Use this page to learn who to involve in developing your strategy and how best to engage them.
It’s important to involve a wide range of people in developing your strategy for three reasons:
This could include:
Have a think about the points below.
Trustee boards set the direction for the organisation and map out the strategy the organisation follows. Depending on the size of your organisation, your strategy process may be led by trustees, by senior management, or by other members of staff.
However, the leadership of the organisation's strategy rests with the board so it’s essential they have oversight over the process, are engaged throughout and support the decisions made.
Read information in our governance section on board responsibilities.
Your volunteers and staff have rich experience of what you do and what people and communities need.
How you involve volunteers and staff will depend on how you intend to make decisions.
It’s important to be realistic, open and honest about how much influence people can have at different stages of the strategy development process.
Ask yourselves how:
Be aware of people’s capacity and be sensitive to barriers that may stop them engaging.
If you employ staff, and the process may result in changes to roles, be open and transparent about this from the start. It’s also important to be clear about how everyone can be involved in the process and who will make final decisions.
The people you seek to serve, other organisations involved in your area of work (whether you currently collaborate with them or not), funders and others with an interest in or connection to your work (often called ‘stakeholders’) all have important perspectives and insight.
How easily you can engage them will depend on:
When involving staff and volunteers, ask yourselves how:
An important wider consideration is to make sure that your organisation is taking the steps required to meaningfully consider equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in your organisation.
Read more about this on our governance pages on EDI.
It’s important to understand how engagement works for different groups and people in your community.
Marginalised groups and those with lived experience (with particular identity markers such as protected characteristics, class, seniority, and disability) are more likely to engage if:
Last reviewed: 04 July 2022
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