By Julie Euber, CEO, SARSEF
“The strategic plan is dead. Long live strategy.” – Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Dana O’Donovan & Noah Rimland Flower
Nonprofit strategic planning can be a divisive topic.
On one hand, strategic planning can be viewed as an important process to ensure an organization is achieving their mission and getting the results they want. It allows staff and board to move in the same direction and understand their role in the organization’s impact.
On the other hand, it can be seen as a box to check that leads to a dead-on-arrival document that collects dust on a digital shelf. As the winds of change batter our doors, who are we to think we can strategically plan for an unpredictable future?
SARSEF staff and board recently completed a strategic planning process that didn’t attempt to predict the future but instead resulted in a shared reference document for everyone in the organization. The SARSEF strategic plan is a framework intended to be used when making strategic decisions to ensure alignment with the desired change we want to see in Arizona communities. The desired change we want to see is that critical thinking and problem-solving become habits of mind for every student, not special activities for some.
The strategic document also serves as a resource to help external audiences understand our work, find alignment for more impactful partnerships, and support us with a deeper understanding of our desired change. I wanted to share our process and insights.
The entire framework reflects an iterative exchange of ideas from the SARSEF staff and board. Months after the process, I am happy to hear phrases and ideas from the framework echo throughout our conversations and planning documents.
This is what we wanted from the process – a framework synchronizing the heartbeat and hard work behind continually opening doors of opportunity in science education for students, especially those from backgrounds historically marginalized in professional science communities.
The Process
I initially brought the strategic design framework idea to SARSEF board and staff after reading an article by Nick Takamine in Nonprofit Quarterly about transforming strategic planning to better fit the needs of nonprofits seeking to build a more just and equitable world. Both groups agreed to the process, and I was able to take on the role of facilitator.
The process began by ensuring clarity around our vision, values and missions. We then determined what challenges are in the way of our desired change and our perspective on how to overcome them. Both board and staff had in-depth discussions around these topics, centering the following questions:
- What does our mission, guided by our vision and values, look like in action today and in the short-term?
- By choosing the mission, vision, and values we have chosen, what might we NOT prioritize?
- Broadly by category, who do we work with to ensure we accomplish our mission?
- Long-term, if/when our mission is achieved, what does that look like? What change has occurred?
- What gets in the way of achieving our mission?
- What do we need to do to overcome barriers to achieving our mission?
We then determined our response to those challenges from different organizational angles – board, leadership team, programs team, operations team, and philanthropy team. The result of this process was a draft of our strategic framework that was then reviewed, updated, and approved by both board and staff.
What’s Next?
In its first year of adoption, the strategic framework will not be put to rest. We’ve created a poster for our internal meeting space to ensure it’s taken into consideration during decision-making gatherings. We will be brainstorming questions we should ask ourselves to ensure we’re in line with our strategic plan. Then, we will build roadmaps at the board and staff level to name what we must hold strong on and how we can evolve to ensure we are all working towards our theory of change. Once the framework expires, we hope to revive it with additional community feedback.
Conclusion
This process afforded us the opportunity to reflect on what we know to be true, the value we bring to our community partners and program participants, and how we can continually improve. We invite you to explore the document for a better understanding of our work and for inspiration on how you might work with us to create Arizona’s future critical thinkers and problem solvers through science and engineering. If you have any questions about the process or how to adopt it in your organization, please feel free to reach out to me directly.
“The strategy outlined in this document will help us stay on track as we work towards our big goals, acting as a light through the darkness, reminding us change is possible, and that we are both fortunate and driven to be a part of it.” – SARSEF’s 2026-2029 Strategic Framework
You can read the SARSEF 2026- 2029 Strategic Plan here.
Contact Julie Euber, CEO, at julie@sarsef.org