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What we do

Strategic Planning

Our strategic planning approach ensures all perspectives are heard while empowering stakeholders to make values-based decisions about the future. We've found many processes get stuck rehashing current issues or proposing impractical ideas. We facilitate collaborative, focused sessions driving shared understanding and commitment.

Session 1 - Frame the situation through open dialogue, grounding analysis, and articulating the reason for planning.

Session 2 - Articulate and prioritize core values to create a decision-making framework. Define roles and responsibilities in final choices.

Session 3 - Evaluate goals against values, capacity, and focus. Finalize strategic priorities and say no to misaligned opportunities. Outline success measures and tradeoffs.

Session 4 - Develop the transparent plan, coach boards on utilizing it for governance, and ready stakeholders to champion and operationalize it.

The outcome is a focused roadmap rooted in shared values and commitment, with clarity on decision drivers and individual responsibilities moving forward. This equips your organization to stay aligned amid complex choices.

How the engagement runs

  1. Ground the questions

    We start with your mission, your numbers, and structured listening across staff, board, and community. A strategic plan built on assumptions nobody checked is a wish list. We check.

  2. Work with the board

    We facilitate working sessions where the board makes real choices, not wordsmithing exercises. The hard questions go on the table early: what to grow, what to hold, and what to stop. A plan that avoids those questions is not a plan.

  3. Write the plan

    We write a multi-year plan with narrative around the goals, not bullets alone. Your staff, board, and donors should be able to read it and understand where the organization is going and why it can get there.

  4. Set the measures

    Every goal gets milestones, an owner, and a review rhythm. We build the framework the board will use to check progress each year, so the plan stays a working document instead of a shelf document.

What you receive

  • A written multi-year strategic plan with full narrative
  • A financial framework tied to each goal
  • An implementation calendar with named owners
  • An annual review framework for the board
  • A short public version for donors and community

Who does the work

A partner facilitates every session personally and writes the plan. We bring frontline experience to the questions in front of your board, which is different from bringing a process. Most planning engagements run four to six months, paced to your board calendar.

How fees work

A fixed fee, tied to the length of the process and the number of facilitated sessions. Scoped in writing before we begin, with no change unless the scope changes by mutual agreement.

Senior consultants stay in the room from kickoff through implementation.

How we work

Let's talk

Ready to have a conversation?

We would be glad to learn about your organization. Please reach out any time. We answer our own phone.

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Offices
Toronto | Chicago