Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is a process in which an organization determines what it wants to accomplish in the future, what actions need to be taken to achieve these goals, and what resources the organization needs to reach its goals. The focus of a strategic plan is usually on the entire organization. However, there will be some differences in the planning activities between not-for-profits and profit-oriented organizations.

Profit-oriented organizations Not-for- profit organizations

• Focus more on activities to maximize profit

• Rely almost solely on the sale of goods and services to the public for its sales and revenue.

• Focused on how to successfully compete against other organizations seeking the same customers.

• Their priority is to maximize revenue growth and profitability, which demonstrates that the company was able to provide an acceptable return on investment for its shareholders. • Focus more on matters of board development, fundraising and volunteer management

• Also serve the public as profit seeking organizations, but overall goal is to increase the number of people they serve.

(eg. To increase the number of meals it serves by 20 %, OR raising the level of donations by 20%)

• They mostly depend on membership fees, donations, endowments, and contributions in addition to revenue.

• Their priority is not maximizing their profits because they have other incomes.

Due to that, we could see that is a different regarding to the target usage of the strategic planning for profit-oriented and not-for-profit organizations. Generally, not-for-profit organizations make used of strategic planning for