The 10 Steps of Strategic Planning

The 10-step process that follows suggests a general approach to strategic planning. Although it may appear daunting, each land trust should tailor the specifics to its own size and complexity.  

The first step in strategic planning is determining the planning period and process your land trust will undertake. 

• Be sure all board and staff understand why strategic planning is important and why everyone must commit to participating fully. Set aside some time at a board meeting to discuss what you want to get out of planning and how it will benefit your land trust. 

• Discuss and agree on the process you will use and who will be involved in each step. Expand or adjust the steps to create a common understanding of the process your organization will follow, including who will be involved in each step (drafting, reviews, reports, decisions) and what will be the schedule. 

• Agree on the time period for which you will be planning. A typical planning period is between three and five years — short enough to be foreseeable, but long enough to allow you to think ambitiously. Many land trusts find that five years is too long, especially in an environment that is changing rapidly. 

• Decide whether to use an outside facilitator or consultant and agree on what you want that person to do. Then designate one or two board or staff members to research and recommend a choice for board selection.  

• Establish a time and place for at least one daylong planning meeting or retreat. Choose a time when all board members will commit to attend. Except in large land trusts, all staff members are typically asked to attend as well.  

This four-part step, often conducted before the planning retreat, is critical and should not be skipped! These activities are sometimes assigned to a task force or planning committee appointed by the board and consisting of both board and staff, if any, who then present the results of their work to the full board for discussion at the start of the planning retreat. This analysis can be a simple assessment of current conditions lasting two to three hours or a more exhaustive evaluation of internal and external factors influencing the land trust, taking several days or even weeks to complete. 

A. External Analysis. Develop your best collective answers to the questions posed below, as well as others you identify that could impact your work. Although you will make educated guesses on some of these issues, try to base answers on hard data, whenever possible. 

• Community transitions: Is the community changing from an agricultural base to a second-home community? Are there other relevant demographic issues to take into consideration? Is ownership of key conservation properties likely to change hands in the next few years (through aging of owners or sales for development)? What kind of land is most at risk in the next few years? What are the likely types of buyers for the proper- ties we care about? 

• Politics: Has a recent election (local, state, federal) improved or decreased the likelihood of support for land conservation, including public funding and other public incentives? Are public officials likely to look favorably on sound land use and open-space planning or are they moving in a different direction? Are there regulatory changes to consider? 

• The economy: Has an economic downturn or boom made it likely that fundraising will be more or less difficult? Are real estate prices likely to increase or fall? 

• Other organizations: Is there an increase in other organizations with similar or overlapping goals? Do they represent increased competition for the land trust or opportunities for partnerships? 

• Community conservation ethic: Is there a growing community sentiment that supports conservation? Do people understand and care about protecting conservation values? Or is there evidence of hostility and suspicion about private land conservation that is likely to continue and/or increase? 

• Other factors: Are changes in technology likely to impact our work? Are there likely trends in funding support that we should consider? 

B. Internal Analysis. Answer the following kinds of questions about your organization. Be realistic about both positive and negative conclusions. Include any other organizational issues that you think will significantly enhance or detract from your ability to achieve whatever goals you set. A young land trust with little history will need to be as realistic as possible about its strengths and weaknesses and the capabilities it is likely to develop during the period addressed by the planning process. 

• Program accomplishments: Have we accomplished goals that we have previously set? What led to success? Where we fell short, what factors were involved? 

• Finances: Do we constantly struggle to keep our heads above water or do we generally at least meet our budget? How much are we likely to be able to grow our income? Is the donor community “tapped out” or is there room for growth? Do we have a fundraising program in place? Do we have any surplus or do we always spend everything we take in? Do we have an endowment? A stewardship fund? 

• Human resources: Do we generally have ready access to a sufficient number of the right people to carry out our current work? Or is everyone completely maxed out? Do absolutely crucial things go undone because there is no one to do them? Are the right people in the right jobs? Do we have good partners we can count on to do some of the work? (See Practice 7A for a more thorough discussion of human resource capacity.) 

• Board issues: Do we have the right people on the board, or are there critical gaps? Do board members generally agree on overall direction, or are there serious divisions? Does the board understand its responsibilities, or do some things get overlooked? If there is a staff, do board and staff understand their roles and work in partnership, or do board members inappropriately assume staff functions? 

• Reputation and recognition in the community: Is our land trust well respected in the community? Do we reach the right audiences? Do people really understand what we do and hope to achieve? Do we have to overcome any negative publicity? 

• Motivation: Are board, staff and volunteers inspired by and committed to our mission and programs? Or is there some uncertainty, confusion or apathy about our purpose and work? 

C. Create a “SWOT” Summary. Summarize the results of your research and discussion into a “SWOT” format, so named because it addresses your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. As a group, agree on the three or four most critical items in each of the following categories: 

• What are our principal strengths as an organization? What are our greatest assets, the qualities that contribute most to our success? 

• What are the critical weaknesses of our organization? What factors will almost certainly hold us back if we don’t address them? What must we candidly acknowledge in making sure our goals are realistic? 

