Strategic Plans: The strategic plan is the organization’s roadmap to the future — its plan for achieving and advancing its mission. Our approach is to work with the nonprofit’s leadership to create a process that is guided by the board, and supported by the executive director and staff. This starts with an environmental scan through which input from key internal and external stakeholders is obtained. The organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats that it faces, are identified. Taking these into consideration, the group identifies and prioritizes the critical issues that will confront the organization in the next 1-3 years. Participants develop practical and effective strategies and tactics, as well as identifying responsible persons and time frames for addressing these issues. The resulting plan — a concise, flexible, and easy to follow document — contains clear and realistic objectives, and indicators that can be measured periodically to determine the organization’s progress.

One important component of our approach is to actively engage the organization in the planning process. Through this highly interactive process, the organization works through issues that might otherwise be overlooked and that could arise later to stymie implementation of the plan. The result is a realistic plan, which the organization truly “owns” and is ready to implement.

For more information on La Piana Associates’ strategic planning methodology and services, visit http://www.lapiana.org/consulting/services/planning.html.

Marketing Plans: La Piana Associates provides seminars and related services on how to create a marketing plan. We also provide individual coaching to organizations to help them with the nuts and bolts of developing and implementing a marketing plan. Topics covered include:

• Reviewing the organization’s mission and values to assure that marketing statements are consistent and reflect these.
• Developing an effective case statement that supports marketing and fund development activities.
• Developing marketing goals and objectives.
• Identifying target audiences for marketing messages, and determining what messages will appeal to these audiences.
• Conducting market and competitor research.
• Developing strategies and tactics that will support the achievement of the marketing goals and objectives, taking into consideration budgetary and other resource constraints.
• Identifying the marketing materials/vehicles to be used, and determining the appropriate delivery methods/channels.
• Developing staff and board skills in marketing.
• Evaluating the marketing plan and revising it, as needed.

For more information on La Piana Associates’ services in marketing and communications, visit http://www.lapiana.org/consulting/services/marketing.html.