How Nonprofits Can Build Strategic Plans People Will Actually Use with Dr. Rebecca Sutherns

Key Takeaways

• Strategic planning should function as a decision-making filter, not an inventory of everything your organization does.
• Nonprofit strategy should create space for innovation while also helping organizations make clearer prioritization decisions.
• Participation matters, but organizations still need clarity around who ultimately makes decisions.
• Small nonprofits do not need expensive or overly complex strategic planning processes to create meaningful direction.
• Timing matters. Strategic planning works best when leadership teams have enough alignment and stability to move forward together.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that happens in nonprofit organizations when someone says, “We need a new strategic plan.”

Not because strategy is bad.

But because too many nonprofit professionals have lived through planning processes that felt disconnected from reality.

Months of meetings. Endless brainstorming. Giant documents. Competing priorities. A board retreat that generated excitement for two weeks and then disappeared into a shared drive.

The result is often not clarity. It is fatigue.

In a sector already stretched thin by staffing shortages, funding uncertainty, burnout, and constant pressure to do more with less, nonprofit leaders are increasingly asking a more practical question:

How do we create a strategic plan that people will actually use?That tension sat underneath a recent conversation with Dr. Rebecca Sutherns, founder of Sage Solutions, who has spent more than 25 years helping nonprofit organizations navigate strategy, leadership, and organizational change. What emerged was not a rigid planning framework, but a much more grounded conversation about what strategy is actually supposed to do.

Here are five oHere are five of the biggest takeaways from that discussion.

_{^{1. Stop Treating Strategic Planning Like a Compliance Exercise}}

One of the clearest points Dr. Rebecca Sutherns made was that strategic planning should not simply exist because organizations feel they are supposed to have a plan.

“It’s understanding again the purpose of a plan is to help you make decisions. It’s a filter. It’s not an inventory of all the things an organization does. It’s a filter for decision making.”

That distinction matters.

Too often, nonprofit strategic plans become oversized documents trying to capture every initiative, every aspiration, and every program priority at once. But when everything becomes strategic, nothing actually is.

A strong strategic plan should help organizations:

• Make clearer decisions
• Focus resources intentionally
• Align teams around priorities
• Understand what success actually looks like
• Create consistency across leadership and staff

Without that clarity, strategic planning can quickly become performative instead of practical.

And nonprofit teams can feel the difference.

2. Strategic Planning Is Really About Prioritization

Many nonprofit organizations are operating in a constant state of reaction.

Funding changes. Staffing shifts. Community crises. Urgent partnerships. Reporting requirements. New opportunities that all feel mission-aligned.

The challenge is that organizations eventually reach a point where saying yes to everything creates organizational chaos.

Dr. Rebecca Sutherns explained that strategy helps organizations understand not just what they are doing, but why they are choosing certain priorities over others.

“And so people can understand together why we are saying yes to certain things and why we are saying no to certain things.”

That sounds simple, but for nonprofit leaders, it is often one of the hardest parts of strategy.

Because saying no can feel deeply uncomfortable in mission-driven work.

Especially in smaller organizations where teams are already wearing multiple hats, strategic planning is often less about innovation and more about focus.

It requires organizations to ask difficult but necessary questions:

• What work is creating the most impact?
• What no longer fits our priorities?
• Where are we spreading ourselves too thin?
• What are we doing simply because we have always done it?

Those conversations are rarely easy.

But avoiding them usually creates even more strain over time.

3. Participation Matters More Than Most Organizations Think

One of the biggest reasons nonprofit strategic plans fail during implementation is because people do not feel connected to them.

A plan may technically get approved by a board, but that does not automatically mean staff understand it, believe in it, or know how to operationalize it.

Dr. Rebecca Sutherns emphasized that strategic planning works best when organizations are intentional about participation and decision-making.

“I think it needs to be very clear who makes what call.”

She also noted that organizations need clarity around how decisions are made long before the planning process is complete.

“Someone along the way needs to be the person or maybe the smaller group that actually says of all these hundred ideas, these are the six that are going to land and be part of the plan.”

That level of clarity matters because nonprofit organizations can easily get stuck in endless consultation loops.

Staff complete surveys. Boards attend retreats. Community members provide feedback. But eventually organizations still need to make decisions.

The healthiest planning processes create opportunities for participation while also being honest about who is responsible for final direction.

Otherwise, strategic planning can unintentionally create frustration instead of alignment.

4. Small Nonprofits Do Not Need Giant Strategic Planning Processes

There is a persistent belief in the nonprofit sector that good strategic planning needs to be large, expensive, and highly polished.

Dr. Rebecca Sutherns pushed back on that idea directly.

“If I’m a tiny little organization, I may not have the money, for example, to hire an outside consultant. But the steps that I need to follow in strategy are probably the same steps.”

That does not mean every organization needs the same scale of process.

In fact, one of the most practical parts of the conversation focused on keeping planning proportional to organizational capacity.

“And trying to keep those steps very much proportional to the benefit of having the strategy is important.”

For smaller nonprofits, that may look like:

• A two-year roadmap instead of a five-year plan
• Fewer strategic priorities
• Internal facilitation instead of external consulting
• Smaller engagement processes
• Simple action plans instead of highly designed reports

Dr. Rebecca Sutherns even suggested that for some organizations, a couple of focused planning sessions may be enough to create meaningful direction.

“Maybe you have an action planning meeting for two half days… and you come up with kind of a two-year action plan of we’re going to focus on these three things for the next 24 months.”

That kind of realism is important right now.

Many nonprofit teams are already operating close to burnout. A planning process that drains every ounce of time, energy, and capacity is unlikely to create long-term momentum.

5. Timing and Alignment Matter More Than Organizations Realize

Not every season is the right season for strategic planning.

That was another important tension Dr. Rebecca Sutherns named during the conversation.

“I don’t normally recommend that a brand new executive director or CEO embark on strategic planning the first month that they’re there.”

Instead, she encouraged leaders to spend time listening, understanding organizational dynamics, and settling into leadership before launching a major planning process.

She also emphasized that unresolved organizational tension can make strategic planning significantly harder.

“If you’re finding that you have a lack of alignment on prioritization from your board or your senior team, you may want to try and get some of that a little bit settled first.”

That insight feels especially relevant in a sector navigating leadership turnover, restructuring, and funding uncertainty.

Strategic planning cannot solve every organizational challenge.

Sometimes organizations need alignment before they need strategy.

Common Strategic Planning Traps vs. Healthier Approaches

Common Trap	Healthier Strategic Planning Approach
Trying to include every organizational priority	Narrowing focus to a few meaningful strategic priorities
Treating strategy as a board requirement or compliance exercise	Using strategy as a practical decision-making tool
Endless consultation without clear ownership	Defining decision-making roles early in the process
Building highly polished plans nobody uses	Creating simpler plans teams can actually implement
Launching planning during leadership instability or major conflict	Building alignment before starting a major strategy process

What This Means for Nonprofit Leaders

Nonprofit organizations do not need more performative planning.

They need clearer priorities, stronger alignment, and more realistic approaches to organizational sustainability.

The most effective strategic plans are rarely the most polished.

They are the ones people actually use.

They help teams make decisions.
They create shared understanding.
They clarify what matters most.
And they help organizations stop trying to do everything at once.

Because ultimately, strategy is not about producing a document.

It is about helping people move in the same direction.