Absolutely not! While we do consider ourselves experts at planning, we are also coaches, problem-solvers, facilitators, and builders of community. Many of our partners have gone on to utilize our support far beyond the completion of the plan to ensure that they are implementing well and building the capacity of their team along the way. 

While we certainly have tried and true tools that we bring to this work, and a general process we follow, this also looks different depending on your context. Generally speaking for a strategic planning project, we like to start our work with some kind of assessment of your current state – we call it a “capacity review” – that involves many different stakeholders and some data analysis. Then, we use that information to craft an “architecture” that outlines the goals (the what) and strategies (the how) of your work. Those form the foundation for the implementation planning with clear owners, metrics, and timelines. And then finally, we believe no strategic planning process is complete without setting up the right routines to monitor progress over time.

This is highly dependent on how much stakeholder engagement work you want to do, how much time your team can devote to the process, and how detailed you want the implementation planning to be. We fit our timeline to match what you need – and we start by meeting you where you are. That said, we typically recommend somewhere around 6-9 months (shorter means you’re likely overlooking important details, and longer means you’re likely to lose momentum). 

Our work is scoped collaboratively with you, ensuring that we “right-size” it to your specific context. Therefore, the price varies depending on what type of support you need, how much in-house capacity you have to support the work, and how much background work you are bringing to the process. Reach out to us to see what we can do about working within your budget!

Yes! We do make them look nice, but that’s actually a secondary objective. Our most important objective is to work with you to create the version that will actually be USED. That’s where the real magic happens!

Our work has been focused on education since that is our background and passion, but we believe that these tools and processes can be helpful in many different settings. If you’re a mission-focused organization serious about delivering results, reach out and let’s see what we can do together!