Strategic Planning
“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”
–Joel A. Barker
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The status quo is not an option. Nonprofit leaders need a guiding strategy and a roadmap to anticipate change, focus resources, and advance their mission. Our collaborative strategic planning service helps your team understand where you are, envision where you want to go, build on your unique strengths, address critical challenges, seize opportunities, and make clear, shared choices about the priorities and goals that will have the greatest impact.
Our clients’ strategic plans articulate a comprehensive set of coordinated strategies that work together to advance your priorities and goals, along with meaningful indicators for measuring progress and success.
Drawing on principles of community organizing, we build relationships, surface diverse perspectives and lived expertise, identify shared interests, navigate differences, and cultivate the collective ownership needed to move your nonprofit from strategy to action.
Our clients’ plans are adaptable and developed through meaningful engagement with the people who shape, and are shaped by, the work: community members, clients, staff, board members, government partners, policymakers, funders, and other key constituents.
Our strategic planning consulting services are grounded in antiracism, intersectionality, and equitable practices. We incorporate principles of change management throughout the planning process to build alignment, readiness, and ownership for successful implementation. Along the way, we cultivate champions who can carry the strategy forward, helping ensure that your strategic plan becomes a living tool for decision-making across your organization.
With alignment on a clear strategic direction and goals, your organization is equipped to allocate resources effectively, seize opportunities, skillfully navigate obstacles, and adapt proactively to an evolving environment.
Services we often pair with our strategic planning include conducting organizational assessments, designing a theory of change, conducting scenario planning, developing a strategic fund-development plan, supporting change management, and providing strategic advising for nonprofit and foundation leaders.
Select Strategic Planning Clients
We work with national nonprofit organizations and organizations across California, in addition to local Bay Area community nonprofits, public agencies, and foundations in Alameda, San Francisco, Contra Costa, Marin, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties.
We have subject matter expertise and extensive experience in public health, affordable housing, social services, disability justice, climate justice, multi-stakeholder coalitions, collective impact, policy advocacy, and the arts.
Our Philanthropy and Grantmaking Strategy Process
Our Insight-to-Impact grantmaking process is customized to flexibly provide a unique experience and process for each client. We work with you to customize your project, drawing from the components below to design the process to fit your project’s context and goals. Our three-phased framework includes these core steps.
Discover (What is?)
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Engage board members and trustees, staff, grantees, community partners, and other stakeholders so you better understand your current grantmaking approach, aspirations, strengths, and opportunities. Assess the landscape. Analyze community needs, trends, research, existing investments, and philanthropic opportunities to identify where your philanthropy can have the greatest impact.
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Clarify what guides your giving. Define or refine your vision, mission, values, and theory of change.
Design (What if?)
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Ideate. Then make strategic choices. Determine your grantmaking priorities, focus areas, target populations, and funding strategies.
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Measure what matters. Design your outcomes, success measures, learning questions, and monitoring and evaluation plan.
Plan (What now?)
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Build the systems that bring your strategy to life. Design your grantee solicitation and application process, proposal review, decision-making, reporting structures and templates, and learning practices.
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Develop an implementation roadmap and timeline, launch your grantmaking, monitor progress, learn from results, and continually refine your approach. Build relationships with grantees.
When we’re done, you’ll have:
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A clear grantmaking strategy and priorities
A community-centered approach that authentically incorporates community voices while supporting fiduciary responsibilities and strategic objectives
Effective and streamlined grantmaking processes and tools, including application and reporting templates
Consistent and transparent evaluation criteria
Clearly defined outcomes
Internal tools and skills to manage and evolve your grantmaking program
Implementation roadmap for executing your grantmaking and for continued learning
In Our Clients’ Words
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“Belinda and Erica guided the Robertson Foundation for Government through an intensive year-long strategic planning process that was both thoughtful and highly productive. Belinda brings a calm presence and a real talent for managing complex group dynamics. The tools and frameworks they developed are now helping us successfully implement our strategy.”
Julia Robertson, President, Robertson Foundation for Government
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“Belinda was an incredibly valuable partner during the formative years of the Travis Credit Union Foundation. Her guidance on strategic board development, governance, and long-term foundation planning helped us build a stronger and sustainable organizational structure during a critical stage of growth. Belinda balances strategic insight with practicality. She brought thoughtful perspective, asked the right questions, and helped our board think beyond day-to-day operations toward long-term impact and mission alignment. I strongly recommend her to organizations seeking thoughtful, experienced guidance in foundation strategy, governance, and nonprofit leadership development.”
Damian Alarcon-Young, President, Travis Credit Union
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“The Air District Board tasked the Community Advisory Council (CAC) with designing a proposal to distribute $3 million in community benefits. Belinda and Erica were instrumental in this effort, bringing deep expertise in participatory budgeting. They helped guide the CAC through a collaborative process that deliberately shaped the vision and framework for a new program. The resulting People’s Air Grant Program, created by the CAC with support from Lyons‑Newman Consulting, is now approved and accepting applications for funding.”
Miriam Torres, Senior Advanced Projects Advisor, Bay Area Air District
Related Case Studies
Philanthropy and Grantmaking Services FAQs
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We work with foundations, public agencies, corporate giving programs, community investment initiatives, and individual donors.
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We support philanthropies at any stage, from early vision-setting to supporting the strategy and grantmaking for complex portfolios.
Our grantmaking strategy projects include:
Strategic planning
Developing or refreshing grantmaking strategies
Establishing new funding initiatives
Defining funding priorities
Designing participatory grantmaking processes
Building grantmaking frameworks
Creating application and review processes and tools
Designing evaluation criteria
Developing learning and impact measurement systems
Participatory grantmaking processes that engage community members
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We engage communities through a variety of engagement methods and design a customized process for each project. Engagement methods include facilitating listening sessions,holding focus groups, engaging grantees,conducting surveys and interviews, and establishing, convening, and facilitating advisory committees.
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We recognize the inherent power imbalance between funders and grantees and support our grantmaking clients to intentionally build relationships grounded in trust, transparency, and mutual accountability. This includes engaging grantees as partners by inviting honest dialogue, collaboratively developing expectations, and supporting their long-term organizational capacity rather than simply monitoring progress or compliance.
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We begin by understanding your mission, values, history, community context, and desired impact. We combine research, stakeholder engagement, and facilitated decision-making to help grantmakers make intentional choices about where they can create the greatest difference. From there, we translate strategy into practical grantmaking processes that are equitable, transparent, and efficient.
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Yes! Whether you’re establishing a new foundation, launching a funding initiative, or exploring a new area of investment, we help transform your vision into a grantmaking strategy that is thoughtful, effective, and sustainable. The result is more than a new grantmaking program; it’s a cohesive strategy and implementation framework that enables you to make meaningful funding decisions and maximize impact for years to come.