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Strategic Plan Examples: 50+ Nonprofit Strategic Plans and How to Create Yours

By Alyssa Conrardy

Looking for a strategic plan example for your nonprofit? You’ve come to the right place.

50+ Strategic plan examples for nonprofits

In this post, we’re featuring not just one strategic plan example, but more than 50 example nonprofit strategic plans that will inspire your organization. This page actually contains the largest repository of strategic plan examples we’re aware of anywhere on the internet (!) But we’re not stopping there. We’re also going deep into the topic of nonprofit strategic planning, discussing what strategic planning is, why it’s essential for nonprofits, how to approach strategic planning for your organization, and more.

Most importantly, we’re peeling back the curtains on our Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template. It’s an invaluable resource, because while nonprofit strategic plan examples are helpful, every plan is different. Browsing through strategic plans for other nonprofits can sometimes leave you with more questions than answers about how to proceed. Where strategic plan examples leave off, our template picks up. The Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template walks you step-by-step through our proven process for stakeholder-centric nonprofit strategic planning, with exercises, worksheets and “fill-in-the-blanks” documents your organization can start using today to begin building its own strategic plan. At the end of this post, we’ve also included a variety of related resources your nonprofit can use to shape its mission, vision, values, priorities and strategic plan.

Table of Contents

What is Nonprofit Strategic Planning?

50+ Nonprofit Strategic Plan Examples

How to Approach Nonprofit Strategic Planning: 7 Nonprofit Strategic Planning Best Practices

A Look Behind the Scenes at the Essential Nonprofit Strategic Planning Template

 

What is Nonprofit Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the process of shaping your nonprofit’s priorities for the future. Strategic planning asks your staff and board to evaluate your nonprofit’s vision and mission, and then to determine the most important things you need to do to advance both over the next 3-5 years by establishing pillars, objectives and key results (sometimes called goals, priorities, KPIs etc.)

The best strategic planning processes are staff and board-led, but rely on heavily on input and feedback from a diverse range of stakeholders, such as program participants and donors.

Strategic planning results in the development of a document outlining your nonprofit’s priorities and how you’ll pursue them. Even more importantly, it results in strategic focus throughout a nonprofit organization. That leads to meaningful action, where staff and board members are all rowing toward the same destination (based on direction from beneficiaries), evaluating their progress, and making continual adjustments.

Strategic planning is the process of shaping your nonprofit’s priorities for the future

50+ Nonprofit Strategic Plan Examples

We’ve rounded up the most comprehensive list of nonprofit strategic plan examples on the internet (that we’re aware of, anyway) in order to help you begin to see the different ways nonprofit strategic plans can come together, and begin to envision yours. A few notes before you dive into the strategic plan examples:

  • Every strategic plan is different. That’s because every nonprofit is different, and organizations choose to organize their plans in unique ways to make the plans work for their mission, staff culture, and more. That said, if you want a nonprofit strategic plan template with a proven plan structure and planning practices you can follow, keep reading. We have that too.
  • These plans are all public, and hosted on each organization’s respective site. That means links may occasionally break, and new plans will be released. We’ll keep this post as updated as we can with fresh examples, but if you see anything that needs to be refreshed, leave a comment and let us know. We most recently rounded up strategic plans in early 2024, meaning many of the plans listed below reach into the end of the decade.
  • Are you proud of your nonprofit’s strategic plan or have another example to share? Email hello@prosper-strategies.com with a link or PDF of your plan, and we’ll happily evaluate it for inclusion in this post.

Strategic Plan Examples from Animal Welfare and Environmental Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from Community Development and Social Justice Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from Hunger Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from Cultural Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from Health Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from Youth-Serving and Education Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from International Aid Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from Human Services Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from Faith-Based Nonprofits

Strategic Plan Examples from Associations

Strategic Plan Examples from Funders and Foundations

* This strategic plan was developed in partnership with Prosper Strategies

How to Approach Nonprofit Strategic Planning: 7 Nonprofit Strategic Planning Best Practices

Strategic planning is a big undertaking, and we can’t possibly cover every recommendation for how to approach it in this post. That said, here are seven of the most important best practices to keep in mind when developing your nonprofit strategic plan, along with more recommended reading on each. We’ve also included a handy infographic to help you keep these best practices top of mind.

Infographic: 7 Strategic Planning Best Practices for Nonprofits
Infographic: 7 Strategic Planning Best Practices for Nonprofits (download here)

Nonprofit Strategic Planning Best Practice #1: Involve Your Stakeholders Throughout the Entire Strategic Planning Process

If you’re familiar with our Shared Power StrategyTM Philosophy, this best practice should come as no surprise.  You’ll also see it in action in several of the strategic plan examples above. An effective strategic planning process starts with identifying all of the internal and external stakeholders who need to be involved in strategic planning, including your clients, program participants and anyone else who your mission exists to serve.

