5 Types of Strategic Plans Every Nonprofit Should Know (And When to Use Them)

While there are numerous books and websites on strategic planning, the process of developing a plan often seems prescriptive — but it doesn’t have to be. Strategy for any organization can be tailored to set forth the ways an organization will negotiate its environment to attain a competitive advantage and, as a result, become more successful. A strategic plan defines how the organization will undertake this strategy — at all levels of the organization and in a sustainable fashion — over a set period of time.

However, strategic planning is not a “one-size-fits-all” process. Every organization is different. They exist at different phases in the nonprofit lifecycle, focus on different issue areas and are influenced by external forces to varying degrees.

At Social Impact Architects, we have spoken a lot about how to best pursue a strategic plan. But something was missing. Over the past 15 years, we found that our clients often need different types of strategic plans to meet their unique needs and competitive environments. Our experience has shown us that determining the right type (or types, since they can be blended) of strategic plan is both an art and a science. As you move forward in your strategic planning efforts in the new year, we encourage you to reference the information below to chart the best course for your organization:

Action Plan

• Focused on initiation — getting the right things done in the right order
• Created when launching an organization to ensure smart decision-making or when recalibration is needed for an existing organization to perform a quick jump-start

For start-up organizations, those that have operated without a strategic plan, or those that feel stuck, a quick one-year action plan can be very helpful for building discipline around planning without dealing with a complicated and often costly process. We also use action plans as a tool to start new ventures or new objectives within an existing strategic plan.

Foundational Plan

• Focused on stability — either in operations or transition
• Created when an organization has hit a “limit to growth” due to operational and/or staffing constraints
• Typically done when growth is on the horizon for next plan

When business experts looked at Fortune 500 companies that have been around for a century or more, they noted that these companies cycle back and forth successfully between two phases — growth (see Transformational Plan below) and plateau. Plateauing doesn’t mean the organization isn’t growing, but it does mean that it is focused on building up foundational infrastructure and correcting “growing pains” before it hits another phase of growth. Organizations need this downbeat to take stock and ensure that operational areas are functioning at their maximum levels of efficiency based on best practices. It is also a helpful stage during times of organizational transition (e.g., CEO departure).

Bridge Plan (a.k.a., “Refresh”)

• Focused on extending existing strategic plan
• Created when uncertainty in future funding or leadership exists and a new strategic plan is not yet feasible
• Requires reviewing results of the existing plan and consideration of new areas to include

Many of our clients who had been planning to start a strategic planning process in 2020 course-corrected once the pandemic hit and decided to use a shorter-term “bridge plan.” Because of the many unknowns and the extra work associated with meeting community needs during the pandemic, a bridge plan was the perfect way to focus on strategic issues without overtaxing the organization or making unrealistic plans. Once the pandemic was over, many clients revisited their past plans (pre-2020), and we assisted them with a “refresh” that brought pre-pandemic goals up to date to meet current needs. During an economic downturn or period of uncertainty, a bridge plan is a quick way to take stock of any changes needed, add a few new goals and have a fresh plan for the upcoming year.

Transformational Plan — Growth or Evolutionary

• Focused on growth — either in programming or geography
• Created when an organization or community needs to go to the next level
• Requires operational elements to be relatively stable and mature
• Requires a community assessment of need

For many years, a “strategic plan” was synonymous with a “transformational strategic plan.” However, we have found that growth, especially in the traditional for-profit sense of “growing bigger,” isn’t always the right answer in the nonprofit space. Nonprofits have two types of growth: 1) growing wide (expanding geography or service offerings to support community need) or 2) growing deep (refining existing services for greater impact). Both have merit but require different litmus tests. A transformational strategic plan asks why the problem exists and, more importantly, persists, and what your organization can uniquely do to solve it. We have also found that there are two kinds of transformational plans: 1) growth transformational planning, which forecasts trends and charts the best course forward for growth of the organization, and 2) evolutionary transformational planning, which sets the trend and often redefines an industry and the organization’s competitive advantage within the community. To put this into more concrete terms, growth planning is about taking a larger piece of the pie and evolutionary planning is about growing the pie (or changing the recipe).

Turnaround or “Right-Sizing” Plan

• Focused on continuity — “right-sizing” mission with financials
• Created when an organization has hit the decline phase in the organizational lifecycle and needs swift action
• Requires competitive and community assessment

While the name alone makes it hard to talk about, many nonprofits need to consider a turnaround plan — not necessarily due to poor management, but rather to external forces. Instead of “turnaround,” we often use the word “right-sizing” to describe this plan. Due to the financial and personnel challenges caused by the pandemic, many nonprofits retrenched, consolidated and experienced a rebirth. As a result, the revamped organizations are now leaner and better able to tackle issues more creatively.

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While we often look at these types of plans separately, they can often be blended together or used to define a given year. For example, we are working with a large nonprofit now on strategic planning where they are “right-sizing” their mission in certain areas but are taking a more transformational growth approach in others. Another nonprofit did a bridge plan for 2023–2024 and has been using “bridge” as a theme for the year. We hope you have enjoyed this breakdown of different strategic planning types. We would love to hear your reactions to them.