Strategic Planning…Yuk!

by Bunnie Riedel, Host

I’ve never met a “strategic plan” that I liked.  Mostly because I see them as a horrific waste of time.  It may make a nonprofit board feel good to sit in a room for a couple of days and dream up new and exotic ideas for what the organization should be doing, but rarely do strategic plans (done the typical way) turn into anything but dust collectors.

And don’t get me started on mission statements.  Some boards want to change their mission statements every couple of years.  Then there’s Bylaws. Some boards believe that if they aren’t re-arranging their Bylaws on a regular basis they aren’t doing anything.

But I digress.  

Back to strategic planning.  Let me give you a real life example of what can happen when the “good ideas committee” takes over.

A few years ago, some portions of the federal government decided to change out how they classify their employees.  Instead of having “grades” and “steps within the grade” to determine pay and seniority, the feds decided to go to “pay bands.”  Hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours of time were spent attempting to educate the federal workforce about the new pay bands.  

I even sat next to a woman on a plane whose full time job it was to go around the country and have meetings with Navy personnel to educate them about the new system.

So about one year into the new pay band system, portions of the federal government decided it wasn’t working and they were going to go back to the old way of grades and steps.  A colossal waste of time and taxpayer money to say the least.  Why did this happen?  Because a group of well meaning people sat in a room and engaged in strategic planning.

So if you don’t do strategic planning, what should you do?

Action planning.  Plain and simple.  Decide what it is you are going to do and then do it.  And keep the action planning within reach, make it simple and make it immediate.  Figure out what is absolutely necessary for the immediate future (no more than 12 months) and what is desired for the 24 to 36 month timeline.  Here’s some do’s and don’ts. 

·         If it ain’t broke, don’t “fix” it.

If your organization has some program that runs like a well-oiled machine, leave it alone.  Say you have an awards banquet you do every year that brings you recognition and a few dollars, stick to the formula.  The truth is people find comfort in something they know and can depend on, think the McDonald’s Big Mac, for forty years it hasn’t changed and yet people go back to it time and time again because they know exactly what they are getting.  Or how about the new Coke?  That was a huge failure and they had to introduce “Classic Coke” to re-capture their market.

·         Take what you are doing well and do it better.

Maybe this year the awards banquet could use a celebrity speaker.  It doesn’t have to be Hollywood celebrity, maybe it’s a local news anchor or well known physician.  Maybe it’s time for your quarterly publication to go online or become a downloadable app.  Maybe it’s time to grow your tradeshow from 20 vendors to 50.  Figure out where your success spots are and make incremental improvements and of course, heed the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it" rule.

·         Analyze what’s not working and if necessary, toss it.

This is kind of like cleaning out a closet.  If you haven’t worn it for 2 years you probably need to get rid of it.  Is our membership system relevant?  Is our board too large (or too small)?  Do we really need to hold a conference?  Is our continuing education units program working?  Before you come up with a new program or new service, analyze what is working and what’s not, don’t be hamstrung with the “but we’ve always done it this way” mantra.

·         Everything requires time, money, resources.

It’s a shame that there’s only so many hours in a day, a limit on spending and boundaries on what human beings can do in a 24 hour period, but that’s the way it is.  You can’t take a 3 person staff and expect them to do the work of 20 people.  You can’t have champagne taste on a beer budget.  For every program or activity your organization is doing you must factor in time, money and resources.  Resources being staff, volunteers, technology, space, talent, intellect, mobility, property, etc.  Given our time, money, resources…what are we really capable of accomplishing in the next 12 to 36 months? 

An action plan identifies what you would like to do to meet some kind of need and then puts a definitive timeline on that action.  It identifies what is to be done, who’s going to do it, what it will take to do it (time, money, resources) and when it will be done.  An action plan calculates the likelihood of success and what the fallout might be if there is a failure.

An action plan prioritizes the actions and is realistic.  I once saw an organization with a budget of around $500,000 per year claim they would raise $10 million in 10 months.  Truth was they barely kept up with their annual budget.  I may not be able to add 5 new staff this year but maybe I can add one.  We may not be able to increase the attendance at our awards banquet by 50% but maybe we can increase it by 10%.  Be clear about what you can actually accomplish given your time, money and resources.

And then…go out and do it!

How Do Nonprofits Change in Lean Times?

Is it possible to imagine an industry harder hit in this environment than the real estate industry? Hardly. So imagine now that you have a double challenge, you are a nonprofit trade association president that serves the real estate industry. I asked the question and Joe Cusumano gave this response. Things I really like: shorter Board meetings that focus on action rather than philosophy; dividing tasks into smaller working groups with an assigned staff person; using technology to reduce travel and paperwork. Bunnie

How Do Nonprofits Change in Lean Times?

by Joe Cusumano, President

Inland Valleys Association of REALTORS® Triple Play

We are three (3) REALTOR® associations in southern California who combine our resources and strategies to provide nearly 20,000 REALTOR® members professional support. We’re called, Triple Play.

The Pacific West Association of REALTORS® (PWR), Inland Valleys Association of REALTORS® (IVAR), and Tri- Counties Association of REALTORS® (TRICO), represent southern Los Angeles, northern Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. In a nutshell, the Triple Play REALTOR® Associations, make up the largest organized representation of REALTORS® in the state of California. And real estate trade associations, as with many others, must run to keep pace with and anticipate member needs in a market-driven profession.

