The Framework for a Strategic Retreat
Strategic Retreats are an important and tactical step that create a concrete set of objectives for the next five years at an organization and ensure that leadership is aligned with the mission, values, and goals for the future. This gives the Board of Directors and leadership team the opportunity to contribute to the organization’s future, encouraging their participation and support of the nonprofit.
Cogeo has created an example framework of a strategic retreat. As every organization is different, we highly recommend involving professional counsel to help guide this process. If you’re planning to host a strategic retreat, please feel free to reach out to Cogeo with questions and for a conversation.
Planning for Strategic Retreat
Identify and invite key stakeholders: founder, potential board members, trusted partners and other business professionals with relevant expertise.
Determine the setting of the retreat
In-person or virtual
If in-person, determine location
If virtual, determine platform (phone conference, video conference)
Date & time that will allow for maximum participation
Prepare and distribute the agenda prior to meeting
Share any pre-meeting questions with key stakeholders that will be in attendance.
Strategic Retreat Execution
3-hour session
Determine and/or refine vision and mission statement.
SWOT Analysis.
Determine scope of programmatic development and deployment (Y1-Y5).
Determine staffing resources needed (Y1-Y5).
Analysis of necessary financial resources (Y1-Y5).
Determine location and scope of facility footprint (if needed).
Board of directors identification, triage and recruitment.
Structure of the agency, as it relates to culture, bylaws, roles and responsibilities and reporting structure.
Summary, overview and next steps.
STRATEGIC RETREAT TOPICS
Mission
Determine or refine your organization’s mission.
Organization’s Goals
Determine your organization’s goals and objectives for the next 5 years.
Sample Strategic Imperatives
Board Development
Volunteer Recruitment
Comprehensive Resource Development
Fee-for-Service Social Enterprise
Program Management
Volunteer Management
Implement Social-media Outreach Capabilities
Putting It All Together
The organization's strategic framework focuses on what is most important for the organization to continue performing the work of its mission, and the challenges presented, in order to organize all programs around overall goals and strategic imperatives.
Below are two sample organizational goals and the strategic imperatives created to ensure that those goals are met over a five-year period.
GOAL 1: ENSURE FINANCIAL STABILITY FOR LONG-TERM SUSTAINABILITY
Strategic Imperative: Board Development
The formula for composition of a Board of Directors is that its members must possess the expertise to support the work being done in the Board sub-committees. To ensure that the organization has the most effective board composition, a board matrix should be developed and leveraged on an ongoing basis. The matrix outlines member expertise areas, and recruitment will focus on individuals with the appropriate skill set to carry out the organization’s mission going forward.
The most effective recruitment methodology is through past-and current board members, as well as well-known volunteers. Larger-city civic and community leaders and local entrepreneurs are also relevant to the recruitment process. Seek AAA prospects (Affinity to Organization’s mission and goals, Access in the communities they live and work, personal Affluence).
If the organization's footprint reaches several counties/states/countries, Board composition should include representation from each of the geographic areas, as well as the largest communities within the organization footprint. This will result in adequate representation and feedback from each county/large community.
Board member term limits will influence the scope of the recruitment process annually.
Strategic Imperative: Comprehensive Resource Development
The organization’s Resource Development Committee, led by the ED and its Chair, will be tasked with identifying and prioritizing funding sources from a diverse pool of current and to-be established funding streams. Each initiative should be assessed annually, strictly from a ROI perspective (e.g. was the return worth the investment of time involved?).
Annual unrestricted gifts;
Major gifts;
Cultivation events;
Foundations;
Corporations/Businesses;
Bequests (Planned Giving- Named Legacy Society) - deferred gifts;
Special event(s).
Special events in particular should be closely evaluated and scrutinized in terms of ROI.
Proper stewardship protocols need to be observed on an ongoing basis.
The annual-giving initiative should leverage donor-centric delivery systems (regular mail, vs. email, vs. phone call, vs. in-person meeting). A minimum of two appeals should be conducted annually, and never solicit an entity twice in their calendar year. Messaging should be clear, the ask simple, and the voice of the appeal should be well known in the donor’s community.
The major-gifts program should have the support of an annual Case Statement that clearly outlines funding priorities and the organization’s community impact initiatives annually. Sample Case Statements: www.cogeo.us/case
The cultivation events initiative should identify event hosts, recruit hosts perform quarterly events, leverage the annual Case Statement at the events, as well as steward through moves management with all event attendees.
Relationships with corporations/local businesses and foundations should be identified and examined on an ongoing basis.
