Strategic Planning
Strategic planning involves defining what you want your group to achieve and making decisions on the best way to get it done.
Strategic planning is important to an organization because it provides a sense of direction and outlines measurable goals. Strategic planning is a tool that is useful for guiding day-to-day decisions and also for evaluating progress and changing approaches when moving forward.
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Strategic Planning
Reading
For new and established organisations / groups. Information about the strategic planning process, analysis, tools, and drawing up your strategy.
Templates
Strategic Planning in Non-Profits Introduction (SPIN)
Video
This site has a number of short videos to explain the strategic process in full., implementation, and review.
Examples of Strategic Plans
Reading
Theory of Change
Reading
Theory of change is a specific type of methodology for planning, participation, and evaluation that is used in the philanthropy, not-for-profit and government sectors to promote social change. Theory of Change defines long-term goals and then maps backward to identify necessary preconditions.
A Theory of Change (TOC) is a living tool that links:
- What you do
- Who you are targeting for results
- Why and how you do it
- What you expect to achieve
Reading
See Creating your theory of change document
Webinar
Video
Risk Management
Templates
It is important that when you plan you also think about risk to your charity/organisation. The first step is to consider the possible risks and identify them. Creating a risk management plan is an approach that:
- recognises risk
- considers the likely probability of the risk occurring
- identifies the likely impact should the risk occur and
- describes how the risk will be managed.
For a risk management plan see Templates below.
The Risk Management Toolkit is a resource to assist with identifying and understanding risk factors for an organisation, create a risk management policy and manage and monitor the risks identified.
Book
The Harvard Business School released a collection of best-selling articles in “10 Must Reads On Strategy” which has some great introductory information on strategic thinking.