over the years, many have revealed that they have a plan, but the gap between the type of change they believe is possible, and reality isn’t shrinking. They are not creating the level of impact that permanently moves the needle for the populations they serve, but they want to.
As we’ve analyzed why, we’ve come to see that it’s because conventional strategic planning is flawed and generally only able to create strategies that live within the bounds of the status quo. Not great for innovative organizations looking to push the boundaries of what many believe is even possible by uplifting entire communities.
We’d like to help you make your next strategic plan incredible. Here are 5 common flaws in the traditional strategic planning approach and how you can avoid them.
1. Doesn’t Engage the Community
Flaw in the traditional approach: One of the most significant pitfalls of traditional strategic planning is the lack of meaningful community engagement. Plans are often developed based on the insights and opinions of staff, experts, politicians, and academics. While these perspectives are valuable, when nonprofits do not involve the community in the planning process, they miss out on critical insights and risk developing solutions that do not meet the real needs of those who are most affected by the issues at hand, Even organizations that do talk with their communities benefit from intentional process that engages community members.
What to do instead: Community needs assessment
Start from the bottom. Conduct a community needs assessment as part of your strategic plan. Remember that the community’s needs are the foundation upon which all programs and initiatives are built. With the constant changes in social, political, cultural environment, the specific needs and pain points of communities also shift. Only by reengaging the community can you be certain that your new strategy can address the challenges that matter most in an actionable way.
2. Misses the opportunity to create more lasting change
Flaw in the traditional approach: When strategic plans are created without a deep understanding of the root cause of a problem and how they affect community members, they often miss the mark in terms of creating substantial change. Traditional planning tends to focus on surface-level issues and solutions, often telling an organization to keep doing the same thing it’s been doing and missing the opportunity to address the changing and more urgent community needs. This prevents a nonprofit from reaching its full potential as a truly transformational pillar of the community. By not digging deeper to understand the systemic and interrelated factors contributing to the issues, these plans overlook the real opportunities to make a lasting impact.
What to do instead: Ecosystem analysis
Analyze the system that’s producing the issue your organization works to address and define the role your programs, services, and initiatives can play in changing how it operates. Poverty related issues are systemic, but many nonprofit strategic plans fail to offer guidance that acknowledges that. It’s not enough to just serve someone today. Truly transformational nonprofits recognize that systemic change can only be achieved by addressing not only immediate needs, but also fortifying individuals to have greater self-sufficiency.
3. Fails to Build Buy-In from Key Stakeholders Along the Way
Flaw in the traditional approach: One of the hidden superpowers of a well-crafted strategic planning process is the ability to bring a whole community together around a common goal. This requires buy-in from all key stakeholders, including staff, board members, community partners, community members, and funders. Unfortunately, while traditional planning processes tend to engage a subset of these stakeholders, they fail to catalyze collective action and excitement for the work ahead. When stakeholders aren’t involved from the beginning, they are less likely to support and champion the plan, which significantly hinders its execution and makes your job harder.
What to do instead: Multi-Stakeholder engagement
Analyze the roles of the different stakeholders in your ecosystem, and create a map of their varying levels of power, resources and alignment with your organization. Some stakeholders are allies who are vital to the success of your plans. Others are disengaged with the issue you’re working to address, but unknowingly hold the power to influence its outcome. Develop a robust stakeholder engagement plan that ensures all key players' voices are heard and understood. This will ensure your strategic planning process has the buy-in you need to succeed.
4. Not Actionable
Flaw in the traditional approach: Even the most well-crafted strategic plan is useless if it isn’t actionable. Unfortunately, in many traditional strategic plans, elaborate goals are crafted without thinking through an actionable roadmap of how to get there. Implementation of the plan is left as an afterthought. Once a strategic plan is made, teams do not know how to incorporate the plan into their daily activities. Ultimately, no further progress is made and all effort goes to vain.
What to do instead: Programmatic Strategic alignment
From the beginning of your strategic planning process, begin thinking about strategic alignment and implementation. Strategic alignment is the act of assessing how well your current programs, services, and initiatives align with the strategic plan that’s just been created. Implementation is the act of forming partnerships, developing new initiatives, and executing on the plan over the course of 5 years. While strategic alignment is a separate phase that should generally follow strategic planning, you must prepare for it early. If it is overlooked during the strategic planning phase, many plans will simply sit on the shelf as nonprofits lose the momentum needed to implement them.
5. Not Crafted with Measurement of Impact in Mind
Measurement of impact is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of nonprofit initiatives and for securing ongoing support from funders and stakeholders. However, traditional strategic plans often choose KPIs that don’t reflect the community transformation that would demonstrate real impact. By targeting metrics that are solely focused on the nonprofit’s activities (e.g. Increase the number of beds filled by 50%, expand to 3 more locations) rather than the results achieved in communities (e.g. Help 15 attendees secure long term housing) these plans can prematurely force a nonprofit down a narrow path of producing irrelevant results.
What to do instead: Start planning for monitoring and evaluation from the beginning
Define the high-level measurements that would indicate success at the objective level, recognizing that the next phase of work is a creation of a detailed monitoring and evaluation framework that associates both programmatic and outcome based KPIs with each program. This means that by the end of a strong and actionable strategic planning process, an organization knows not only what directions they need to head in but also, the types of metrics they will want to evaluate, clarifying what success looks like for themselves and their communities.
Results
When You Do it Wrong: The Shelf Life of Stagnation
Traditional strategic plans often fall short of its potential. The result? A document destined to stagnate on the shelf. Disconnected from community needs, lacking clear action steps, and without a measurement system, these plans fail to spark change or achieve impact. They become static documents that do little to advance your organization's mission, leaving you unsure of how to move forward. You, and the community you serve, deserve more.
When You Do it Right: A Roadmap for Action
By contrast, by focusing on these five key elements of transformative planning, you can create a strategic plan that serves as a vibrant roadmap for action, not a forgotten relic. This plan will provide clear direction, inspire stakeholder buy-in, and translate your vision into actionable steps. It will also establish a system for measuring progress, ensuring your efforts make a real difference in your community.
A New Approach: DC Design’s Human-Centered, Systems Thinking Strategy
At DC Design, we recognize these flaws and have developed a strategic planning approach that addresses them head-on. Our process is rooted in human-centered design and systems thinking, ensuring that community voices are at the forefront. We engage all key stakeholders from the beginning, creating plans that are actionable and aligned with the organization’s capacity and resources.
Ready to move beyond the shelf? If your nonprofit is ready to create real, lasting impact, explore how DC Design's innovative strategic planning approach can help you achieve your goals. Let’s start a conversation about transforming your strategic vision into reality.
If you feel ready to start your strategic planning or have questions about it, schedule a 1:1 FREE consultation call to get started!
