What is the Purpose of the Planning Section in a Strategic Plan?
Many times people focus only on the overarching strategy in a strategic plan, and that’s not necessarily wrong. However, at NMBL will feel it is critically important to include the planning section because it lays out how to operationalize the strategy that has been laid out. A clear path forward is critical for an organization, not just in terms of setting up the mission and vision, but how to achieve the mission and vision. With this in mind, we typically break our planning section up into four areas of influence:
Marketing, Public Relations, and Brand Awareness
Sales, Fundraising, and Membership
Operations
Staffing
These four groups typically allow an organization to function, but sometimes an organization has another area that they ask us to include or focus on.
Marketing, Public Relations, and Brand Awareness
Your communications plan is key to making sure your audience knows who you are and what you do. Reaching that group through the right mediums, at the right time, and with the right message is critical to your success. As noted in our Stakeholder Analysis blog post, this is where personas come into play: knowing who your customers/donors/members are; where they frequent; and how to reach them all play into your communications plan. This is also a good area to start measuring yourself against competition/others in your space. A matrix of competitors with their social followers by platform and how they reach clients/donors is impactful here and provides a baseline measurement for your organization.
Sales, Fundraising, and Membership
Depending on what type of organization you are, not all of this may apply to you. As a nonprofit, you may not have sales (although you may adjust that to Earned Income), or as a small business, you are unlikely to have fundraising or membership (but perhaps you have a subscription plan that could replace this). Regardless of which pieces you do have within your organization, this is how you will grow your revenues. From pricing strategy to client growth, this section should take into account the personas you utilized in the communications section, looking at how you will grow both new customers/donors as well as how you will increase sales/donations from existing customers/donors. Where possible, this is also a good area to provide a matrix of competitor pricing, revenues/fundraising, etc. as a measurement against your own operations.
Operations
This area varies wildly depending on the organization, but at the heart of it, is the need to plan for optimal functionality. In other words, what should your organization be doing to operate better/more efficiently? This area can tie in pieces of other areas in the plan, needing staff to beef up manufacturing or needing a capital campaign to grow your museum footprint or update the exhibits. Whether it’s optimizing a gift shop with products that are more of interest to your clientele or adding a new product line, this is a space primed for both external and internal feedback. This means you need to ask, what does your community want you to be doing, and internally, does that fit within your mission and vision, if so how do you do it?
Staffing
Now that you know—how you will reach potential clients (communications plan), what you will sell, who your clients are and your price points (sales/fundraising plan), and how you operate (operations plan)—ensuring you have the staff to succeed is critical. Building too much ideation without the staff to do it will only set your organization up for failure. Similarly, the staffing needs to grow with the organization’s sales/fundraising otherwise you’ll spend too much too soon and end up failing. Take this section to outline what roles need to be added, when they will be added, and what responsibilities each role will have.
Find our whole “Purpose of” series here:
You can also download our sample/template Strategic Plan Request for Proposal for free here, no sign up or anything necessary: Strategic Plan Request for Proposal Template
A strong planning section can set an organization apart from its competition. Mission and Vision are critical, but how you will reach those goals through planning is just as important (as is actually delivering on the plans). Reach out to us today to build your plans and help you deliver on those plans.
