One of the first activities to be deferred by many nonprofit CEOs over the past six months is strategic planning. It is very understandable that they have had to forget about long range goals to focus on immediate concerns around the health and safety of clients and employees. Hiring a consultant to direct a strategic planning process is probably one of the last things on the minds of most CEO’s and boards.  

However, now more than ever nonprofit organizations should be investing in effective strategy development and long-range strategic planning. The fact that many organizations have scrapped their current strategic plans as irrelevant is more likely because the approach to planning was flawed, did not prepare the organization to be nimble and responsive to unforeseen changes in the environment, and lacked decision-making criteria and processes that would have supported innovative and adaptive strategies.

What have we learned?

One lesson learned is that standard models of strategic planning don’t necessarily work when the whole world gets turned upside down. Familiar approaches to planning which don’t address capacity, support real-time strategy development, provide conceptual frameworks for nimble decision-making, or include risk management have demonstrated their limitations.

What seems apparent during this crisis is that nonprofit organizations can be resilient if leaders keep their heads, work together, and strive to find solutions to significant problems while positioning their organizations for sustainability over the long haul. Those nonprofits that are surviving and thriving have developed strategies using technology to connect people, access resources, build collaborative partnerships, and deliver services. Using the experience gained through the pandemic to build planning models which support strategy development in the context of long-range goals is an imperative and one that is achievable for most nonprofit organizations.

How have nonprofits changed?

One of the most obvious ways nonprofits have adapted is in how they do work. Listening carefully to the science and incorporating the latest knowledge into service delivery models have saved lives. Priorities have been realigned to make sure that organizational resources are applied to the most critical areas of need. Strategies have been implemented, modified, and reapplied as organizations learn from their mistakes as well as from their successes. All of these lessons point out the need for a “strategy mindset,” that is, a disposition to plan, execute, learn, adapt and plan again. Those who succeed in this environment will have developed such a mindset.

What can we carry forward into an uncertain future?

First, strategic planning is still needed! Not the traditional models which develop lofty sounding goals that can’t be action-ized or measured, which force organizations to conduct academic or contrived exercises such as SWOT analyses instead of fluid environment scanning, which fail to monitor performance metrics to support business decision-making, or which fail to monitor capacity and risk. Rather, we need strategic scaffolds which provide the organization with a long view, but which also support continuous strategy development, testing, and adaptation.

Second, nimbleness in decision-making doesn’t happen by accident. Intellectual processes that support strategy development, execution, and learning should become embedded in daily operations. Such mental disciplines can and should be learned, starting with the CEO, but also including senior staff and the board.

Finally, even though the future is uncertain, now is the time to engage in a strategic planning process so that a coherent, future oriented framework can be built which also has the capacity to support continuous strategic learning and decision-making, adaptation and innovation, and which anticipates risk and builds sustainability.

Can one ever adequately plan to anticipate crises such as the current COVID pandemic? Perhaps not specifically to any one incident or event. But organizations certainly can build planning models which support real-time analysis and decision making within the context of the organization’s long-range vision. This requires a new mindset and a new set of skills. What better time than now to invest in developing these for the sake of long term sustainability?