Strategic Planning Through an Equity Lens

Opportunity

Active Children Portland (ACP) is a non-profit making a significant positive impact on the children of our community. ACP’s mission is to empower students to lead healthy lives, succeed academically, and inspire positive community engagement. This objective is accomplished through after-school sports, nutrition, creative writing, and service-learning programs. The programming is provided at no-cost to families, schools, and the communities, relying entirely on individual, corporate and private foundation support.

ACP was looking for help with reviewing and advising on their 3-year strategic plan, yearly objectives, operational goals, and execution of the objectives.

Solution

Pepper Foster led the nonprofit’s Executive Director, staff, and Board of Directors in a series of three workshops, taking them from strategy to execution:

1. Brainstorming – Facilitated a meeting with stakeholders to understand where the organization was now, what their vision for the future is, and what challenges they were facing.  
2. Identifying Strategies – The Pepper Foster team shared themes from the initial brainstorming session that informed potential strategies for the organization to pursue. The second session was focused on ensuring alignment with those strategies and beginning to plan out the work needed to accomplish their goals. 
3. Execution – The final session focused on reviewing the strategic planning journey, culminating in priority recommendations against the three identified focal areas.  Finally, Pepper Foster introduced a flexible project management tool for the organization to use and measure progress toward their goals.

Outcome

Five strategies were identified to meet the nonprofit’s 3-year goals, and priority was placed against three:

1. Diversify Funding Sources
2. Implement a Compelling Marketing Plan
3. Create Sustainable Growth.  

Objectives for those priority strategies were identified and broken down into manageable pieces. A timeline was created and project planning for the first year began using the new project management tool.