Our Services

Strategic Planning

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STRATEGIC PLANNING SERVICES

Organizing and mobilizing resources around the globe and across diverse teams is what we do. Strategic planning is essential to create wins you can iterate on year over year, building the systems and processes that meet your specific challenges and needs. 

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Organizational development

Strengthen your systems, grow staff and stakeholder skills, and refine your programs to serve your mission and get results.  

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Change management

We guide you through challenges, growth phases, and pivots in order to stay on track, do good work, and come out stronger. 

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Tailored plans

Create strategies that are as unique as your organization, centering your staff, your stakeholders, and your service population.  

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Research and Insights

Drawing from deep experience in human-centered design and qualitative research, we help you understand and overcome the contextual and motivational barriers between you and your vision.

More articles on the topic

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Case Studies: Executive Advisory Council Meeting in Ireland

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Difficult Dialogues with Curiosity and Intention

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Consent is a Process, not (Just) a Form3 Steps for Equitable Editing in Storytelling

"Caliopy listened and engaged, guided everyone in a positive and forthright manner, and really helped us have an end result of an incredibly impactful strategic plan to guide us over the next several years. "

Derrick Olsen
President at World Oregon

Problems with  
Strategic Planning at Nonprofits

Problem: Strategic plan is more of fundraising and marketing tool and less of a tool to guide decisions.

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Solution: Incorporate a decision making-framework into the plan and test it by discussing likely scenarios. Remember, you can always have a separate version of the plan that is for internal use only. 

Problem: Impact is not often measured or quantified

Solution: Determine how you define “impact” in your organization, and then how you would measure that. There are many great tools and examples to help you. 

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Problem: No use of prototyping

Solution: Explore ways of prototyping or piloting small-scale experiments before launching into large initiatives.

Problem: End user are rarely engaged in the planning process.

Solution: If it is not possible to engage  end-users in the strategic planning process, then be sure you gather their feedback and ideas in other ways that can be used to inform the plan. 

Problem: Planning is at arbitrary cyclical junctures, every 3 years or 5 years, not when there is an urgent or imminent crisis.

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Solution:Every plan should include “Conditions for Re-Evaluation.” Some common conditions include change in leadership, drastic increase or decrease in revenue, or a major change to programs.

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LOCATION

Portland, Oregon

About PWB

At Philanthropy without Borders, we help nonprofits clarify their priorities, tell powerful stories, and raise more money so they can continue to tackle the world’s toughest problems. 

Copyright © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Philanthropy without Borders is not in any way affiliated with Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières. Doctors Without Borders
and Médecins Sans Frontières are registered trademarks of Bureau International de Médecins Sans Frontières International.