You have a clear mission and vision, and a strategic plan is the roadmap you need to execute your mission and fulfill your vision. 

Starting the new year with clearly defined goals and a list of achievements you want to accomplish is a good start, but you also need to make sure those goals and achievements are measurable, realistic, and aligned with your values and purpose. 

This post will walk you through the strategic planning steps to follow when preparing for 2025 and monitoring your progress throughout the year. You can always save this post and come back to it at the start of a new quarter, at a mid-way point through the year, or any time you need to refresh your plan and get back on track toward what matters most. 

Start with an in-depth analysis

You can’t decide where you want to go or what you want to do until you clearly understand where you are now and how the past year played out. 

Internally, make sure you look at your current programs, finances, and staff capacity and performance. Are there any gaps in your programming that need to be addressed? Do you need to add a team member or scale back on certain staff responsibilities? 

You’ll also want to do an external review that includes trends you saw in donor participation, overall recruitment, and community needs. Are you still solving the same problem this year that you were last year, or have things shifted and evolved? 

Once you have a clear picture of where your organization or foundation is now, you are ready to look at what’s ahead. 

Work on these strategic planning steps with your stakeholders

You don’t have to shoulder the responsibility for planning as the Executive Director or Chair. 

Once you’ve done a sufficient analysis and review, share your findings with your team leaders, board members, and potentially key donors. Get their feedback and ask if there are any key points you missed or skipped. 

Including others in the review and planning process will help increase their buy-in when it comes to adopting new initiatives or making changes in roles and responsibilities. 

Revisit your mission, vision, and values

Write down your mission, vision, and values and compare them to the work you did last year and the findings from your analysis. 

Are you staying true to what matters most?

If you find you’re slightly off track, that’s okay. Now is the time to correct course. You want to make sure your mission, vision, and core values are top of mind before setting out your goals for the next year. These are your guiding principles, so make sure every decision you make is grounded in them. 

Set clearly defined goals

The best goals are both measurable and in your control.

Leaders will often set goals like: “Raise 10% more in donations.”

While that is measurable, it is not actually within your control. If Raising 10% more in donations is the outcome you want, try setting goals based on what you and your team can control.

Those may look like:

• “Invite 50 new people to our Donor Happy Hour every month.”
• “Send a newsletter to our community every week of the year.”
• “Create new Thank You cards to send to donors.”

These are the actions that will drive the result you want (10% more donations) but they are actually things you can control. 

Make sure your goals are completely aligned with the mission, vision, and values you reviewed before taking this step! 

Upgrade your brand

Depending on the last time you invested in branding, this may be a small task or a major project. 

A nonprofit’s visual identity is essential to the overall success of the organization. A professional brand that is aligned with the mission and vision of the nonprofit will instill more trust and encourage more support from the community. 

If your brand is inconsistent, you may be losing donor support because your organization looks unprofessional and disorganized. 

All of the following should be cohesive and grounded in your mission:

• Logo
• Fonts
• Color palette
• Patterns
• Website
• Social media
• Email marketing 

Plan ahead for your annual report

Make a decision now to improve your annual report so you can capture the images and information throughout the year that you’ll need to complete a more effective report at the end of the year. 

Storytelling is an effective strategy for creating an annual report that generates more donations and works for your organization, but you have to plan ahead and gather what you need to tell the whole story as you go. 

Putting these strategic planning steps into action

It’s one thing to talk about planning, and it’s a whole different effort to go through the steps outlined here. While planning is a heavy lift on the front end, the effort you put in now will pay off throughout the year.

Once you’ve done a proper review, revisited your mission, vision, and values, set clearly defined and aligned goals, upgraded your brand, and made plans for a more effective annual report, here are some other strategic planning steps you may want to take:

• Plan your marketing and fundraising efforts (and incorporate storytelling!) 
• Invest in staff and team professional development
• Implement and monitor progress
• Celebrate your wins! 

Follow these strategic planning steps and set your nonprofit or foundation up for your strongest year yet!