Strategic Planning for Nonprofits
Nonprofit StratOp
A premier strategic planning system that brings clarity, alignment, and focus to your organization.
What is StratOp?
StratOp is a premier strategic planning system that has helped bring clarity, alignment, and breakthrough to hundreds of organizations for over 50 years.
Each StratOp is facilitated by a licensed StratOp Guide and begins with a multi-day strategic planning session where you and your leadership team are guided through the same strategic planning suite of tools that have empowered so many other organizations. Throughout the course of your StratOp engagement, your team will craft a strategic plan unique to your organization and be equipped with additional tools to turn the strategic plan from a good idea on paper to real world impact in the communities and causes you serve.
Included in StratOp are the operational tools that so many other strategic plans lack and help ensure that your strategic plan becomes more than just a Plan-On-A-Page left on a shelf.
Ready to gain the clarity, alignment, and breakthrough that so many other organizations have experienced? It all starts with a simple conversation.
Slow Down to Move Quickly
While many strategic planning sessions focus on speed–how quickly can we get a plan put together–StratOp recognizes the value of getting the right plan in place and spends significant time on perspective–understanding where we are today–so that when we launch out we move with greater speed, efficiency, and impact.
Strat · Op (n) : A Strategic, Operational, & (Financial) planning system
Strat-
-Op
(Fin)
Strategic
– The Art of Planning for Tomorrow, Today –
StratOp begins with a multi-day, facilitated strategic planning session after which your team will walk out with a Strategic Dashboard, a W.I.N Wheel (What’s Important Now), and an extensive Plan-On-A-Page (POAP) to grow impact.
Operational
– The Discipline of Managing Today, Today –
Once your POAP and W.I.N. Wheel (What’s Important Now) have been completed, your team will be guided through the process of building a roadmap for your organization, helping drive each project from inception to project completion, building momentum and operationalizing your POAP.
Financial
– Faithfully Financing Tomorrow’s Impact –
While not included in the name, your StratOp will take into account the funding needs of your entire strategic plan. Your Strategic Dashboard and Action Initiative Plans (AIPs) will measure the financial needs and targets of your strategic plan, ensuring that your great ideas become funded realities.
The Benefits of StratOp
Clarity
StratOp provides you and your team clarity on where you are now, where you want to be, and how to get there next.
Alignment
The collaborative nature of StratOp will help align your leadership team from top to bottom.
Breakthrough
Asking great questions is only the start of the strategic planning process. StratOp guides your team through a process of Socratic strategic planning that has helped hundreds of teams achieve breakthrough.
Impact
At the heart of StratOp is the pursuit of changed lives. StratOp is used by churches and nonprofits to accelerate their impact and make the world a better place for the communities and causes they serve.
Collaborative and Socratic
StratOp is a collaborative and Socratic process that brings your whole leadership team together in a unified direction.
Bringing your chosen leadership together, your StratOp Guide will guide your team through a Socratic process using the StratOp planning process that will enable your team to craft a strategic plan for your nonprofit, church, or business based on how the perspectives, experience, and gift-sets in the room best meet your vision and calling.
Unlike many other Strategic Planning Process, StratOp builds a plan specific to your organization, not borrowed from a previous client.
The collaborative nature of StratOp creates plans built by a nonprofit’s, church’s, or business’ leadership team that are uniquely and powerfully aligned to push forward together to grow your impact and following your calling.
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Your StratOp Experience
What to expect during your StratOp Engagement
Phase I – StratOp Session
- 2-3 Day Facilitated StratOp Session: The ability of StratOp to bring clarity and alignment to your leadership team and organization is felt immediately in Phase I. Phase I brings your leadership team together, and your StratOp Guide will lead your team through the process of crafting your unique strategic roadmap to align, focus, and grow your organization. During these three days your team will experience being guided through a series of tools that will be bring out the creative, strategic, and tactical thinking in your team. This is when breakthroughs happen.
- Results: Your team will walk out of this highly collaborative process with greater clarity and alignment and a suite of tools, including a Strategic Dashboard, Big Idea Core Strategies, W.I.N. Wheel, Action Initiative Profile, Plan-on-a-Page (POAP), and your Digital Playbook, including 20+ other proprietary StratOp tools.
