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
Strategic Planning Consulting Services
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 Strategic Planning Process
No two organizations or challenges are the same. Our Insight-to-Impact strategic planning process delivers a flexible, customized experience and strategic plan for each client. We work with you to custom-tailor the process, drawing from the components below to design an experience and a strategic plan fit to your organization’s context and goals.
Discover (What is?)
Understand the current reality
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Identify the strategic questions and critical decisions facing the organization that will guide the process, set expectations, and identify mandates.
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Identify relevant stakeholders; gather stakeholder input; assess external context and opportunities; evaluate organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT); and analyze data.
Design (What if?)
Interpret what the insights mean, ideate, and explore possibilities
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Define or refine vision, mission, values, theory of change, unique value proposition, and strategic positioning.
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Explore possibilities and future scenarios, evaluate alternatives, test assumptions, and surface the tradeoffs between strategic choices.
Plan (What now?)
Make choices and translate strategy into action
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Make choices; prioritize strategic directions; and develop measurable goals and strategies.
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Create an actionable implementation plan with decision criteria, ownership, timelines, and performance measures, aligning organizational culture with strategic priorities.
When we’re done, you’ll have:
A clear, compelling, and actionable strategic plan tailored to your organization’'s unique strengths, opportunities, and context.
A shared vision for the future and alignment on your organization'’s mission, vision, values, and theory of change
Clarity about your organization’s strategic priorities and core capabilities, including the key choices that will drive the greatest impact
A practical roadmap for action with coordinated strategies to capitalize on opportunities, address challenges, and adapt to change
Clear goals, metrics, and a framework for measuring progress and guiding day-to-day decision-making
Engaged board members, staff, and key stakeholders who are aligned, committed, and champions of their organization’s vision and strategic priorities
An engaging, inclusive, and culturally responsive planning process where people feel heard, valued, and empowered to contribute their best thinking
Increased organizational capacity for strategic thinking, productive dialogue, collaboration, and adaptive leadership
Stronger relationships, shared ownership, and collective capacity for action among the people who shape and are shaped by your organization’s work
Tools and messages to communicate your strategic direction with funders, partners, and other stakeholders
Greater organizational effectiveness, resilience, sustainability, and mission impact
In Our Clients’ Words
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"Belinda has been an excellent facilitator for our strategic planning process. We are at a critical moment in our history, and Belinda was able to hear, review, and analyze critical aspects of our mission and the issues we will face in the future. She provided a strong support system for our organization and facilitated excellent engagement from everyone, which provides a robust foundation for our future."
Michael Armentrout, CEO, Maitri Compassionate Care
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“Belinda, Erica, and Lyons-Newman team patiently coached our diverse constituents — board, staff, and community stakeholders — through the process. They were flexible with our timing needs while diligently making sure we stayed on track to an on-time completion. The result is an ambitious yet realistic and flexible plan for growth over our next five years. It’s a plan we are all proud of and excited to implement.”
Stacy Horth-Neubert, Executive Director, Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law
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“Belinda and Erica were warm, empathetic, creative, and knowledgeable. They helped us dial in to exactly what we envisioned for the future of the agency while incorporating the input of our participants, partners, and community. The process was full of excitement and deep discussions. At all times, our needs and interests were at the forefront. They were a joy to work with!”
Jennifer Vanaman, Now-former Executive Director, Peers Envisioning & Engaging in Recovery Services (PEERS)
Related Case Studies
Strategic Planning Services FAQs
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Every engagement is customized, but most of our strategic planning processes take between six and nine months from kickoff to a finished plan.
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We use many tools and processes for strategic planning, including landscape analysis; organizational assessment; SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis; competitive advantage analysis; program evaluation; visioning; mission, vision, and values and DEIBA principles development; theory of change; strategy development; scenario planning (see our blog); board and staff retreat facilitation; partnership development; strategy screen and decision matrix design; implementation planning; and performance dashboards.
We also often integrate strategic fund development planning, business model development (see our blog), negotiation strategy and training (see our blog), coalition building, and strategic partnership development into strategic planning projects.