• What are our most exciting opportunities? What are the likely trends that we should take advantage of? 

• What are the most likely threats? What are the potential obstacles that, should we fail to take them into consideration, have the greatest likelihood of derailing our success? 

D. Identify Critical Issues. Drawing on these discussions and analyses, identify critical issues that your land trust most needs to address during the planning period — the external and internal issues that could have the greatest impact on your success. It can be helpful to brainstorm a list. But then, narrow these items down to just a few each of the most critical issues that you will address in setting your goals and strategies. 

Some organizations may move directly to a group discussion of the SWOT analysis described in part C. However, that discussion should take into consideration the issues described in parts A and B.  

Now you are ready to establish your goals — the outcomes you most want to put in place. Although you may brainstorm a dozen desired outcomes, narrow them down to those that have the highest priority. Smaller organizations may have a total of only three or four priority goals, while larger organizations with several programs and projects may set one or more goals for each program or department. For every goal, answer the following questions: 

• Does it describe a result or outcome, rather than an activity? 

• Can we describe clearly how it is consistent with our mission? 

• Does it take into consideration one or more of the critical issues we identified? 

• Is it one of the most important accomplishments or outcomes that will define our success over time? 

• Do we believe we have, or can obtain, the capacity to make significant progress toward this goal during our planning period? 

• Does it challenge the status quo and inspire excitement? 

For each goal, list the methods or approaches you will use during the planning period to help you reach that goal. Make the strategies realistic, given what you know about your operating environment and your organization. Remember, goals are the outcomes you want to achieve; strategies are the methods (not the specific tasks or activities) you will use to get you there. For example, a land trust might identify utilizing donations of conservation easements as a method to achieve its goal of saving productive farmland in its region. A specific objective (or task) to accomplish this goal would be distributing promotional materials on conservation easements to farmers in the area and hosting informational meetings on the tax benefits of easement donations. 

Note: Some small or new land trusts may stop here; however, most land trusts will benefit greatly from completing the remaining steps, at a level appropriate for their size and ambitions. 

For each strategy, list the objectives that will ensure you are making desired progress in implementing that strategy. Remember, objectives are the critical actions your land trust will take to implement each strategy. 

To the best of your ability, assign timetables to each objective by year or, in some cases, by the month or quarter of a year. Wherever possible, state your objectives as measurable accomplishments and clearly defined actions. They may not always contain specific numbers, and some activities will be ongoing. However, try to limit ambiguity so you will know whether you have achieved the objectives, or how close you came.

Contrast the vagueness of the first statement in each pair below with the specificity of the second statement.  

The job of determining objectives is usually best delegated to appropriate standing committees of the board or to staff, rather than trying to develop them during a full board gathering. If you have engaged a planning consultant or facilitator, they can also assist you in setting realistic and measurable objectives. 

Determine what kinds of expertise and personnel (paid or unpaid) you will need in order to accomplish your objectives, roughly when you will need them and what category of help you will seek (e.g., full-time or part-time staff position, seasonal intern, consultant or contractor, new volunteer position, partnership with another organization, etc.). Personnel plans are usually best drafted by a subgroup of the board or staff for subsequent review and approval by the full board. However, the need for additional expertise or staff is often identified as a critical issue during earlier planning discussions of the full board. 

As an alternative to drafting a separate personnel plan, a land trust may simply include personnel additions in its objectives for each year, for example: “hire a part-time development director and retain a contractor to prepare missing baseline documentation reports” or “hire a summer intern to assist with easement monitoring.” Either way, the process of thinking through what help you will need and when you will need it is critical for a sound plan and is essential for the next step. 

These projections are not detailed annual budgets, rather, they are yearly, rough estimates of the level of expenditures your plans will require and the sources of the money. Depending on your specific plans, you may break expenses into categories such as operating, acquisition and stewardship expenses. After projecting rough costs, make educated judgments about realistic funding sources: major donors; special gifts; annual memberships; foundation, corporate or government grants; partnerships; events; contract services; etc. Remember that it takes personnel to obtain funding, so be sure those positions are figured into your personnel plan. Obviously your estimated revenue should equal or exceed your estimated expenses. If you can’t figure out a plausible way to fund your plan, you should rethink some of your goals, strategies and objectives to bring them in line with your situation. 

Make sure your revenue projections are realistic! Land trusts that expect significant growth during the planning period should be especially careful to clarify their assumptions and plan the general steps they will take to reach their revenue goals. 

Like the personnel plan, budget projections are probably best initially drafted by a small group (e.g., the treasurer and board fundraising committee, together with appropriate staff ). However, because the full board has a fiduciary responsibility to the organization and needs to make sure plans are financially sound, be certain everyone understands the implications and assumptions of your cost and revenue projections. 

More guidance on budgeting can be found in Practice 6A1. 

A thorough evaluation process is critical to determining success. See Practice 1B3. 

Once you have all the pieces completed, combine them into one document, adopt the final plan, prepare a summary and refer to the plan regularly. The final plan needs to be sufficiently detailed to provide internal guidance, so most land trusts also prepare a summary plan for their website, funders, other supporters and the general public.