Taking time to intentionally reflect on your organization's prior strategic plan is a critical step before diving into a new planning process. This strategic plan progress assessment worksheet guides staff, board and stakeholders in evaluating achievements and obstacles for each goal.

Organizations and their leaders need to ensure that strategic plans serve as guiding documents for an agency's work, but how do you make this happen? We’ve built a tool to weigh the cost/benefit of new opportunities and ensure that all decision-makers understand the human and financial capital needed to launch new programs.

There is an entire field of experts thinking creatively about how to present data in a way that our brains can digest. This “data visualization” matters for how we understand data and how seriously we take it.

One of the first steps to building power is understanding it. Advocates often embark on their policy work with an element of naivete. That the data is persuasive, the stories are heart-wrenching, and the policy solution is a “no-brainer.” Rarely do we take a moment to understand the bare-knuckle power dynamics at play.

Done well, strategic plans can be useful guiding documents for any organization, especially nonprofits who don’t have the almighty dollar as their guiding light. Advocacy organizations are among the first nonprofits to shrug off strategic planning, pointing to the ever-changing political landscape and need to be adaptive as justification. These uncertainties make a solid strategic plan evermore necessary, otherwise organizations are flitting in the wind at the whim of political pressures.

Amid a moment when the world feels like it’s falling apart around us, it’s alluring to change course. That’s what it means to be responsive, right? We need masks, we need testing, we need financial support for low-income families. The number of fires to put out at this moment is intense. I challenge you to hold onto your goals but adapt your strategies.

Building out a powerful Coalition requires thinking about the many elements your advocacy will need to be successful, influential supporters, stories about impacted populations, funding, and policy expertise, to name a few. We’ve put together a free planner tool to help you get started.

Approaching policymakers to advocate for your mission can be intimidating, but know that elected officials are in office to represent your community. They need and want to know what issues are impacting their constituents and you are uniquely suited to do exactly that.

You know the saying that the longest journeys start with just one step? Well, changing policy is a long journey. Here are five easy first steps: 1) Join an alliance of advocates. 2) Schedule a meeting with your federal lawmakers’ district staff. 3) Learn who represents you in state, county, and city government. Invite them to come tour. 4) Understand the policies impacting your work. 5) Make sure your social media connects to your elected leaders.

One of the most pervasive misconceptions about nonprofit organizations is that they can’t lobby or advocate for policy change. The fact is that, while there are handful of things nonprofits can’t do or can only do on a limited basis, there are far more that they can and should be doing. Nonprofits are trying to tackle massive social problems, many of them the result of policies and systems. Undoing these social problems will require nonprofits to change the policies and systems that perpetuate inequity.