Strengthening Strategic Planning Skills for Nonprofits

Welcome to our first look at strategic planning! In our work together on this topic, you’ll get a fresh perspective on how planning strategically can be a strength of your nonprofit…a power that reaches beyond the occasional multi-year plan you might be familiar with!

We’ll begin our learning with a consideration of what strategic planning is and why it matters. We’ll link this to the theory of change and intended impact concepts and look closely at several skills to support your planning work.

We’ll wrap up our learning with a look at how an adaptive strategy approach can create a culture of learning within your nonprofit that has long-lasting effects and how we can measure our readiness for beginning any sort of planning process.

*Note that a transcript of all audio is available for download on the lessons to come, as well as an audio-only version of the lessons. You can always turn on closed-captions on the video player settings above.

In this lesson, we'll jump in on an overview of what strategic planning is.

Be sure to download the transcript to begin building your reference library, and also feel free to use the audio-only download below for on-the-go learning.

Now that you have some basics about strategic planning, let's take a look at why it matters.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

In this lesson, we'll look at the key skills related to strategic planning. Remember: skills can be learned, practiced, and developed over time, so if you feel that you have a little (or a lot of!) room for improvement, know that you're on the right track!

Be sure to download the transcript to not only review your learning but also to see the research references used in this lesson.

In this lesson, we'll bring together our learning on what effective strategic planning looks like, and how can we measure them.

Be sure to download the transcript to add to your reference library, and also feel free to use the audio-only download below for on-the-go learning.

How will you know if you and your nonprofit are ready and have the capacity to embark on a strategic planning initiative? Six key questions will help you assess your readiness across multiple dimensions.

Remember, you can download the audio and transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

Welcome to the silver badge lessons on strategic planning! Now that you have a sense of what strategic planning is, what skills are needed to improve in its practice, and how it looks when effectively done, we’ll now turn our attention to putting planning into practice!

We’ll begin by exploring what it means to activate your personal abilities and then look at how to leverage these abilities in leading others to strategically plan. We’ll expand our perspective by looking at building and enhancing your organization’s strategic planning abilities, and wrap up with a look at how to set goals for improvement in this important capacity area.

Let’s jump in with our first lesson!

*Remember that a transcript of all audio is available for download below on the lessons below, and you can always turn on closed-captions on the video settings above.

In this lesson, we'll jump get ready to do some action planning around strategic planning efforts, and look closely at how you can make (or support) a really great plan for positive change in your own nonprofit.

Be sure to download the transcript to review your learning.

Now that we have a little bit of foundation in your strategic planning efforts, let's think about how we can apply this to your organization.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

In this lesson, we'll look at how to put strategic planning into practice with a look at how to build and enhance it in your nonprofit.

Be sure to download the transcript to review your learning.

Any personal or professional type of improvement that we want to make is always more successful when we set goals to work toward and achieve. Improving your own strategic-planning abilities is no different!

Be sure to download the transcript to review your learning.

Goals can get us to new levels of functionality in many areas of our organization. We'll next consider how setting strategic planning goals for your nonprofit can be successful both at the individual and team levels.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

Welcome to our final series of lessons and work on strategic planning. Our gold badge content turns the learning experience over to you: we start by considering how motivation and other psychological factors affect the ability and interest to improve strategic planning practices. We then review all that we’ve learned, which is a great way to prepare for drafting your personal learning plan on this topic.

This personal learning plan is a way for you to reflect on this topic and sketch out how you’d like to improve in this area over the next three to six months. Take your time with this process: it’s worth the energy spent in reflecting on where you’re already skilled and where you could grow and improve.

Let's jump in!

*Note that a transcript of all audio is available for download on the lessons to come, as well as an audio-only version of the lessons. You can always turn on closed-captions on the video player settings above.

In this lesson, we'll look at how motivation can be supported in building strategic planning efforts in your organization.

Be sure to download the transcript to not only review your learning but also to see the research references used in this lesson.

In this lesson, we're going to discuss how we can inspire others to get personally motivated about nonprofit strategic planning, especially those who may be resistant.

Remember, you can download the transcript for this video below, and can also turn closed captions on and off for your convenience.

In this final teaching lesson on strategic planning, we're bringing together all our learning into a capstone video on how we can grow from everything we've covered thus far!

Be sure to download the transcript to not only review your learning but also to see the research references used in this lesson.