We suggest starting with the development of a primary planning committee. This is the group of individuals who will be stewarding your nonprofit’s strategic plan from start to finish. The primary planning committee is typically made up of leaders within your nonprofit organization. Individuals who will likely be on this committee include:

  • Your executive director or CEO
  • Your director of operations
  • Your director of finance
  • Your director of fundraising
  • Your director of marketing
  • Your director of programs

Additionally, we recommend identifying a board strategic planning committee, which is comprised of a select group of board members who are engaged at strategic checkpoints throughout planning to provide inputs before elements of your plan are shared with the full board. This group should include no more than 10 board members. Finally, but most importantly, you should organize a stakeholder committee, made up of clients/beneficiaries, community members, donors, funders or any other individuals who impact or are impacted by your mission. When building your strategic plan timeline, you’ll want to determine when and where these groups should be involved and what role you expect them to play . We often use the DARCI model (see below) to help teams align about how important decisions will be made during strategic planning.

The DARCI Model for Decisionmaking, useful for nonprofit strategic planning. Content credit: liyana Stareva.
The DARCI Model for Decisionmaking. Content credit: liyana Stareva via Medium.

Ideally, you’ll want to involve stakeholders outside of your staff and board not just at the onset of the strategic planning process, but at key checkpoints throughout, and as you start to bring your strategic plan to life. Your organization exists to serve your stakeholders, and simply deploying a survey or conducting a few interviews just isn’t enough. If you want to make your strategic plan a success, ensure you’re truly sharing power to develop your plan with your stakeholders.

Shared Power Strategy Rule Book on a shelf

Related tools: Check out the Shared Power Strategy™ Rule Book for more about how to involve your stakeholders in strategic planning, and why you must. Then, use these Stakeholder Audit and Engagement Worksheets along with the strategic plan examples to begin mapping out your plan.

Nonprofit Strategic Planning Best Practice #2: Conduct Robust Research

The best strategic plans are grounded in deep research, not just into stakeholder perspectives, but into existing models, comparator organizations, ecosystem trends, and more. Working with your primary planning committee, you’ll want to conduct an organization assessment, where you’ll review important documents, such as past strategic plans, financials, program plans, cases for support and annual reports to better understand your organization’s current state.

Then, you should conduct an ecosystem assessment, where you analyze the business models of several comparator organizations, or nonprofits that provide similar services to those of your own. This information helps to align the strategic planning team around the same set of baseline research and ensures the team knows your current positioning among other nonprofits in your space.

A strategic plan example of a comparator matrix, a helpful tool for nonprofits strategic planning,
The comparator matrix, a helpful tool for nonprofits strategic planning

The combination of stakeholder inputs and these assessments will begin to manifest your nonprofit’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, or the things you will likely address in the strategic planning process going forward. To ensure everyone is on the same page, summarize key “a-has” from your research as takeaways that everyone can keep top of mind as you get deeper into planning.

 

 

Related tool: We walk through the research process in depth in the Essential Nonprofit Strategic Planning Template.

 

Nonprofit Strategic Planning Best Practice #3: Ground Everyone in Your Mission and Vision

Remember, a vision statement describes the aspirational future your nonprofit is building toward and a mission statement describes the work you are doing every day to bring it to reality. Grounding each committee in these statements is essential for successful planning. While they’re meant to stand the test of time, these statements should be re-evaluated every time you go through strategic planning to ensure that they still hold true as dynamics change. You should not take revising your mission or vision statements lightly, but you also shouldn’t move through the strategic planning process tied to old statements that no longer articulate what the world needs from you or where your organization needs to focus. 

Related tool: For guidance on (re)evaluating your nonprofit’s mission and vision statements, download our 101 Guide to Mission and Vision Statements.

Strategic Planning Best Practice #4: Ask Questions

Once you have developed or reaffirmed your vision and mission statements, work with your primary planning committee to imagine the next three years and what they look like when your nonprofit meets all of its goals. We like to start this part of the process by asking the question coined by author Dan Sullivan as the “three year question”:

If we were having this discussion three years from today, and you were to look back over those three years to today, what has to have happened for you to feel happy about your progress?

