Getting Your Organization Ready For Strategic Planning
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
9:00 am - 11:00 am
Virtual Workshop via Zoom
Individual Members: Free to Attend
Organizational Members: Free to Attend
Non-Members: $55
About this event
When creating a strategic plan for your nonprofit, readiness is essential to success. Too often, organizations jump into strategic planning only to learn too late that the Board and staff lack the knowledge, skill sets and capacity to see the process through successfully. The result is often a document that does little to meaningfully guide the future direction and decisions of the organization.
In this workshop, we will examine how an organizational can assess its readiness to begin the strategic planning process. We will explore the key questions nonprofit leaders should ask to assess capacity and capability for moving forward. We will also assess what resources an organization needs to assemble and consider in advance to ensure its planning process delivers on its promise.
Learning Outcomes: Participants in the workshop will learn:
- The value of an effective strategic plan
- The key questions Board leaders and staff should examine before embarking on a strategic plan
- What resources and information is needed to support strategic planning
- What capacity and skill sets will be required to undertake a strategic planning process
Target Audience: This workshop is designed for nonprofit staff and Board leaders who are looking to formalize their organization’s strategic planning and/or considering the process of updating their outdated strategic plan.
Faculty
Jennifer Lobenhofer
As the principal at JSL community Strategies, Jennifer Lobenhofer guides mission-driven organizations in envisioning, planning, achieving, and measuring their greatest imaginable impact on the communities they serve. She has more than twenty years of experience providing capacity-building education, facilitation, and consulting to organizations in the public and nonprofit sectors, and her current consulting practice focuses on providing strategic planning and program evaluation support to nonprofit organizations.
Two decades ago, Jennifer began her career examining the outcomes of pilot programs demonstrating promising new responses to affordable housing and community development needs. She then directed a statewide community and economic development training and advising program for local government officials. Those combined experiences led her to the realization that nonprofit organizations engage in the most meaningful policy implementation, innovation, and “heavy lifting” of creating real social change in communities, and that they all too frequently face significant capacity challenges in maximizing their impact. Since then, Jennifer has dedicated herself to the belief that the greatest good can only be accomplished if it is done well, and she has built her consulting practice on that foundational philosophy.
Jennifer holds a Master of City and Regional Planning degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives in Thousand Oaks, California, where she enjoys choral singing, attending live theatre, wine tasting, and creating handmade greeting cards.