By Adenike Adeyemi

The social sector space has experienced an evolution in the last few decades. Traditional non-profits have begun to understand the need for a sustainable business model that looks at operational efficiency and resource viability while still working to achieve their mission. The evolution draws on the reality that most social sector organisations, particularly those within the non-profit space, may never become fully self-sustaining if always subsidised by non-earned sources through philanthropy and grants. Such a situation leads to the puzzle of achieving impact while still trying to achieve sustainability.

As Jim Collins (2005) noted in Good to Great and the Social Sectors, in the social sectors, the critical question is not “How much money do we make per dollar of invested capital?” but “How effectively do we deliver on our mission and make a distinctive impact, relative to our resources?” As we look to be more effective in our work, we must be very clear in framing our activities in the context of a well-defined strategy that would help us deliver on our mission and objectives.

How can a social sector leader think through developing and implementing a strategic plan?

The first and crucial step is centering the organisation’s purpose in a framework that provides a pathway to think through how to achieve its mission, vision, and strategic objectives. They should have clear goals and targets typically in line with their focus. It also must state the key strategic objectives and define details clearly.

Having a strategic plan in place is key to unlocking your growth potential for the future and guiding against uncertainty. All leaders skilled at strategic planning would be in a better place to handle uncertainties and unexpected events that could come up at any time given our now volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world with events like the pandemic.

What are growth and sustainability measures? In other words, how do you measure if your strategic plan is working, and how do you sustain the growth?

The first measure will be ensuring that the strategy plan, content, and details centre on the organisation’s theory of change. The theory of change is essentially the need that an organisation has identified and seeks to address. Once the need is clear, the theory of change then describes the interventions that the organisation is developing to address them. It then raises questions such as: what are the outputs and outcomes? Thus, having clarity on the theory of change is a measure for an effective strategic plan.

While different organisations have different impact measures, social sector leaders need to clarify the indicators that define when they have achieved that impact. For example, at FATE Foundation, once we defined our theory of change, we then identified the key performance indicators (KPIs) that drive our strategic plan.

What are the critical success factors for delivering a successful strategic plan?

The first success factor will be aligning sustainability with the overall strategic plan. As a social sector leader, our mission and theory of change provide the context for the KPIs defined in our strategic plan. Our strategic plan defines how we will deliver this key impact area, while our sustainability plan answers the questions on how our strategic goals and objectives will be resourced and financed.

•Adeyemi writes from Lagos