What a Review Panel might Review

The final item that I think would be appropriate for a new charity start-up review panel to understand about a new nonprofit is the strategic plan developed by the founder. Having seen the plans developed by several charity start-ups in recent years, I know that what these founders have understood by "strategic planning" is not adequate to the task at hand.

Strategic Planning must be done according to a model, and the model I like most includes the following topics:

1. Who are we, in terms of our past? Where did we come from? What are our traditions, our symbols and our customs? How and why did these develop and over what kind of time?

2. What is our present situation? Where are we located geographically and conceptually? What is our current purpose, mission and vision, and what are our values? What programs of service do we presently offer and why do we offer these, and to what target populations? What resources do we have available? What is our Case for Support?

3. What are the current trends in our arena of service? What's happening to change the picture in which we find ourselves?

4. What, going forward, should be our new role and mission? What are the ways we want to affect the society around us? The environment? What is the greater social good that we seek to serve?

5. How do we define the steps we will need to take to get from where we are now to where we need to be in order to fulfill our role and accomplish our mission? Over what kind of time? Using what resources – human and financial?

6. What strategies and tactics are we going to need in order to achieve the objectives defined by those steps? How will we structure ourselves for work? How will we program our organization? What procedures and policies will be needed, and at what conceptual levels?

7. What resources will we need (including those we have now) and how do we find or make a continuing source of those resources? Particularly, the fundraising strategic plan comes in here, as well as the plan for human resource procurement and management.

8. How will we know when we have succeeded in accomplishing our mission? What units of measurement will we use? What process of measurement will we use, in the short run and over longer periods of time? To whom will we report these accomplishments?

9. What means do we have in place to make mid-course corrections within the framework of the organization's structure, budget, policies, procedures and human limitations?

10. What are the means by which we will make our strategic plan operational on a day-to-day and week-by-week basis so that we understand every action and every policy in the context of our strategic plan?

If and as the new charity start-up review panel would have in hand the details of such a plan, they would be able to identify immediately any potential flaws they see that would mean trouble down the road for the new nonprofit. They could point these out and the founder would have a chance to continue the work of planning, ironing out those wrinkles before getting started. That would save the donors, the taxpayers, the service recipients, the board, and, ultimately, the founder him/herself a lot of time and wasted effort. Unfortunately, if this system were in wide use today, there would be less work for us fundraising consultants to do!