What are the benefits of strategic planning ?
Strategic planning serves a variety of purposes in organizations, including to:
- Clearly define the purpose of the organization and to establish realistic goals and objectives consistent with that mission in a defined time frame within the organization’s capacity for implementation.
- Communicate those goals and objectives to the organization’s constituents.
- Develop a sense of ownership of the plan.
- Ensure the most effective use is made of the organization’s resources by focusing the resources on the key priorities.
- Provide a base from which progress can be measured and establish a mechanism for informed change when needed.
- Bring together of everyone’s best and most reasoned efforts have important value in building a consensus about where an organization is going.
Other reasons are that strategic planning:
- Provides clearer focus of organization, producing more efficiency and effectiveness
- Bridges staff and board of directors (in the case of corporations)
- Builds strong teams in the board and the staff (in the case of corporations)
- Provides the glue that keeps the board together (in the case of corporations)
- Produces great satisfaction among planners around a common vision
- Increases productivity from increased efficiency and effectiveness
- Solves major problems
The information about nonprofit strategic planning was adapted from a small portion of the guidebook, Field Guide to Nonprofit Strategic Planning and Facilitation by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD. of Authenticity Consulting.
