Our Strategy Management practice provides critical support for your organization's strategic planning process. Our projects deliver the data you need to create a solid strategic plan and a tool to monitor and measure your execution against that plan.

As shown in the chart below, a strategic planning or key decision-making cycle typically includes four key steps. While not everyone approaches strategic planning or management in the same way, tackling each of these four steps in some fashion is essential to setting critical and feasible priorities, and then following through on those goals.


We offer support for both the research and build support phase and the implement and monitor phase of your strategic planning cycle. Our Service Grants can also help you at any point that you need the right data to drive key decisions. If you need facilitation for mission/vision or strategic planning work, we encourage you to visit one of our nonprofit strategic planning partners.

To learn more about the scope, deliverables and target nonprofit grantee for a specific Service Grant, click on the title.

• Competitor/Collaborator Analysis
  What are similar organizations doing? Who poses a threat? Where are opportunities for collaboration?
  
  Do you know who you should work with and who you need to watch out for? The better you understand what similar organizations are doing, the better equipped you are to make good strategic decisions. Our team works with you to map the competitive landscape so you can understand the key players. The team then creates detailed profiles for a targeted set of organizations, giving you the data you need to decide who might be a threat, what best practices you can emulate, and where there might be strategic opportunities.


• Financial Analysis
  What do our programs cost? How much does it cost to run each of our sites? How much are our different revenue generation strategies costing us?
  
  Do you know how much that initiative is actually costing you? Understanding costs is the cornerstone to informed decision making, but standard financial reports fall short when it comes to delivering the cost information you need. Not understanding the true costs of your initiatives puts you at a disadvantage when it comes to weighing financial decisions. In our Financial Analysis Service Grant, our team will help you define the costs associated with your important activities such as programs, expansion, or revenue generation. Once you understand your full costs, you can make better choices about strategic investments and initiatives, and offer hard facts to justify those choices to stakeholders.


• Strategic Planning Prep
  Who are our stakeholders and how can we involve them? What is our operating environment like? What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats?
  
  Do you have the external data you need to make informed strategic decisions? Understanding the environment you operate in, and your unique situation in that environment, is the key to good decision making. Our team works with you to define and gather the contextual information you need, then helps you understand associated opportunities and threats so you are well prepared for strategic planning or any key decision. Throughout the process the team works with you to ensure essential stakeholder involvement, setting you up for better alignment during the strategic planning process.


• Strategic Scorecard
  What are the metrics I need to track to ensure execution against my plan? What reports do my team and board need and how often? And how do I get that data and display it in a meaningful way?
  
  How do you show your stakeholders that you are making progress against your strategic plan? Preparing your strategic plan is only the first step to mission success: strategic execution is the key to achieving your goals. Monitoring and communicating strategic execution, however, can be a challenge. Our team works with you to translate your strategic plan into measurable targets and define a data collection plan; they finish by delivering a scorecard tool that you can use to report your progress to your board and other stakeholders.