How Nonprofits and NGOs Can Get Real Value from Strategic Planning

The Bridgespan Group, How Nonprofits and NGOs Can Get Real Value from Strategic Planning addresses a common organizational challenge: why strategic planning often feels like a frustrating, uninspired exercise, and how leaders can transform it into a powerful driver of social impact. Drawing from hundreds of real-world engagements—including case studies of organizations like Generation Hope and Living Goods—the report details a practical, iterative framework designed to help nonprofits achieve radical clarity on what matters most.

The publication outlines four vital, interconnected elements required to build and execute a high-impact strategic plan:

• Clarify Strategy: Focuses on making hard choices regarding your three- to five-year impact goals, target population, geography, and theory of change rather than just listing daily activities.
• Set Strategic Priorities: Translates overarching impact goals into roughly five to seven concrete multiyear initiatives, which explicitly highlight what the organization will do as well as what it will stop doing.
• Estimate Resources: Assesses the necessary time, money, and talent required to execute priorities, utilizing scenario planning (low, middle, high) to navigate external economic uncertainties.
• Plan to Implement: Integrates change-management principles from day one, leveraging performance dashboards, learning agendas, and continuous board/staff engagement to adapt to shifting environments.

The report concludes with a comprehensive toolkit defining core operational concepts—such as benchmarking, landscape analysis, operating models, and program strategy maps—making it an invaluable blueprint for nonprofit leaders seeking lasting organizational transformation.