June 5, 2017June 10, 2017 North Star Ministry Consultants, LLC

6 Essentials for Strategic Planning

A few weeks ago, I blogged about four key features of constructive goals for a prospering agency. However, goal-setting is but one piece of strategic planning. Clearly, this single article cannot begin to spell out the details of such planning that will get you where you want to go. But reviewing the basic essentials and structure of an efficacious plan is a start.

I am surprised by how much confusion reigns here. For example, many organizations appear bewildered when it comes to distinguishing between a vision and a mission statement. I have seen countless vision statements that look a bit more like mission statements, and vice versa. Sometimes objectives are listed as the mission. Most frequently, you find just one or the other that smells like a pot of rotten soup with ingredients randomly tossed in. Your vision and your mission are not the same, and lack of clarity here leads to uncertainty as to what the organization is about or where it is heading.

Similarly, I often see objectives and goals tangled up in a jumbled mess. The two categories are decidedly not the same and need to be carefully distinguished for the organization to accomplish its mission in harmony with its vision. One of the reasons I wrote a short piece earlier on goal-setting, is so that you gain some sense of the difference.

So, fully aware that there are various, legitimate opinions regarding these important matters, I’ve ventured a concise definition of each and, perhaps, in the future will focus on precise ways these essentials play out. However, it would be potentially misleading to provide concrete examples from a specific or imagined agency, as no two organization’s SP Essentials are, or should be, alike. That said, here you can see how each piece fits into the total picture.

Maxim: A concise, memorable, “bumper-sticker” phrase that “captures” the agency. A nonprofit’s maxim (or motto or slogan) plants the organization into the hearts and minds of its participants. The slogan should not be confused with the vision as it would be sorely incomplete and unhelpful as a stand-alone.
Vision Statement: Formulates in a relatively brief statement what you see the agency accomplishing. Visionaries “see” things that others don’t, and any agency should have in view a satellite image of their journey.
Mission Statement: Provides a (somewhat philosophical) rationale for the vision, the agency’s existence and purpose. It is longer than the vision statement, but not longer than a well-written paragraph.
Objectives: Lists the (5-12) primary ways the agency will accomplish its mission (hint: each usually begins with a participle).
Goal-Setting: Articulates (a) concrete, (b) achievable, (c) challenging and (d) verifiable goals to be accomplished within a specific time-frame for advancing the agency objectives. These can be as few as 20-30 for a small organization or as many as a 200-300 for a large agency. Specific strategies are mapped-out for how to attain each goal as needed. Annual, short-term goals are much more precise and numerous than mid- or long-range goals.
Core Values: Defines the “principles” of an agency that support and permeate everything else. These should not be confused with a faith-based nonprofit’s Statement of Faith, but core values certainly are in tune with such a statement, as well as the rest of the essentials. Core values communicate a particular “moral-like” code that drives the agency to achieve the goals to advance the objectives for accomplishing the mission in fulfilling the vision.

Every year in a thriving cycle of sustainable growth, these essentials are reviewed and fine-tuned based on valuable data gathered in the praxis during the implementation period. Without continuing the cycle, and simply coasting on the success you’ve achieved by conducting an earlier review, an organization will run out of steam. An annual cycle of reflection, anticipation and initiation, however, produces the turbo-power for sustaining momentum. Obviously, fewer changes are made in the slogan, vision and mission statements from year-to year. Perhaps some objectives can be tightened up. And the most new information will occur in the goal-setting for the new year.

Here is the cycle I’m talking about. You can see how all six essentials, in full gear, flow and interact as your nonprofit moves forward, following its North Star.

Understand, it is entirely possible for an organization to “flourish” for awhile–even a long while–without (correctly) installing these SP Essentials—if it happens to catch a wave of necessity for services rendered. At that point, you may feel like a genius. But without the essentials, once that wave passes, the organization may find itself hanging on to a piece of drift wood.

If the wave happens to last for a long while, in its starburst expansion, the agency may eventually feel like the dog that caught the pick-up truck. Now what? How do we sustain and fund this momentum? Alas, some are clueless enough to not even get to these questions in the assumption that institutional growth is ex opere operato. And when success eventually wanes, then comes the irrational leap for quick-fixes, grasping for straws.

But sustainable growth never lasts without intentionality.

By the way, for the faith-based crowd, God is a planner so we, made in his image, must also plan. God promises to do more–much more–than you could ever ask or think, but that means you must ask and think.

So, in one way or another, a failure to plan well will catch up with you and sour into a plan to fail. Then you no longer feel like that genius. Lacking the SP Essentials is why most nonprofits and churches follow the highly-predictable life-cycle of (1) ‘glory-years,’ (2) plateauing, and then (3) decline. Without an activated vision cycle, the life-cycle eventually suffocates on life-support.

In our experience, these six essentials, rightly formulated, are sine qua non for a robust Strategic Plan. You may see things differently, but if these ideas look like a good recipe, and you would like a confidential analysis of your organization’s SP Essentials, contact North Star. The fact is that any agency can experience limitless, sustainable growth. But only if it wants to.