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Our strategic planning consulting services are customized for each client, but typically our strategic planning processes include:
Strategic issue identification and framing: Identify the strategic questions and critical decisions facing the organization that will guide the process, set expectations, and identify mandates.
Discovery and strategic analysis: Identify relevant stakeholders; gather stakeholder input; assess external context and opportunities; evaluate organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT); and analyze data.
Organizational identity and positioning: Define or refine the organization’s vision, mission, values, theory of change, unique value proposition, and strategic positioning.
Strategic options and scenario planning: Explore possibilities and future scenarios, evaluate alternatives, test assumptions, and surface the tradeoffs between strategic choices.
Strategic plan development: Make choices, prioritize strategic directions, and develop measurable goals, strategies, and key initiatives.
Implementation and accountability: Create an actionable implementation plan with decision criteria, ownership, timelines, and performance measures, aligning organizational culture with strategic priorities.
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Some organizations can run their own process. Most benefit from an outside consultant who can facilitate the process, ask hard questions, and engage stakeholders from an objective point of view. Having a facilitator allows you and your team to benefit from expert guidance to ensure successful outcomes, support decision-making and align teams on shared goals, and support you as leaders to focus on the content and strategy rather than facilitating meetings or coordinating project planning. If you are weighing the decision, our blog post on how to choose a strategic planning consultant walks through the questions to ask yourself.
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Strategic planning sets your organization’s direction. An organizational assessment evaluates the current state of your organization. Conducting an organizational assessment can be a useful step in launching strategic planning or organizational capacity development. Learn more on our organizational assessment page.
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Meaningful engagement is a core component of effective strategic planning. Throughout our process, we draw on principles of community organizing to engage the people who shape, — and are shaped by, the work, including community members, clients, staff, board members, government partners, policymakers, funders, and other key constituents. We create opportunities to surface diverse perspectives and lived experience, identify shared interests, navigate differences, and build the understanding, alignment, and collective ownership needed to move from strategy to action.
A key way to meaningfully engage board members, staff, and other constituents in the strategic planning process is to invite them to participate on the strategic planning committee that will steer the planning process. Learn more in our blog, Who to Include in Strategic Planning: How to Build Your Strategic Planning Committee.
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Evaluation should be incorporated throughout the strategic planning process, not just at the end. We approach evaluation as a mindset that, when embedded in the planning process, increases engagement, self-determination, and ownership of the plan.
Nearly every aspect of a strategic plan can be evaluated, including the mission and vision, strategic priorities and goals, and the implementation process. Maintaining an evaluative mindset throughout the process helps your team assess what is working, identify what needs to change, and stay on track to accomplish your priorities and goals and advance your mission.
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Strategic planning provides greater clarity about where your organization is headed, stronger alignment around priorities, better decision-making, and a practical roadmap for achieving your goals. It helps you anticipate change, focus resources where they can have the greatest impact, and strengthen accountability for results.
Just as importantly, a well-designed strategic planning process builds the relationships and collective capacity needed to turn strategy into action. It creates opportunities to develop leadership, surface diverse perspectives, navigate differences, build shared ownership, and cultivate champions who can carry the strategy forward and sustain it over time.
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We integrate intersectional equity throughout the strategic planning process — not as a separate topic or exercise, but as a fundamental part of how we understand your organization, design the planning process, engage people, make decisions, and set priorities. Depending on your organization’s context, this includes:
Exploring your organization’s current diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism efforts from the outset
Centering equity in the design of the planning process, including who is engaged, how they participate, and whose perspectives and lived expertise is valued
Helping you assemble a diverse planning committee and creating inclusive, facilitated spaces where people can contribute their best thinking
Engaging community members, clients, and other constituents who are directly impacted by your organization’s work
Examining how equity considerations inform your strategic priorities, goals, strategies, and measures of success
Explicitly addressing equity in the strategic plan and identifying opportunities to strengthen equitable practices and outcomes
Explore Related Services
If your organization is preparing to launch a strategic planning process, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us for an introductory conversation about where your organization is today, where you want to go, and how our strategic planning consulting services for nonprofit organizations can help you develop a strategy and road map for getting there.