March: Strategic Visioning
What do spring forward, March Madness, and Stefanie Pessis Weil have in common?
They all happen in March -- Happy Birthday to our Empowered Founder!
What has Empowered Nonprofits been up to this month?
While the Chicago River turned green, Empowered Nonprofits...
Hosted our first EmpoweredHour Webinar of 2023
Preparing to kick-off event season
Diving into strategic goal setting and organizational re-visioning
Assessing current development plans and creating new sponsorship levels and donor cultivation tactics
Developing customized processes and documents to improve internal communications
...just to name a few!
We want end this month with how we started - reflecting on our webinar which focused on strategic visioning. Christina Jensen, one of our Empowerment Officers, reflects on our webinar below.
Q&A with Christina Jensen, Empowered Nonprofits Empowerment Officer
Christina was the co-moderator at our March EmpoweredHour: The Evolution of Strategic Planning.
Q: The title of the webinar alludes to Empowered Nonprofits new way of thinking about strategic planning. What’s the difference between a Strategic Vision Roadmap and a Strategic Plan?
A: A Strategic Plan covers a 3-5-year period, with a focus on a clear vision and plan to get there. The plan typically includes goals and metrics for success, considering the organization’s internal capacity needs as well as evolving its external impact. The planning process often includes board and leadership staff, can take up to a year, and requires adopting many assumptions to outline the necessary details. With this approach, organizations tend to get stuck in scarcity thinking–limiting their goals because of the resources needed to achieve them.
A Strategic Vision Roadmap outlines an aspirational vision and high-level impact-focused strategies for the next 3-5 years. The Roadmap is then used as an iterative tool to facilitate taking action, assessing and adapting, and building broad alignment. Informed by the Human-Centered Design approach, the Strategic Vision Roadmap process leads to nonprofits setting (and achieving) bolder, trailblazing visions.
Q: What are the benefits to a Strategic Vision Roadmap?
A: Community Informed Goals - The process starts with analyzing a nonprofit's historical data alongside input gathered from board, staff, intended communities served, and other key-stakeholders. This allows those with lived experience to inform the nonprofit’s direction before internal discussions even begin. Ongoing feedback from external stakeholders is core to the Strategic Roadmap Process. With this insight, nonprofit’s are able to identify overlooked community needs and think more expansively about how they can effectively respond.
It Gets Used Right Away - Keeping the nonprofit’s ultimate destination at the forefront, the focus is on testing ideas, reflecting, and pivoting or progressing. The Roadmap becomes a funnel and guide for decision making, messaging, fundraising, and programming, while also allowing for flexibility in thoughtfully determining what goals and success should look like. The Roadmap is meant to evolve as more is learned and implemented.
Secures Resources Earlier - Nonprofits typically finish their strategic plan wondering how to move forward without additional funding. The Roadmap process engages donors, prospects, and community leaders early on in the planning process–rather than waiting to present a final product. This leads to a larger community of informed advocates and a group of people excited about partnering on realizing the new vision.
I always walk away from the Roadmap process with well-tested language for a case-for-support and the basis of a major-gifts campaign, including likely potential lead donors. I often secure catalyzing gifts during the planning phase! Because, in the words of Dale Carnegie, “people support a world they help to create.”