Client Challenge

The organization is a 113-year-old charity going through a major transformation: expanding from regional to national, with an associated need for far larger philanthropic support than they’ve had in the past. Our client was the Philanthropy office responsible for raising that support. The new Philanthropy leader had an equally transformational vision for that office to significantly increase its annual raise. This vision included an expanded national staff, a shift from annual and event giving to individual giving, extensive leadership and staff development, new operational infrastructure, and much more.

This was a moment when focus, prioritization, and alignment was critical to their success. That meant developing a new strategic plan and cascading the resulting priorities, projects, and targets into the existing organization. In short: they needed a destination, a map to reach it, and new ways of working in order to make the journey.

Our Approach

We facilitated a series of initial leadership workshops to help the team align and put language to their mission, 5-year goal, and strategic pillars. For some of the newer leaders who had not been through strategic planning before, this was an opportunity to grow their understanding of its value and utility.

Over the next 6 weeks we ran design sessions to brainstorm candidate initiatives for inclusion in the plan, using activities to stimulate thinking and grow the size of the list. Using our proprietary Initiative Value tool, we worked with the team to identify top priorities. Finally, we wrapped up our collaboration with KPI development.

Next we used business storytelling tools to develop a ‘road show’ deck which the Chief Philanthropy Officer used to socialize and build buy-in for the plan across the health system leadership team, the Philanthropy staff, and with key donors.

The next step was to update the Annual Operating Plan development process, and ensure that each of the departments in Philanthropy had ‘year 1’ goals and metrics that cascaded from the Strategy Plan.

Our final steps included expanding the individual goal-setting process to align with the strategic and annual plans; add an innovation program to provide an ongoing flow of ideas for inclusion in the strategy refresh; and build a project management function to keep all of this work on track and monitored.

The Impact

Philanthropy leadership used the strategic and operational plans to make the case for 25% more staff, a larger annual budget, and significant success with their strategic portfolio. The successful achievement of their strategic initiatives helped take them national and virtual while supporting the increased focus on individual giving. This transformation did not come at the expense of fundraising; front line programs and officers substantially increased annual fundraising totals over this time period.