Evolution is now a non-negotiable. In the fast-paced landscape of global development, social impact organizations face an urgent need to evolve swiftly. Many nonprofits are undertaking ambitious overhauls of their strategic plans and organizational structures, investing significant time and resources. Yet, too often, teams emerge burnt out and disillusioned, while leaders grapple with the challenge of turning new strategies into actionable initiatives across the organization. All this at a time when the nature of global challenges calls for bolder impact than ever before.
This article draws on the experiences and insights of a diverse group of nonprofit leaders, offering practical recommendations to increase the likelihood that your strategic planning efforts yield greater impact and better outcomes for your teams.
We focus on four critical elements. The accompanying framework serves as a quick reference guide for any leader driving organizational change.
- Leadership
- Process
- Resourcing
- Communications
To develop this guidance, the authors pulled on their 40+ years of combined experience, working on strategic change initiatives with dozens of social impact organizations. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with six seasoned nonprofit leaders from around the world and had three other industry professionals review this work. Despite these experts’ varied approaches to strategy and different experiences – with international and national nonprofits, local government, social enterprises, and nonprofit alliances – their critical insights were remarkably aligned.
Prepare for an (Ultra) Marathon and Know the Terrain
Strategy is not a sprint. Our primary conclusion is that leaders need to approach strategic shifts as a long race, with many stages, rather than a sprint to the finish line. Ambitious strategic pivots require time, making it essential to manage team expectations and energy mindfully. This approach also allows for small trials, failures, successes, adjustments, and celebrations along the way, ensuring that the staff, who will ultimately drive the changes, have substantive input and time to get on board.
Understand the terrain. Our second key insight is that leaders should be honest with themselves and their teams about whether the strategic change initiative aims to be more tactical or visionary. Tactical planning focuses on changes in modes of operation and near-term objectives within the existing framework. Visionary planning, on the other hand, centers on fundamental changes in the organization’s long-term direction, mission, or overall approach to creating impact.
Both tactical and visionary strategic planning serve important purposes and most strategies will have some elements of both. However, misaligned expectations can lead to more difficult processes, potentially producing muddier results or stirring up internal tensions. For these reasons, we suggest considering four dimensions of strategic planning—leadership, process, resourcing, and communications—along a spectrum from tactical to visionary.
See our Powerful Strategies Framework at the end of the article for an overview of key points in printable form.
For the purposes of this article we use social impact organization and nonprofit interchangeably.