Strategic planning for nonprofits: How to make a plan stick

A strategic planning retreat can feel like a turning point for a nonprofit. People name what has been difficult to say. Priorities come into focus. Board members and staff leave with clearer direction and renewed possibility.

Then they return to the daily work of meeting program demands, staffing challenges, grant reporting requirements, and the board’s regular agenda.

Making a plan is one thing; living it is another

A few years ago, I worked with a West African nonprofit that provided children with safe access to quality education. Its founder had a compelling vision, but she was also carrying too much of the strategic, relational, fundraising, and operational weight. Staff were short on capacity and time, fundraising efforts needed a more concrete plan, and the organization depended heavily on her continued effort.

This is hardly an isolated example. The Lakeshore Nonprofit Alliance’s (LNA) 2025 Nonprofit Community Assessment offers data from one Michigan region on what I see often while guiding strategic planning and board development through my work with The Acuity Lab.

Of the 74 nonprofit executive directors in the LNA survey, 78% said they conduct regular strategic planning that engages board members and staff, up 12 percentage points since 2019. Yet only 35% said planning fully engages those groups and results in concrete action, 43% reported some action, and 19% little action.

And while respondents rated their organizations’ strength in strategic planning an average 7.1 out of 10, only 37% described their strategy as clear, widely understood, and consistently driving day-to-day behavior. Another 46% said it only partly does so.

Why is there is a gap between strategic planning and action?

The challenge for the West African nonprofit was that the founder held the key relationships, interpreted changing needs, told the fundraising story, and made the decisions. The organization around the strategic plan had to become strong enough to embody it and carry it out.

1. Board approval is not the same as shared ownership

Ninety percent of LNA survey respondents said their board members are emotionally connected to and motivated by the mission; 72% said they participate in designing the strategic plan. But the deeper work of interpreting and carrying the strategy is largely left to staff and leadership.

Organizations need to give people a meaningful voice in decisions that shape their work—early in the process and with clear roles, relevant information, authority, influence, feedback, support, and capacity to act. Both board members and staff need to be able to co-create and co-own the future.

In the West African nonprofit, the board moved from supporting the founder to sharing responsibility with her. The organization clarified the work only she could do, while strengthening staffing, leadership, and governance.

2. Implementing strategic planning competes with urgent work

When demand grows faster than capacity, urgent work understandably comes first: Leaders respond to immediate needs, staff absorb additional responsibilities, and strategic priorities are put off.

Only 65% of survey respondents said staff have measurable goals tied directly to operational or strategic priorities; just 24% report clear goals with specific timeframes and concrete measures that are widely known and consistently used. Often the organization has named the future but has not yet translated it into responsibilities, decisions, and measures people can act on today.

How can nonprofits better implement their strategic plans?

What would make strategic planning for nonprofits more feasible, productive, and sustainable?

1. Specific goals, short performance review cycles

Fifty-two percent of organizations in the survey operate on a three-year planning cycle, 33% on a five-year cycle. Today, nonprofits face rapid changes in staffing, funding, and community need. Now more than ever, long-term plans need shorter review cycles under them.

The good news is that 68% of survey respondents regularly measure performance against benchmarks; 73% adjust programs based on performance data; and 87% describe themselves as proactive and forward-thinking in strategic decisions—all significantly up since 2019.

These findings suggest that strategic planning remain useful for nonprofits when they regularly review progress, interpret changing conditions, and adjust the work without abandoning the larger vision. This iterative and adaptive approach to strategic planning is vital.

The West African organization made progress through adaptation: strengthening the team, clarifying leadership, aligning fundraising with actual needs, and deepening partnerships with those closest to the work. School leaders increasingly understood themselves as partners rather than recipients.

2. The work  after the retreat: Ongoing shared responsibility

The retreat may create focus, but what happens afterward determines whether that clarity becomes part of organizational life.

Nonprofits need to translate strategic priorities into board behavior, organizational goals, operating rhythms, and honest decisions about capacity. Leadership, staff, and board members feel their input helps shape the future, they’re given the tools to advance the work, and responsibility becomes genuinely shared.

The founder of the West African organization began to imagine a future she did not have to carry alone. Her vision became more durable because leadership, responsibility, and ownership became more widely shared.

People are more likely to carry a future they have helped understand, shape, and made livable. That is the work of closing the gap between making a plan and living it.

Photo credit: The Acuity Lab

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