Too many nonprofits spend months creating a strategic plan only to place it on a shelf beside last year’s annual report and forgotten board materials. But the goal of strategic planning is not to produce paperwork. It is to create clarity, alignment and momentum for your organization.
A strong strategic plan should help an organization make decisions, align priorities and adapt as conditions change. If your staff cannot explain top priorities without opening a binder, you do not have a planning problem. You have a clarity problem.
Many nonprofits also turn to strategic planning to strengthen their impact and relevance. But if community voices are missing from the process, you risk building a roadmap that doesn’t lead where the community needs you to go.
Over the years, we have received countless questions from nonprofit leaders, boards and executive teams about strategic planning. Here are some of the questions we hear most often and our suggested solutions.
How Often Should a Strategic Plan Be Created?
Five years used to be the gold standard. Today, many organizations are moving toward a shorter planning horizon of two to three years because the environment around nonprofits — funding shifts, community needs, technology, leadership transitions — changes too quickly to confidently predict five years out.
This is why we prefer the phrase strategic planning rather than strategic plan. A plan suggests a finished product, but planning is an ongoing process.
To keep strategy active and relevant, we recommend organizations do the following (see graphic below for a helpful visual):
- Review progress quarterly
- Track movement toward goals and key metrics
- Reassess priorities based on internal and external changes
- Conduct an annual strategic planning refresh, typically during a retreat
Some organizations also benefit from a shorter-term action plan that translates strategy into immediate priorities.
The goal is to create direction without becoming rigid. Strategy should function more like a GPS than a printed map, helping organizations adjust when conditions change while keeping the destination in sight.
Download the printable PDF version of this graphic
What Type of Planning Process Should We Follow?
It depends. Not every organization needs to start from scratch. A planning refresh may make sense if:
- Your environment is relatively stable
- You accomplished most of the goals in your previous plan
- You recently had a CEO transition
- You already have strong dashboards and accountability systems
A deeper planning process may make sense if:
- Priorities have shifted significantly
- Goals remain unfinished
- The current plan is not guiding decisions
- Staff or board alignment has weakened
The strongest plans help organizations determine not only what matters most, but also what can wait.
Are There Different Types of Plans?
Absolutely. The right plan depends on your organization’s lifecycle, aspirations, complexity and capacity. A startup nonprofit may need a growth-oriented roadmap. A mature organization may need a strategic refresh. An organization navigating disruption may need scenario planning or a short-term action or turnaround plan. The chart below shows how plans vary based on need and focus.
One of the biggest mistakes nonprofits make is assuming every organization needs the same process and the same deliverable. The plan should fit the organization, not the other way around.
Download the printable PDF version of this graphic
What Research Should the Planning Process Include?
Every planning process should include both internal and external perspectives. Within our Nonprofit Flywheel framework, we pressure-test six key areas:
- Impact
- Brand
- Revenue
- Operations
- Culture
- Governance
Questions may include:
- What is changing in our environment?
- What do clients and stakeholders need?
- What are peers and best practices showing us?
- Where are we strong?
- Where are we vulnerable?
Research tools can include:
- Surveys
- Focus groups
- Interviews
- Comparative research
- Financial and performance analysis
Good planning combines quantitative data with qualitative insight. Numbers tell you what is happening, and conversations often tell you why.
We typically start by using an internal survey to determine the type of plan needed and benchmark against other nonprofits, while also informing decisions about where to start, where to focus and how deep to go.
Who Should Be Included in the Planning Process?
Strategic planning works best as a partnership between staff and board leadership. The exact process varies, but broad input usually creates stronger alignment and ownership.
Organizations often include:
- Board members
- Leadership staff
- Employees
- Funders
- Community partners
- Clients or beneficiaries when appropriate
One tool we often use is priority voting. Asking people to identify their highest priorities forces difficult but important conversations because strategy is often less about deciding what to do and more about deciding what not to do.
How Long Should the Planning Process Last?
Most strategic planning efforts take approximately three to five months, but we have also facilitated successful compressed planning cycles when organizations needed faster decision-making or created focused time and space through a retreat process.
The timeline depends on factors such as:
- Organizational complexity
- Research requirements
- Stakeholder involvement
- Existing planning infrastructure
Longer is not necessarily better. The goal is to create enough space for thoughtful discussion without creating planning fatigue. The process should be long enough to gather meaningful input and build alignment, but focused enough to maintain energy and momentum. If the process works well, people should finish energized and ready to move into action.
What Should We Do if our Strategic Plan Is Sitting on a Shelf?
First, know that you are not alone. We see this happen more often than organizations realize.
Often, the challenge is not the strategy itself. It is ownership, prioritization, accountability or integration into everyday decision-making. Strategic plans should show up in staff meetings, dashboards, budgets and board conversations. If the plan only appears during annual retreats, it is probably not guiding the organization.
Sometimes the best solution is not to start over. Pause, identify where the disconnect exists and build a stronger process for execution. This why strategic planning should always go hand in hand with change management. We call this a “refresh” for that very reason.
A strategic plan should not simply describe where you want to go. It should help guide the decisions that get you there.
How Many Priorities Should a Strategic Plan Include?
Organizations often try to include everything because everything feels important. The challenge is that when everything becomes a priority, nothing becomes a priority. I recently worked with an organization that had nearly 40 priorities in its strategic plan. Everyone supported it, but nobody used it. The issue was not commitment. It was focus.
While there is no perfect number, we generally encourage organizations to focus on a small number of core strategic priorities (a.k.a., “big rocks”) supported by clear goals and measurable actions.
The best strategic plans do not create more work. They create more focus.
How Should We Share our Strategic Plan With our Board, Staff and Community?
A strategic plan should not live in a binder or sit on a shared drive. Different audiences need different levels of detail and different ways of engaging with the strategy.
Board
Boards should understand the overall direction, key priorities, major decisions and progress metrics so they can effectively govern and steward the mission.
Staff
Staff should understand how the strategy connects to everyday work and where they fit within the broader vision. People are more likely to support and execute a strategy when they can see themselves in it. We also strongly encourage organizations to embed strategic priorities into performance objectives so employees understand how their individual work contributes to broader organizational goals.
Community and Stakeholders
Partners, donors and community stakeholders often need a simpler and more accessible version focused on vision, priorities and intended impact.
Increasingly, organizations are sharing strategic priorities through websites, annual reports and community communications to build transparency and trust. We have even seen organizations host strategic plan “launch parties” to build excitement, celebrate the work and create shared ownership around what comes next.
The goal is not for everyone to memorize the same document. The goal is for everyone to understand where the organization is headed and how they can help move it forward.
Final Thought
Strategy is chess, not checkers. It is about understanding the landscape, anticipating change and making thoughtful choices that create the greatest impact over time.
Done well, strategic planning is about building a strategy that keeps your organization focused, adaptable and moving toward the future your community needs most. We’d love to hear what has worked — or not worked — in your strategic planning process and how your organization keeps strategy from sitting on a shelf.