Strategic Imperative: Implement Social-Media Outreach Capabilities
The organization’s Social-media Outreach Committee is tasked to ensure that social media and web activities are implemented immediately and optimized over time.
There are best business practices as related to creating and executing an appropriate digital tactical plan in three distinct phases:
PHASE 1: CREATE TACTICAL PLAN
Website Development Plan - A roadmap for quickly refining a website, as well as constantly evolving and improving it based upon real-time data, customer feedback, and analytics. To include timeline for key marketing automation platform integrations (e.g. HubSpot)
Digital Marketing Plan - To include personas, customer journey mapping, coupled with a social media and content marketing calendar that aligns with each market segment and key events, funding needs, volunteer opportunities, activities, training, offerings, and milestones.
On-Going Planning - Weekly or Monthly meetings enable status updates on program timelines and requirements in order to continuously set appropriate expectations and keep communications open.
PHASE 2: WEB DEVELOPMENT, PLATFORM INTEGRATION - MARKETING AUTOMATION
The organization should seek to relaunch a mobile optimized and responsive website to elevate the user experience and accelerate the user journey from awareness to membership – to volunteer, and long-time donor. Following the planning phase, the organization will start “connecting the dots”. The site will serve to integrate and automate the organization’s social media platforms, CRM, SEO, E-Mail, Forms, Landing Pages, and CMS into a highly efficient personalized education platform and automated lead generation engine.
SAMPLE ORG VISUAL OUTLINE:
Integrate the organization’s current communication platforms and sites, which most likely are in Silos, into a single digital communications marketing platform and site (e.g. on HubSpot). This will save the organization substantial time and money over time, while increasing ROI, Registrations, Repeat Visitors, and Revenue.
PHASE 3: DIGITAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Full-funnel inbound-marketing campaigns for each target personas to amplify the organization, its needs, and its mission:
Membership Sign-Ups
Volunteer Opportunities
Event Registrations
Sponsor Leads
Email Registrations
Form Completion and CRM Submission
Stakeholder Communications (i.e. Board, Members, Volunteers, Donors, Legacy Society Members)
Subsequently plan and execute full-funnel monthly inbound marketing campaigns to include -- SEM, SEO, email automation, content marketing, social media, landing pages development, call to action modules and registration drives. Below is an example of a customized Campaign Funnel for each initiative and target audience objective.
SAMPLE VISUAL OUTLINE:
Committee will then determine which tactical objectives can be achieved and implemented given priorities, objectives, and available resources.
Strategic Imperative: Fee-For-Service Social Enterprise
The organization’s Fee-for-Service Social Enterprise Committee is tasked to evaluate and determine the potential for a fee-for-service Social Enterprise.
Given its position as the area’s proven expert in a particular field, if there is the potential for a robust nonprofit Social Enterprise, then it should be considered a viable funding tactic to help assure the long term sustainability of the organization.
Sequentially, the committee should analyze the scope of potential target markets across the entire organization footprint, the range of product offerings, market-based pricing per product, contractor resources and resource partners, as well as marketing initiatives.
SAMPLE GOAL 2: MAINTAIN PROGRAMMATIC DIVERSITY & QUALITY
Strategic Imperative: Volunteer Recruitment
The organization’s Volunteer Recruitment Committee is tasked to ensure that volunteer recruitment remains strong, active and seeks to include diverse elements of the broad community.
Diversity characteristics should include age, ethnicity, geography, as well as the organization’s program-area alignment.
Strategic Imperative: Volunteer Management
The organization’s Volunteer Management Committee is tasked to ensure that volunteers are placed in the most synergistic program area and provided with first-rate support services.
Volunteer management sectors should be identified and defined. Once defined, identify and recruit volunteer management leadership for each sector area, as well as associated programs.
Leadership for each sector area will identify volunteer needs given programmatic scope, and then manage volunteers in their respective roles.
An online volunteer calendar of activities created/refined and managed weekly. Calendar is broken down in sector areas and opportunities, as well as managed by sector leaders.
Strategic Imperative: Program Management
The organization’s Program Management Committee is tasked to ensure that programs are meeting the organization’s mission and community demand.
Annual audits of programs, evaluating their purpose, impact, and effectiveness should be conducted. The range of program offerings should be driven by community demand.
Fee-for-service programs should be considered where/if the market can sustain costs.
Promotion of programs should be aimed at synergistic target markets, including local businesses, Science programs in high schools throughout the organization’s footprint, nonprofit partners, economic impact partners, and any other relevant outlets and channels.