Strategic planning is a management tool. As with any management tool, it is used for one purpose only: to help an organization do a better job – to focus its energy, to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the organization’s direction in response to a changing environment. In short, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. (Adapted from Bryson’s Strategic Planning in Public and Nonprofit Organizations)

Strategic planning is a process that typically includes creating a mission statement, defining an organization’s mandates, conducting a stakeholder review, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, issue identification, strategy development and plan management.

Presentations for UW-Extension Strategic Planning Training (2009)Step 2: Mandates
Step 8: Visioning

Resources available for strategic planning:
Stakeholder Assessment
Criteria for evaluating strategies
Defining Mission and Vision
Creating a Vision Statement