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This post is based on Changemaker Conversations, Episode 8: “The Four Roles That Make—or Break—Your Strategic Planning Process.”
🎙️ Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at ChangemakerConversations.com.
Prefer to read? You’re in the right place — this article summarizes and expands on the full conversation between Alyssa Conrardy and Lindsay Mullen.
Why Role Clarity Matters in Strategic Planning
Strategic planning isn’t just a roadmap—it’s how your nonprofit aligns people, purpose, and power to achieve lasting impact. At Prosper Strategies, we’ve seen again and again that who you involve in the process—and how—is often more important than the document itself.
Your strategic plan determines where your organization is headed, how you’ll advance your mission, and what your next several years will look like. To get it right, you need clarity about the most effective roles for the four stakeholder groups at the heart of the process: staff, constituents, board members, and facilitators.
What Are the Four Key Roles in Nonprofit Strategic Planning?
1. Staff — Ownership & Implementation
Your staff should lead and own the plan. They understand day-to-day operations, community needs, and how to turn strategic pillars into measurable objectives and key results. When staff help shape the plan, they take genuine ownership of implementation.
🔊 Hear Alyssa explain how staff ownership drives successful implementation at 05:30 in the episode.
2. Constituents — Input & Validation
Constituent engagement—involving the people your organization serves in shaping its direction—is essential. Too many nonprofits rely on a one-time survey. Instead, engage constituents at multiple points: early research, mid-draft validation, and post-launch feedback. This ongoing loop builds trust, accountability, and relevance.
🔊 In the episode (09:45), Lindsay shares how continuous constituent engagement strengthens mission alignment.
3. Board — Insight & Oversight
A nonprofit board’s role is to provide strategic direction, not tactical control. Boards should focus on mission, vision, and strategic pillars—offering guidance and final approval, not micromanagement. The right balance prevents over-involvement (“in the weeds”) and under-involvement (“hands-off until it’s too late”).
4. Facilitators — Guidance & Shepherding
Facilitators—often external consultants like Prosper Strategies—guide the process without dictating outcomes. They create structure, manage complex inputs, ensure equitable stakeholder engagement, and help the group balance ambition with realism.
Why Is Stakeholder Engagement So Important?
Effective stakeholder engagement ensures staff, board, and constituents are involved and invested in shaping your organization’s future. It drives alignment, builds buy-in, and ensures your plan reflects real-world needs. Without it, even the most well-designed plan will struggle in implementation because they won’t actually be aligned with the needs of the people and communities you serve, nor the realistic constraints that dictate what your nonprofit can and cannot do.
Common Pitfalls in Stakeholder Engagement (and How to Avoid Them)
With over 10 years of strategic planning experience, we’ve seen what can go wrong with stakeholder engagement, and want to help you avoid those mistakes. Here are a few o the most common.
Pitfall 1: Failing to Involve Constituents Throughout
A one-time survey won’t cut it. Effective engagement means continuous dialogue: interviews, focus groups, and follow-up feedback throughout and even after the strategic planning process.
Fix it by:
- Combining qualitative and quantitative research to uncover themes.
- Sharing mid-process drafts with constituents for validation.
- Closing the loop by reporting back: “Here’s what we heard, here’s what we changed.”
- Developing a process for ongoing stakeholder feedback even once your plan is complete.
Pitfall 2: Board Over- or Under-Involvement
Boards sometimes swing between extremes—micromanaging staff decisions or disengaging entirely until the final vote.
Fix it by:
- Forming a Board Strategic-Planning Committee (a small, focused group).
- Involving them in high-level discussions only—mission, vision, and pillars.
- Setting boundaries early: the board guides, staff executes.
🔊 In this episode (18:40), Alyssa and Lindsay share real examples of boards finding the right balance between insight and oversight.
How to Structure the Process for Success
We recommend three committees to keep roles clear and engagement balanced:
- Staff Strategic Planning Committee: Cross-functional leaders who meet bi-weekly to develop and test ideas.
- Board Strategic Planning Committee: A small subset of board members who provide high-level input and champion the plan to the rest of the board.
- Stakeholder Committee (optional): Constituents or community representatives who provide ongoing insight beyond surveys.
This structure keeps collaboration high while maintaining clarity and momentum.
How to Balance Stakeholder Feedback
During the strategic planning process, you’ll collect a flood of ideas—some insightful, some conflicting—from your vairous stakehodler groups. Here’s how to balance various inputs to determine what really matters.
- Start with Research: Collect both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (surveys) data to identify patterns.
- Look for Themes vs. Outliers: Focus on what most stakeholders align on, not one-off comments.
- Facilitate Dialogue: Encourage stakeholders to hear each other’s perspectives before deciding.
- Be Transparent: Explain why certain suggestions were or weren’t adopted.
What Does a Successful Strategic-Planning Process Look Like?
When all four groups engage in the right way, your process will:
- Feel collaborative, not chaotic.
- Produce a plan that’s aligned across staff, board, and constituents.
- Strengthen organizational culture and trust.
- Lead to stronger execution and measurable impact.
How Strategic Planning Reflects Your Culture
Strategic planning is a mirror for your organizational culture. It surfaces trust levels, collaboration habits, and areas of tension between staff and board. Use it as a diagnostic moment: the way your organization plans together reveals how you work together.
If your culture is healthy, planning will amplify it. If it’s fractured, planning will expose it—and that’s a valuable opportunity to improve.
What You Can Do Next
- Map who should be involved in your strategic planning process, when, and how.
- Form your committees and set communication rhythms.
- Launch constituent research and feedback loops early.
- Remember: clarity + intentionality = impact.
Strategic planning done right builds more than a plan—it builds alignment, collaboration, and a culture of shared ownership.
🎙️ From the Podcast
This post was inspired by Changemaker Conversations, our podcast for nonprofit leaders navigating change and strategy.
Listen to the full episode:
Quick Recap
Four Roles must be involved properly in strategic planning: Staff (ownership), Constituents (input), Board (oversight), Facilitators (guidance)
Goal of effective stakeholder engagement: Role clarity → stronger engagement, culture, and impact
Why It Matters: A well-structured strategic-planning process strengthens both your strategy and your organization’s health
Resources & Next Steps
- 📘 Read more about our Strategic Planning Framework.
- 💬 Explore the Shared Power™ philosophy on Prosper-Strategies.com.
- ✉️ Reach us at hello@prosper-strategies.com with your questions or topic ideas.
About Prosper Strategies
Alyssa Conrardy and Lindsay Mullen are the co-founders of Prosper Strategies, a strategic consulting firm that helps nonprofits align mission, strategy, and culture through the Nonprofit Strategy System™ and Shared Power™ philosophy.
About Changemaker Conversations
Changemaker Conversations is a podcast for nonprofit leaders who are ready to build smarter, more strategic organizations with less friction and more joy. Join hosts Alyssa Conrardy and Lindsay Mullen, Principals at Prosper Strategies, every other week as they pull you out of the day-to-day grind and refocus your attention on the big picture through candid conversations about the challenges facing nonprofit leaders today.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit changemakerconversations.com for show notes and additional resources. If you have ideas for future episode topics or guests, or if you’d like to discuss stakeholder engagement and strategic planning for your organization, email us at hello@changemakerconversations.com.