H. David Schuringa
Copyright © 2017 North Star Ministry Consultants LLC
For more: The Nonprofit Leaders Digest

March 17, 2017March 18, 2017 North Star Ministry Consultants, LLC

5 Simple Rules for Goal-Setting

How are you at making and reaching goals? A-? C+? Annual goal-setting is one of the most vital tools for sustainable growth in accomplishing the mission you envision. The value of setting the right goals in the right way at the right time cannot be overstated.

Every year you’ll want to gather key staff to participate in setting goals for the dimension of the institution for which each is responsible. Of course, you must guide the process and take responsibility for the end product. This complete list of institutional goals—and there should be many— should be presented to your board of directors each year and, the following year, a progress report provided.
For effective execution, each goal should meet several criteria. I’ll explain just five of the main rules. I have religiously abided by these, and they have never failed me. So here they are, bare-bones. In the future we’ll flesh them out.
_____________________________________________________________________
ALLIGNABLE: A particular goal may be fine in and of itself, and would further a great cause for the advancement of humanity. But if it doesn’t align with one or more agency objectives– which in turn flow from your well-framed vision and mission statements—it doesn’t belong on your list.
Chasing rabbits is a tempting organizational pastime. Perhaps in a brainstorming session, a great idea sparks and everyone thinks you should run with it. Another side-track can be directed by a huge donation ear-marked for a project not on your radar. Rabbits lead down dark holes.
Bonus Value: The alignability factor keeps the organization on line, ensuring every effort is pushing in the same direction.

______________________________________________________________________

QUANTIFIABLE: Quantifiability goes with clarity and concreteness. To “try harder and do better” is not a goal. To feed dinner to 5,000 homeless people in the northeast shelter of the city is clear, concrete and quantifiable. Sometimes nonprofits rightly find it difficult to quantify a foggy “spiritual” goal such as “for 10,000 people to give their hearts to Jesus.” But “for 10,000 people to sign a card that they have accepted Christ for the first time and to provide contact information,” while still murky, can be quantified. This also means to keep accurate records.
Bonus Value: Quantifiability provides outcomes to be graphed for historical analysis and future projections.
______________________________________________________________________
CHALLENGING: Worth-while goal-setting stretches the agency in all its parts. So an aim to rescue 500 battered women next year, when you housed 495 last year is planning to plateau, not grow. Great goals present aligned and quantifiable challenges for expansion of the organization. As the maxim goes, no pain, no gain. Without challenge, an organization experiences progressive atrophy. As a leader, you are not making the grade if you merely follow the agency, or coast along.
Bonus Value: Challenging goals strengthen your agency and demonstrate you have the courage to lead.
______________________________________________________________________
ACHIEVABLE: Still, goal-setting is best tempered by realism. Your goal of tutoring 400 inner city children for 20,000 hours, when you accomplished a tiny fraction of that last year, should not be confused with visionary. To make matters worse, unachievable goals discourage your team and make you look detached from organizational capacity. On the bright side, however, challenging, but achievable, goals inspire your agency with a “Yes! We can do this!”
Bonus Value: Goals achieved inspire confidence that you and your team know where you are going.
_______________________________________________________________________
VERIFIABLE: If you achieved your goal of training 250 new volunteers, you should be able to print out their volunteer applications, with contact information, the day they were trained, and by whom. Also, these should be volunteers who actually volunteered following the training. Only verifiably accomplished and meaningful statistics count.When anyone outside the organization asks for proof of your figures, you can confidently bring them to a computer and show them (likely with the aid of your IT guy!). Hopefully, your success will sound too good to be true. But then, you must be able to prove your stats are backed by facts. Call this utter transparency.
Bonus Value: Verifiability flows from integrity, the foundation of a successful agency.

_______________________________________________________________________

Having said all this, remember we’re talking here about annual goals, not medium or long-range ones. Also, if goal-setting doesn’t come naturally to you, get reliable assistance to begin or strengthen the process. Such will also help you formulate a strategic plan for reaching your goals.
Goal-setting is always necessary. Sure, you can get lucky and be at the right place at the right time so that the organization seems to be growing by itself. My mentor used to say that a church in a rocketing suburb could have the devil in the pulpit and still grow. So, that means you must set the bar much higher than that which would have been reached anyway, while chatting around the water cooler with staff.
Goal-setting is never infallible. Sometimes circumstances happen beyond your control that you can’t reach a goal. After 9/11, many nonprofits didn’t meet their revenue goals, but any board would understand. By the same token, when you set a goal and exceed it, few will complain if you also went over budget to embrace the opportunity.
Goal-setting is a mark of a top-grade leader: You’ll discover these five simple rules to be advantageous if you are serious about helping people in need. Goal-setting is not about peeking into a crystal ball, it’s about exercising leadership with vision, clarity, faith, realism and accountability.
As a final note, a faith-based leader knows that God can do “abundantly more than we ask and think.” Exactly, which means we must “ask and think.” These five simple rules get you on the path do just that, and to see God do unimaginably more.