Inaugural administrations typically begin with a flurry of activity. During periods of significant change, it’s crucial for an organization to reflect internally and develop strategies to navigate these shifts. In this process, strategic planning plays a vital role.
Many organizations rely heavily on grant funds. These entities often use their grant funds to carry out their missions by funding staffing and operating expenses. When a grant is exhausted, the programmatic and staffing expenses must either be paid from another funding source (such as a new grant or organizational general/unrestricted funds) or the programs and staffing will cease to exist.
Without its staff and programs, an organization may be unable to carry on its mission and do the work that is so important to the community. Through strategic planning, an organization can plan for operational needs, such as how much staff it needs, how long it needs them, and how it can continue to fund these critical positions and programs.
While the strategic planning process may seem complex, breaking it down into actionable tasks can help the process seem more feasible.
Conduct Strategic Analysis
An organization should conduct a needs assessment to identify its priorities. This should involve consulting with its stakeholders, such as the people it serves and its volunteers. An entity can host meetings or survey its stakeholders. The organization should collect its feedback of what the community needs and how the operation can fulfill that need.
An organization should then consider how it might fulfill community needs by performing a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, which helps an entity identify how to execute its priorities.
Set Goals & Objectives, Then Develop Strategies & Action Plans
With insights gleaned from the SWOT analysis, the organization can now formulate its strategic plan, which can be further broken down into action steps called an action plan. This is significant since each step must be clear and have measurable metrics to gauge progress, so an organization can be sure it is moving forward in the right direction. In addition, the steps on this action plan must correlate to a timeline with key milestones.
The current administration has issued seven key executive orders to advance its agenda, which could directly impact grant funding. They include:
- Protecting the American People Against Invasion
- Re-Evaluating and Realigning U.S. Foreign Aid
- Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements
- Unleashing American Energy
- Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
- Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
- Enforcing the Hyde Amendment
To navigate this, consider using the SWOT analysis to assess the alignment of your organization’s strategic goals to the executive orders. Engage with stakeholders to explore potential adjustments to strategic goals as a way to help position your organization for possible changes to the upcoming grants landscape. Doing this could help your operation prepare to capitalize on potential new sources of grant funding. Further, this could help your organization prepare—and have contingencies in place—for possible losses of existing grant funding.
These are all important conversations to have and strategic planning can be a great option to navigate these first 100 days and help steer your organization to success in the future.
How Forvis Mazars Can Help
Our Grants Management Services practice can help organizations set strategic goals for grant writing and grants management. If you have any questions or need assistance, please reach out to a professional at Forvis Mazars.