Developing your organization’s strategic plan can be the most valuable investment of time and energy your group ever makes. This collection guides you through the planning, design, and implementation process for your personalized strategic plan.
Resources in this Collection
Introduction to Strategic Planning
Strategic planning can be the most valuable investment of time and energy your group ever makes. With TREC's Strategic Plan guide, we offer ideas for making the most of your next strategic planning process.
Threshold Questions to Begin Your Strategic Planning Process
Good strategic planning requires time and effort. Before you dive into the strategic planning process, prepare for the process by asking your group important questions to prepare. These pivotal questions will help you properly measure the time, investment, and energy that are necessary for the process before you.
Getting Started: Forming Your Team and Focus for the Strategic Plan
Start your strategic planning right by engaging the right people, setting realistic timelines, and having the right conversations from the start.
Gain Perspective of Your Organization While Strategic Planning
During your Strategic Planning process, it essential to take the time to step back and gain perspective of your organization's effectiveness. This resource offers questions to ask and consider during the process.
Strategic Planning Retreats
If you have the resources and time, a full team retreat in the middle of the planning process is desirable. This resource can help guide you through the logistical and strategic planning process for your next strategic planning retreat.
The Basics of Drafting Your Strategic Plan
This resource reviews the ins and outs of writing your organization's strategic plan, from the style to the framework in detail. Refer and use this resource to make sure that your latest plan has you covered from your Mission to your Individual Staff Work Plans.
Adopting Your Strategic Plan
Formally adopting a strategic plan is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of a board of directors. This resource reviews the process between the planning committee, staff, and board from review to adoption of your new strategic plan.
Putting Your Strategic Plan to Work
You've completed your strategic plan, congratulations! Now what? How much do you communicate with your funders and when? How do you pay for and staff the new programs? This resource will help answer these questions and more as it walks you through the first stages of implementing your new strategic plan.
Your Living Strategic Plan
Once you've completed your strategic plan, it's important to treat it like a living resource through regular reporting, monitoring, and renewal. This brief resources will help with a clear path forward.
Marrying Financial Planning to Strategic Planning
This tutorial reviews the key components of linking strategic planning to financial planning. We'll examine approaches to strategic planning from Good Enough to The Works; and also how to budget for revenue gaps and surpluses, determine where to put your fundraising focus, and determine the sustainability of each of your programs.
Theory of Change Overview and Approach
A TOC (Theory of Change) describes the overall focus and approach for creating change. This TREC resource will give you a greater understanding of the role a Theory of Change plays for your organization and how to develop and apply one for your organization.
Building Fundraising Success into Your Planning Process
Money doesn't grow on trees (unfortunately). Securing the funding needed to advance conservation work requires good planning and diligent follow through. Join TREC Senior Associate Elizabeth Hospodarsky Stanley as we explore ways to raise more money, more reliably, year after year.
Keeping Strategy on Track with Accurate Job Descriptions and Effective Work Plans
All employees deserve to know what is expected of them, and will perform at their best when their job descriptions are clear, relevant and up-to-date. In this webinar, TREC Senior Associate Dan Schwab provides a simple and useful template that helps define expectations for staff in five essential ways. We then investigate a template for work planning that provides links to both strategy and performance evaluation.
SOAR Strategy Screen for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Planning
A strategy screen is a list of criteria against which you can test various strategic options, particularly when navigating crises, opportunities, growth, or change. A strategy screen can be particularly useful to clarify your DEI priorities and scope in a large field of possible activities.