While this question will increase alignment among members of the strategic planning committee, it will also raise additional questions, which we call “strategic questions”. Should we expand our geographic reach? How do we diversify revenue streams? Does our brand identity accurately represent our vision for the future? How do we attract and retain talented staff? Brainstorm as many questions together as you can regarding new opportunities, competitive challenges and business model challenges related to your three year picture. Then break these questions into thematic categories. For example:

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Example strategic plan questions for nonprofits

Strategic Planning Best Practice #5: Remember, Strategic Planning is Not About Maintaining the Status Quo, it’s About Creating Entirely New Strategies

Evaluate each category from your strategic question brainstorm to determine if answering these questions should be part of your day-to-day work or if it requires a new strategy, and therefore a place in your next strategic plan. If you’re having a difficult time prioritizing which categories elevate to the level of your strategic plan, consider using a tool like the Eisenhower Matrix to facilitate a discussion about urgency and importance. Then, use the thematic categories you’ve determined are top priority to articulate your 3 to 5 strategic plan pillars, or the big priorities your organization must focus on in order to advance its mission, and drive toward its vision over the next 3 years.

Pillars are expressed in broad, thematic terms. Here are a few examples from real strategic plans we’ve worked on:

  • Enhance operational excellence
  • Strengthen parent/family programming
  • Elevate our brand and thought leadership nationally
  • Scale up our proven program to serve more youth, families and communities

Nonprofit Strategic Planning Best Practice #6: Set Measurable Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

For each of your pillars, you should create a set of 1 to 4 objectives, which are the measurable key outcomes that need to be reached to achieve each pillar. You’ll see this in action in many of the strategic plan examples above.

Sample objectives include:

  • Pillar: Enhance operational excellence
    • Objective: Embed a DEI positive culture
  • Pillar: Strengthen financial position
    • Objective: Diversify revenue streams
  • Pillar: Elevate our brand and thought leadership
    • Objective: Increase and amplify global recognition
  • Pillar: Scale up our proven program to serve more youth
    • Objective: Expand geographic footprint to reach more youth

Then, for each objective, you will also set 1 to 3 key results, which are the measurable indicators of whether objectives are being achieved. The most effective key results sets include a mix of output-oriented key results and outcome-oriented key results.

Related resource: What’s the difference? Learn more about output and outcome-oriented key results here.

Example output-oriented key results include:

  • Pillar: Enhance operational excellence
    • Objective: Embed a DEI positive culture
    • KR: Collaboratively develop a network-wide DEI vision statement by Q1 2023
  • Pillar: Elevate our brand and thought leadership
    • Objective: Increase and amplify global recognition
    • KR: Create new brand name and visual identity by Q4 2024

Example outcome-oriented key results include:

  •  Pillar: Strengthen financial position
    • Objective: Diversify revenue streams
    • KR: Increase funding by 5% for new programming by 2025
  • Pillar: Scale up our proven program to serve more youth
    • Objective: Expand geographic footprint to reach more youth
    • KR: Expand to 2 new geographies by 2025

Related resource: for more on Pillars and OKRs read our post: “How to Set Pillars and OKRs to Advance Your Nonprofit’s Mission“

Nonprofit Strategic Planning Best Practice #7: Put Systems and Processes in Place to Ensure Accountability for Bringing your Strategic Plan to Life

After your team feels that you have a solid set of objectives and key results in place, you’ll want to make sure that everyone is accountable to carrying out the goals you have set together. Walk through each one of your pillars, objectives and key results and assign an owner for each. Then, meet regularly for continuous evaluation of the strategic plan.

Related tool: Our nonprofit strategic plan dashboard tool makes this simple, and provides more tips on the systems and processes you need to put in place as you begin to roll out your strategic plan.

If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, even with all these strategic plan examples and best practices, fear not. That’s where The Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template comes in.

It’s designed to help your nonprofit strategic planning team understand where your organization is today and what you need to do to increase your effectiveness and maximize your mission impact moving forward. It also give you all the worksheets and documents you need to put your strategic plan together. 

With this template, we’ll guide you through the process of conducting research to inform your nonprofit strategic plan. We’ll help you articulate your nonprofit’s, mission, vision and values. Then, we’ll guide your team through the process of making important decisions about your nonprofit’s course over the next 1-3 years. All of this will allow you to set clear priorities (pillars) moving forward, and create a plan of action for bringing your strategic plan to life — ensuring everyone on your team is accountable. Here’s a look at what’s inside the Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template.

An nonprofit strategic plan example of a stakeholder assessment worksheet
A nonprofit strategic plan example of a stakeholder assessment worksheet

Every strategic planning process should begin with thoughtful engagement of your nonprofit’s stakeholders via a stakeholder assessment, which we walk through in the template. 

This means asking folks like your program participants and beneficiaries, donors, community members, board members and staff how they currently perceive your nonprofit, what they need to hear from you, and where they think you can improve. 

