5 Places Where Your Strategy Belongs
April 18, 2024 | By David M. Wagner
The strategy that ends up sitting “on a shelf” or “in a drawer” is a tragically common trope in the nonprofit world.
Your plan won’t do a lot of good if key stakeholders don’t know about it. Don’t keep yours a secret.
What’s so Important?
So what’s the alternative?
You might be thinking, “I can’t just talk about our strategy all the time. People are busy!”
True. But when it comes to your key stakeholders, what are you discussing with them that’s more important than your strategy?
I argue that, apart from learning about what’s most important to others, either your strategy is the most important thing to discuss, or your strategy is missing the most important things.
Grounding stakeholder conversations in strategy reinforces its importance, creates alignment across disparate efforts, and invites feedback to adapt your plans when necessary.
Bring Strategy into Key Conversations
What does that look like in practice? Here are ways to communicate your strategy with five types of stakeholders.
The Board. Your board has ultimate responsibility for setting strategic direction and overseeing strategy execution. Agendas drive the conversation – how does each item relate to the strategy? If it’s not clear something does, is it truly relevant? Or (if something is important enough and not reflected in the strategy) might the strategy need to change?
Funders. Magic happens when funders’ aims and your strategic goals align. First seek to understand funders’ objectives, and then explore intersections with the direction you’re excited to be going as a program or organization. Don’t abandon your vision to chase funding opportunities with poor alignment!
Partners. Approach new partnerships with a focus on overlaps between your values and vision and look for ways your respective missions may complement each other. Your goals and plans are good fodder for discussions about opportunities, as well as practical limitations, to work together.
Staff and volunteers. Motivate staff and volunteers by emphasizing the mission their work supports. Demonstrate how their role supports a larger strategy. For staff, go a step further and ensure their performance goals are aligned with program and organizational strategic goals. Strategy is about doing things differently, not doing additional things on top of everyone’s “day job.”
Community. Build support and advocacy for your mission by showcasing not only the direction you’re going, but also the ways the community can get – or already has been – involved in realizing that future vision. Public commitments to strategic aims also bolster accountability.
More universally create “mission moments” – opportunities to work directly in the mission or hear from those who benefit from it – to remind stakeholders of your shared “why.”
Using your strategy as a communications tool in stakeholder conversations will foster greater alignment and better results. If you could use a hand with communicating your strategy, or are too embarrassed to share the one you’ve got, set a free consultation to get help making your strategy matter.