Fundraising- Helpful Hint #2- Strategic Planning

The strategic planning process is an excellent tool for an organization to utilize, not only to help it understand how to get from where it is today to where it wants to go, but also to help determine fundraising objectives and cultivate potential donors. Once the organizational strategic plan is completed and fundraising objectives determined, the advancement or development department can also use a strategic planning process to help it achieve the objectives.

Dr. Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, points out, that “strategic planning serves a variety of purposes in organization, including to:

1. Clearly define the purpose of the organization and to establish realistic goals and objectives consistent with that mission in a defined time frame within the organization’s capacity for implementation.
2. Communicate those goals and objectives to the organization’s constituents.
3. Develop a sense of ownership of the plan.
4. Ensure the most effective use is made of the organization’s resources by focusing the resources on the key priorities.
5. Provide a base from which progress can be measured and establish a mechanism for informed change when needed.
6. Bring together of everyone’s best and most reasoned efforts have important value in building a consensus about where an organization is going.

Other reasons include that strategic planning:
7. Provides clearer focus of organization, producing more efficiency and effectiveness
8. Bridges staff and board of directors (in the case of corporations)
9. Builds strong teams in the board and the staff (in the case of corporations)
10. Provides the glue that keeps the board together (in the case of corporations)
11.Produces great satisfaction among planners around a common vision
12. Increases productivity from increased efficiency and effectiveness
13. Solves major problems.”

If you are interested in learning more about strategic planning and how it may help your organization, Authenticity Consulting’s “Free Management Library” website is an excellent place to start. To access their site, just click on the title to this post.