Keeping our board members motivated is especially challenging when we know they are facing tough times in their own firms. It is difficult to ask that they take additional time from their businesses for Association business. So here’s the difficulty for trade associations:

-our volunteer leadership is facing the most difficult time in history in real estate

-they have less time and fewer resources to donate to the efforts of the Associations

-we are more dependent upon staff to provide service to our members

-we have had to dramatically reduce staff

-our members need the support of the Associations more than ever and that support comes from staff

On the surface, this dilemma seems like a cycle of impossibility and a no-win situation for board members, Association executives, staff and members. It’s not.

We have learned to involve our leadership in strategic goal-setting that is tightly focused on member business support. We also have learned that as we create tasks or action items, it is best to divide the tasks into smaller working groups that include a staff person. In this way, we are not creating huge tasks requiring large amounts of board or staff time.

Our Associations have learned to do more with less. We are using technology in place of paper, combined meetings in a location to reduce drive times and we are beginning to also build our capabilities in using technology to replace some in-person meetings to eliminate the use of gasoline and the need to navigate heavy traffic.

I am proud to say that we have also shortened meetings, keeping them tightly focused with attention to action items, and less philosophical discussion. They have become the meetings to attend rather than avoid.

We have become lean and creative during these tough times. As with other organizations, we have had to reduce staff by more than 50% in order to reduce our expenses. It has been tough, but we feel that we have been able to maintain the level of service our members expect.

We must maintain the ability to attract and retain members because REALTORS® in southern California do have a choice of where they hold their trade association memberships.

At the forefront of our strategic planning these days is the creation of increased value for the member dues dollar. We do this by maintaining strong call centers with live operators to help members with technical issues or any other membership-related questions. We also continue to create a large list of vendor/retail relationships in order to bring deep discounts to members’ business needs. We are revamping our education offerings so that their continuing education reflects the current trends in the profession. We communicate each success as we accumulate them. These success stories help us to keep our members aware of our service delivery and keep our board leadership inspired.

For better or for worse, the world of real estate remained constant for about one hundred years and then one day, seemingly without notice, we had to change the way we support members. And our members have had to change their entire business models to meet the needs of the highly internet-educated consumer.

The current market-shift colors everything we do and offer. Our struggle to stay current means we have to keep our eyes on the pulse of the economy, the consuming public and the REALTOR® member who needs our resources in education, political representation and strategic relationships in order to have the maximum opportunity for success. And it all requires an engaged board and professional staff.

contact Joe at http://www.ivaor.com/

Developing a Legislative Strategic Plan

The 111th Congress is in a frenzy of activity as the new administration proposes new legislative priorities on many fronts. State legislatures are meeting or will be meeting over the next few months. State Net produces an excellent state legislature calendar. If your organization has not already done so, now is an excellent time to develop a Legislative Strategic Plan.

Most nonprofits diligently work on strategic planning, but most often that planning is limited to the business end of the nonprofit and not the policy end. A Legislative Strategic Plan helps you identify exactly what your legislative goals are in the short and long terms, and determine what it will take to help you reach those goals.

Unless you are a huge organization, like AARP or the National Education Association, it is best to limit your short term legislative goals. Mid to smaller nonprofits typically don’t have the resources and “person-power” to take on dozens of issues and certainly they don’t have the resources and person-power to do them all well. As with regular strategic planning, Legislative Strategic Planning begins with understanding your mission and brainstorming what policy goals will help the organization achieve that mission.

I like to develop a list of primary, secondary and tertiary issues. What are the two or three issues that are primary and critical to our members? What would be secondary or even tertiary? Clearly identifying your primary issues helps you plan how to use the resources you have (money, time, members) and keeps you from getting side-tracked by issues that you may have a stake in but are not critical. After figuring this out then you can better determine how you will spend your political capital.

Most of us are not islands; we work in coalition with other groups and organizations that have similar or sister missions. For instance, what would the cattle association have in common with the sheep herders’ association? Is it grazing or water rights? Legislation that protects open land while allowing structured use? Is it legislation that funds disease research and eradication? Conduct outreach to organizations that you think your nonprofit crosses paths with and find issue areas of agreement. Leveraging the power of your membership and the power of another organization’s membership is critical.

For the secondary and tertiary issues, I always loved finding things I could sign on to, whether it was another organization’s legislative strategy, letter to Congress or amicus briefs. Signing on not only put you in the game, it also increases your cache and visibility. It tells your members that you are doing “something” to be part of a public policy effort, but you are not spending your resources on issues that don’t rank at the top.

In your Legislative Strategic Plan it’s okay to dream. In a perfect world, what do we want? Is it an amendment of an existing law? Is it a completely new regulatory scheme or a completely new law? Are we going for a Constitutional Amendment? I did say dream. What would it take for us to realize that dream? More money, more members, more clout? The dream legislation can become part of your longer range goals.

How are we positioned to mobilize once we have our plan? In the olden days, we used to create phone banks, I still have an old chapter training manual that taught our chapters how to phone bank. Now it is so easy to pop off a message, provide links, even sample letters, etc. My favorite tool for mobilization is CapWiz by Capitol Advantage, but there are many of these tools out there that work equally well. Mobilization requires planning and judiciousness, you run the risk of wearing people out if you are constantly issuing a call to action. Think about how you are positioned. I had a conversation recently in which I was told the organization did not have the email addresses of its members. So now, they have to go collect those addresses of over 1,000 members before they can begin to send out instant alerts.

What will it take to familiarize the decision makers with our cause? Have we done a good job of educating legislators or do we need to make an effort? Have we identified and matched our members with legislators? What do we need to do to achieve that?

On a later post I will talk about visiting your legislators and decision makers. But for now, these are a few hints on developing a Legislative Strategic Plan, a very important process if you are in an organization that needs to advocate for itself or for a worthy cause.