Facilitation & Strategic Planning

Laura can help you plan and facilitate your next board and/or staff retreat, or work with you to develop your next strategic plan.

Laura’s approach to planning is customized the meet your organization’s needs, culture, and budget. She believes strongly in soliciting input and ideas from all of your constituents to inform your mission and goals. She supports creating a plan that can guide leadership but be flexible enough to be adjusted over time as conditions change.

Laura was the lead author of NAWA’s Strategic Planning in Nonprofits (SPiN) toolkit, and teaches strategy at University of Washington and Seattle University. She has adapted her approach to planning to respond to new challenges that nonprofits are facing, bringing in tools that help her clients deal with uncertainty, weave equity into all aspects of their work, and increase trust and relationships among staff and board members.

Laura has served as a facilitator guiding multiple organizations through the process of merging. She has also facilitated the work of coalitions and community change initiatives with numerous partners.

When to consider strategic planning:

• You’ve never done strategic planning, but your board is ready to commit time and energy to move to the “next level”
• There has been significant turnover at the board level since the last planning process
• Program planning is driven by proposal writing rather than a master plan
• Funders are demanding outcomes, and you have difficulty responding
• There are significant differences of opinion among board and staff about what direction the organization should take
• The board is disengaged and really doesn’t know what the staff is doing