Strategic Planning Resources

Instructions
 

This page serves as a resource for Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Association leadership to conduct strategic planning activities for their Association. It briefly describes each component of the strategic planning process and provides resources and activities that Associations can utilize for their own strategic planning activities. Strategic planning is a higher level operational plan vs program planning focused on individual programs within an organization/association. While programming often comes up as part of strategic planning and the two processes utilize similar exercises, there is a difference in the organizational level each plan is intended to address. Resources specific to program planning can be found in the Organizational Development and Accountability tab on the CCE staff site. There are many ways to establish a strategic plan and depending on the Association’s size and capacity, the level of effort it takes to complete such a plan can vary greatly. Associations may want to consider utilizing consultants or facilitators for any or all steps of plan creation but will want to review funding requirements and the project scope with deliverables carefully. This document will cover the needs assessment, plan development, implementation, monitoring and evaluating activities that make up a strategic plan. Linked here is a graphic and documentation that describes the activities and milestones of CCE Administrations 2016-2017 Strategic Plan. Associations can use this plan and the tools utilized in its development to assist and guide their own strategic plan.

 

Needs Assessment 

The first step in the development of a strategic plan is to collect information about your Association in the context of the community it serves. Needs assessments collect the valuable information for an Association to understand how its current programs and operations fit within the community it serves. These assessments are usually made up of multiple data collection methods both internally (with staff, program advisory committee and board of directors) as well as community partners, stakeholders, program participants, and other external entities. This data can be collected via survey, focus group, key informant interviews, community forum, staff retreat, board meeting, etc. Again, depending on the size and capacity of the Association, the scope and scale of each component of strategic planning including conducting a needs assessment can vary greatly. The most formal and academic needs assessments often accompany the data collected with a literature review to determine best practices on the information gleaned from the data collection.

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Planning 

Once the needs assessment provides an Association the feedback from stakeholders, the actual strategic planning activities can begin. These activities allow Associations to delve deeper into the programming it currently offers, what programs should/could be added or discontinued, what external environmental factors may affect an Association, and many other levels of information that allow an Association to make plans that strategically benefit and position the Association in the best possible position for sustainability, growth and innovation. This includes strategic partnerships, new areas of services/education, new facilities, enhancing and investing more in certain existing programming, etc. Goals are built into the plan that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). Strong strategic plans often have process and outcome objectives that allow the monitoring (spoken more about later) process to be clear and intentional. 

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Implementation  

At this stage, the strategic plan has been developed. Goals have been identified with specific activities that will be conducted over the strategic plan's timeline (often varies, one to five years typically). This is when the plans move into action.  

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Monitoring and Evaluation 

As mentioned previously, each goal or activity that is identified in the plan is SMART, and has process and outcome objectives associated with them. Process objectives are tasks that need to be completed in order to get to the outcome objective. For example, if the outcome objective is to conduct a capital campaign for a new building, process objectives would be to create a capital campaign committee, hire a consultant to conduct a feasibility study, identify professional development trainings on managing a capital campaign, etc. Outcome objectives are the end result the Association expects from each goal or activity, i.e. the capital campaign from the previous example. Generally, once a strategic plan has been monitored and evaluated, it is time to repeat the process from the beginning. Strategic planning should be an iterative process for the Association.

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