Strategic Planning is woefully out of fashion, with many bloggers and thought-leaders claiming it is, in fact, dead.

They couldn't be more wrong!

Strategic Planning is an integral part of any nonprofit's ability to conduct effective social change. It allows the organization's staff, management, volunteers and board to identify and focus on the top priorities that the stakeholders agree will matter most to accomplishing their mission.

Without a strategy, and the execution that follows - nonprofits are awash in mission creep, money chasing, and burned out and demoralized staff. Ain't nobody wants that.

This book will walk you through the process of Strategic Planning invented by Sarai Johnson of Lean Nonprofit. Her practice is based on recent innovations in the business sector, building on the concepts of Lean Canvas and the Business Model Canvas. Adapting this strategic, action-based tool for nonprofits provides you, the nonprofit practitioner, with step-by-step instructions for leading a group of people through the planning process.

Oh, did we mention it is a ONE DAY PROCESS?

Yeah, it's cool. We know.

Along with the book, you can access free downloadable templates and tools to help make your strategic planning session a smashing success - making your organization better off - and making YOU look like a rockstar.

Strategic Planning That Actually Works covers:

- How to set up and lead a meeting that is productive, useful, and FUN.
- Identifying stakeholders - and ranking their ability to pay for services.
- Identifying your stakeholder problems.
- Mapping the solutions your organization provides to the stakeholder problems.
- Articulating the activities your organization conducts in order to provide these solutions.
- Defining the competitive edge your organization has over others in delivering the solutions you provide.
- Understanding how to evaluate and measure your mission-performance in all you do.
- Articulating your value claim, to establish your position in the nonprofit community to be heard above the noise.
- Developing a budget draft for the strategy agreed upon in the meeting with your leadership and stakeholders.

Nonprofit strategy needs to catch up with the direction of the business world - and now it can. Not only focusing on launching things and seeing them "fail fast," this book allows you to integrate lean, adaptive business principles into your mission-oriented work without pain and suffering. That is to say, you'll talk business, but you'll still feel the love.

If you are feeling lost, confused, and bereft of a strategic priority, or if you've simply been told by a funder or other party whose opinion you care about that you need a strategic plan, you'll be hard pressed to find a simpler, faster, cheaper or BETTER way to do it than this process.

Sarai Johnson is the Founder and Principal of Lean Nonprofit, LLC, a member of the Sarai Johnson Group, which also includes Incubetter (for business incubators), Vivo Credo (for faith organizations), Teknia Publishing, and, the creatively named, Sarai Johnson Consulting (for mission-oriented small businesses and service providers).
Sarai is a nonprofit and business management maven and creative entrepreneur. As nonprofits go, she spent more than a decade managing nonprofit programs, people, and projects, earned her Master of Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Oregon in 2012, and she holds Certified Associate in Project Management certification from Project Management Institute. Most recently, Sarai served as the Assistant Director at NEDCO, Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation where she played a key role in scaling the organization from one program run by six people, to the multifaceted gem operated by about 50 geniuses that it is today (with a budget 7 times larger than when she began).