Note: This guest post is adapted from a new book, Inclusive Strategic Planning for Nonprofits, by Dr. Renee Rubin Ross. Thanks, Renee!

When I’m asked why Inclusive Strategic Planning is valuable, I immediately go into the kitchen.

Let me explain.

SOS Meals on Wheels had a problem hiding in plain sight. Their industrial kitchen – the heart of an organization serving thousands of San Francisco Bay Area older adults – couldn’t keep up.

The layout capped daily meal production, forcing inefficient delivery schedules and limiting their reach. Staff knew it. Leadership suspected it. But no one had named it as the priority.

Then we gathered everyone into the same room.

When I facilitated their strategic planning process, executive director Charlie Deterline wanted more than a plan: he wanted alignment. For years, board conversations happened separately from staff conversations. Different rooms led to different priorities, with a fractured vision and less than ideal outcomes.

We went through the Inclusive Strategic Planning process with board members, staff, volunteers, donors, and partners all contributing.

That’s when the kitchen emerged. Not just from leadership or the board chair, but the collective input of people who understood the operation from every angle. The strategic plan they created together included the goal, “Increase meal production and volume to decrease delivery days.”

Goal accomplished!

A year later, I saw the announcement on social media: SOS Meals on Wheels had remodeled their kitchen – expanded refrigeration, increased freezer capacity, dramatically higher daily meal production. Goal accomplished.

Inclusive Strategic Planning surfaces what matters most, builds shared ownership of the solution, and creates momentum that outlasts the planning process itself.

What’s “the kitchen” for your organization? What’s the constraint everyone feels but no one has prioritized, or the solution that requires multiple perspectives to see clearly?

Why your organization can benefit from this model

Some time ago, Nancy (not her real name), an executive director from a medium-sized nonprofit, joined my strategic planning course at California State University East Bay.

At the end of the course, Nancy explained that she and her co-director had created their most recent strategic plan. They did this by sitting together in her office for a few days and writing out strategies and goals for the organization for the next few years.

As Nancy shared on the last day of class, “Having learned more about Inclusive Strategic Planning, I see how we were not inclusive. It was just the two of us. We did not ask others on staff or board to build the vision with us. We did not consult the larger community in any way. And now I see why a lot of team members do not understand and feel connected to the details of our current vision and goals.”

Top-down plans don’t work

I frequently hear how strategic plans created without the input and buy-in of the staff aren’t implemented, since the staff doesn’t understand where the plan came from. I’ve heard stories about how a new executive director “inherited” a strategic plan and – without understanding the rationale behind the priorities and goals – wasn’t interested in putting it into motion.

Designing plans that incorporate a plethora of perspectives strengthens many parts of an organization: morale, recruitment, finances, and overall investment in the work. For example, when fundraising goals are created in collaboration with the development team, then team members help to make sure that those goals are realistic and become invested in accomplishing them.

How Inclusive Strategic Planning is different

Traditional strategic planning methods focus on the how and when – vision, mission, strategies, goals – but less about the who. With Inclusive Strategic planning, we hold deeply the idea that it matters who’s in the room as the plan is created.

Inclusion has been defined as an environment that offers affirmation, celebration, and appreciation of different approaches, styles, perspectives, and experiences, thus allowing all individuals to bring in their whole selves (and all their identities) and to demonstrate their strengths and capacity.

Inclusive Strategic Planning acknowledges that the lived experience of those in the room informs the plan. The design incorporates a wider swath of participants, including Deciders, Builders, and Sharers.

Traditional processes always incorporate Deciders, those who make final decisions, and often include Sharers, people who weigh in via interviews, focus groups, and surveys. The innovative aspect of this model is the Builders group, who co-create the plan, especially the parts that they will be implementing. This makes the process inclusive.

This isn’t easy, but it’s worth it

Working this way is not always easy. It challenges leaders to be open to information from different perspectives, which allows them to make better-informed decisions and co-create realistic, sustainable, energizing strategies and goals. It just takes more time.

However, in our volatile and uncertain era, open, transparent, and inclusive processes are needed more than ever. This approach models transparency and inclusivity, which benefits us all.