Strategic Planning - Corporate versus Non-Profit

On November 19, 2012, the AJC Board met again to ratify the previously submitted strategic plan. Having just gone through this effort at my workplace in a corporate setting, where a three-years plan was a heroic effort with significant political muscle flexing from all parties involved and ripple-effect to everything the company does, I was ready to sit back and enjoy a lively debate at the non-profit AJC.

I was somewhat disappointed with this expectation. Most of the questions during the meeting were tactical in their nature (e.g., How are we going to increase young membership?, or How are we going to improve our fundraising record?, etc.), and while they are key issues to discuss, very few strategic insights related to long-term operation and budgetary guidance was included in the final plan that was unanimously approved by the AJC's board.

The lack of a cathartic experience was probably due to the difference between for-profit and not-for-profit focus of governance. Both plans at my company and at AJC included structural changes to their leadership and governance organizations, they differed on their specificity on how they answered the "what's next?" question. A publicly traded company undertaking strategic planning has to primarily allocate its budget to the main areas of their operation and set up metrics that monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of the performance as it relates to the plan. This non-profit planning process was more geared towards understanding where the biggest challenges and opportunities are, using the SWOT analysis technique. The outcome of that self-analysis was than translated into changing their working committee structure. This included the creation of an executive leadership committee that includes the President (ex-officio) and Director as well as all committee leads. However, because AJC has minimal freedom to their yearly budget allocation, they did not tie these initiatives to any financial metrics.

The take away from this experience for me was that corporations and non-profits have very different strategic planning and leadership models. While slicing the dollar-cake dominates the prior, an almost Freudian self-reflection is in the focus of the latter. As my synagogue is gearing up to have leadership transition and strategic planning for the future, this lesson comes handy determining what should be on our agenda.