You’ll start by auditing your stakeholders and then choosing the best ways to engage them at the onset of your strategic planning process. Then, you’ll continue to keep your stakeholders informed and involved as you continue to shape your strategic plan. We’ll show you how.

Inside the Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template: Research

A nonprofit strategic plan example of an ecosystem assessment worksheet

Before you put pen to paper, you need to develop a clear understanding of where your organization is today, so you can chart your course for the future. The Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template provides you with all of the tools and templates you need to do just that.

You’ll conduct organization assessment, where you’ll identify whom you serve, where you serve them, the programs you offer and how you’re funded. Then, you’ll take a look at other nonprofits in your area to assess how your nonprofit is similar or different. You’ll also look generally at trends in your space. 

This section of The Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template ends with a SWOT, or an assessment of your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The SWOT is a great launching pad for identifying your nonprofit’s upcoming strategic priorities. 

The template is complete with many of the tools you need to conduct these assessments, but also strategic plan examples to help you successfully complete each one.

Inside the Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template: Mission, Vision and Values

Within the template, you’ll find resources for creating or reevaluating your nonprofit’s mission and vision statements, which define the future your nonprofit is working to create and the work you’re doing every day to get closer to that reality.

You’ll also find ideas about how to craft your nonprofit’s values. All of these elements are fundamental to your nonprofit’s ability to make strategic decisions today and the future, so it’s worth taking the time to get them right.

Inside the Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template: Strategy Exercises, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

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Strategic plan example OKR worksheet

Next, we take you through several exercises to help you do some BIG thinking about your nonprofit’s future and your priorities. This is where we help you start brainstorming your strategic planning objectives by reflecting back at your organization’s SWOT analysis and working through the biggest strategic questions your organization is facing. Then, we help you narrow those questions down into categories that become your pillars, objectives and key results. 

We recommend choosing no more than 3-4 organization-wide objectives for the year. Therefore, once you’ve brainstormed all of your potential objectives for your strategic plan, we help you narrow them down based on each one’s:

  • Potential impact on your organization’s mission and outcomes
  • Urgency to complete in the coming year
  • Likelihood it can be accomplished in the coming year with your existing team and resources
  • Measurability

Inside the Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template: Dashboard, Meeting Cadence and Strategic Plan Document

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Strategic plan example dashboard from the Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template

Finally, we help you bring accountability to your nonprofit strategic plan. This is the part of the process where most organizations stop short. They have their strategic objectives, but they fail to make those objectives actionable by breaking them down with quarterly milestones. 

In this section, we provide a dashboard and recommended meeting cadence so your nonprofit will begin to look week-by-week, month-by-month and quarter-by-quarter at what you need to do as a team to reach your objectives. The dashboard and meeting cadence will also help you evaluate your progress, see where you’re falling short and make adjustments on the fly. This ensures you can adopt a structured approach to achieving the objectives and key results in your strategic plan, while also maintaining agility to shift and change plans as unforeseen circumstances arise.

Inside the The Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template, we’ve also included a link to a Google Doc / Word Doc strategic plan template you can begin filling in once your plan is ready if you like a more “narrative” format for your plan.

Shared Power Strategy Rule Book on a shelf

Download The Essential Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template.

What is an example of a strategic plan?

An example strategic plan is a plan for an organization that includes sections like mission/vision, situation analysis, goals/objectives, strategies, implementation plan, measurement and key results. These plans typically direct an organization’s path forward for a period of 3-5 years.

How do you write a strategic plan?

To write a strategic plan:
– Collaborate with your organization’s stakeholders, especially its beneficiaries
– Assess the current state of the organization and others in its ecosystem
– (Re)-evaluate the organization’s mission, vision and values
– Determine the organization’s priorities (pillars) for the next 3-5 years
– Create objectives and measurable key results for each pillar
– Put it into a format for internal use, and another for public consumption

What are the 4 Ps of Strategic Planning?

The 4 P’s of strategic planning are often referred to as Purpose, Priorities, Plan, and Performance. Purpose involves defining the organization’s mission, vision, and values to guide strategic decision-making. Priorities entail identifying the most critical goals and objectives that will drive the organization forward. Plan involves developing a detailed roadmap outlining the strategies, actions, and timelines needed to achieve the established priorities. Performance includes establishing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress and evaluate the success of the strategic plan.

What are the 5 types of strategic plans?

Five common types of strategic plans include:
– Visionary strategic plans
– Operational strategic plans
– National strategic plans (for the national entity in a federated organization model)
– Network strategic plans (for federated organizations’ affiliates/members/partners)
– Strategic priority plans

Want more on nonprofit strategic planning? See these related resources:

 

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