Phase II – Refinement and Execution
- Review Action Initiative Profiles: With the help of your StratOp Guide, each team leader and project team will take their initial Action Initiative Profile and build a Project Action Plan for their project, including project requirements, necessary steps for completion, required resources, team member assignments, and timeline. As needed, this will include coaching and support from your StratOp Guide for your project team leaders and StratOp Champion.
- Complete Dovetail Timeline: Once your project teams have completed their Action Plans, your StratOp Guide will work with your leadership team to review and finalize each project onto a Dovetail Timeline that provides a 30,000ft view of your entire Action Initiative Profile, including project timelines, required resources, and team leaders.
- Determine Ongoing Management Schedule and Begin Executing Plan: During Phase II, your teams will turn your strategic plan into action steps and start building momentum for growing your impact.
Phase III – Ongoing Management and Project Execution
- Complete and Reload W.I.N. Wheel and AIPs: During Phase IV, your project teams will continue to complete each project on your Action Initiative Profile (AIP) designed to propel your organization forward. As each project is completed, your StratOp Guide will guide your team through the process of reloading the Action Initiative Profiles using your Fountain of Youth and W.I.N. (What’s Important Now) project tool. This will ensure the continued completion and momentum for your strategic plan continues to grow.
- Quarterly Reviews: Once a quarter, your StratOp Guide will meet with your leadership team and/or board for a strategic review. This will ensure the teams are on track for their project deadlines and any strategic adjustments that need to be made to your plan can be built into the updated project plans, Action Initiative Profile, and W.I.N. Wheel. The ability to flexibly adjust is one of the strengths of the StratOp process and is a necessary part of robust strategic planning.
- Ongoing Project Team Trainings: As needed, your StratOp Guide or StratOp Champion will be available to help provide additional coachings and trainings for project team leaders, leadership team, and board.
StratOp Testimonials
YMCA
StratOp is the underpinning of our success as we rebuilt a thriving organization post pandemic.
It guided us to create a shared vision, clear measurements of success, alignment of our board and staff, and clarity of our biggest risks. Our organization has never before had such clarity among its volunteers, staff, and stakeholders.
(Story Provided by Paterson Center)
Community Foundation of Abilene
StratOp has been nothing short of revolutionary for our team.
It’s given us a shared language and created a culture of accountability toward our overall mission.
(Story Provided by Paterson Center)
Thistle Farms
“When we started working with Paterson, our organization was experiencing the effects of a fractured, siloed leadership team and everyone was rowing in different directions.
After just 8 months, we’ve made tremendous progress in our culture and alignment, now able to shift our focus to improving operations, program delivery, and scaling our justice enterprise.”
(Story Provided by Paterson Center)
WestFall Gold
“WestFall Gold is an experience design agency and fundraising consultancy for organizations passionate about advancing good.
40% increase in revenue growth targets after 12 months of engagement.
Successful alignment of new acquisitions into one cohesive team.
Deployment of their Core Values into the Culture.“
(Story Provided by Paterson Center)
Laurie Sorensen
In a season of immense culture shock and navigating the familiarly unfamiliar, LifePlan helped me to make meaning from the transitions and turns my life had taken and pointed me toward a hopeful future. Most of all, it help me find my way back to myself and a vision for who I am becoming. I am forever grateful.
(Story Provided by Paterson Center)
Mike Hahn
I have participated in several evaluation workshops and used multiple tools to discover my skills and personality traits. The Paterson LifePlan is by far the best and most complete goal setting and alignment process in which I have ever participated.
(Story Provided by Paterson Center)
*StratOp and LifePlan testimonies provided by Paterson Center as a reflection of the power and impact of StratOp on its practitioners. Some StratOp and LifePlan testimonies may be from clients served through Paterson Center directly and may not all be through Great Peaks Benefits.
The Story of StratOp
StratOp has impacted hundreds of thousands of people across the globe over the last half century. Based on a belief in the power of perspective, collaborative planning, and the value of the process, StratOp continues to powerfully change the lives of the people and organizations that stand on Tom Pateron’s legacy.