Marie Palacios, Lead Consultant | Funding for Good

Marie is an expert facilitator, certified by The Institute of Cultural Affairs in the USA, in evidence-based facilitation practices known as the ToP Method. She combines proven facilitation methods and her passion for community to facilitate dynamic and productive meetings. Marie enjoys facilitating community organizing, advocacy, consensus building, and action planning workshops for diverse organizations across the nation. Over the past two decades, Marie has worn every hat imaginable in the nonprofit world: volunteer, board member, program director, executive director, and development consultant. Her nonprofit specialties include strategic planning facilitation, program design, board development, grant writing, and messaging. Marie is bilingual and uses her Spanish skills to provide language access services for businesses and local government sectors, teach Spanish for Professional Courses, and coordinate missions in Latin America through her consulting company, MP Pro Consult. Marie is a native of Morganton, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and three children.

Links:

• Web address: www.fundingforgood.org 
• email: team@fundingforgood.org 
• Steps in Strategic Planning Blog article: https://fundingforgood.org/steps-in-strategic-planning/ 
• Get a free Strategic Planning checklist: https://fundingforgood.org/strategic-planning/ 
• If you know a consultant who is growing their business and seeks to grow their network, please share: Nonprofit Consulting Conference: https://fundingforgood.org/npcc-online/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/fundingforgood 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandapearcefundingforgood/ 
• Compass: Connect with other members of the philanthropic community at Community.foundant.com
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Hello and welcome to our Foundant Connected Philanthropy podcast.

We are privileged to have Marie Palacios from Funding for Good as our guest.

Today we will be digging into strategic planning.

Marie and the team at Funding for Good have been helping nonprofits

develop their strategic plans using.

Methodology that focuses on the process.

And this focus could help nonprofit leaders engage in strategic

planning conversations and come away with a great written plan.

I also know funding for Good has been offering trainings,

workshops, and resources focused on strategic planning for many years.

Marie and her colleague Mandy have also been guest speakers on

several educational webinars for us, and they have also offered

several articles found on our blog.

Our community has definitely benefited from all the wisdom and knowledge

they have shared with us over the past years, and we are excited to learn more.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Marie.

My pleasure.

I am excited to be talking about the process of strategic

planning with you today but before we dive into that topic, can you tell

me a little bit more about yourself?

Sure.

So as you already said, I'm Marie Palacios and Mandy and I are actually celebrating

20 years of partnering together in some sense, not just as funding for good.

We started out both working in the nonprofit sector and subcontracting

and bartering our services and.

Have grown into the business of funding for good over the

years, but my background is all grassroots, hands-on nonprofit work.

So we say, a lot of times you go to trainings or you meet with a consultant

and they're telling you these, all these great ideas that fill, sound easy.

But in reality it's like walking through peanut butter.

And for those of us who have been there and have been on the front

line serving as an executive director, which I have as a program

director, which I have development.

Staff, which I have.

It's like things sound easy, but we know better.

So we really, our business model is really helping people, not just telling them

what they need to do, but giving them tips and tools and showing them how to do it.

So we hope that any engagement with us, whether it's a short podcast

or a training or a bootcamp leaves people with something they can

actually take away and use it today.

We've definitely heard that from our community so far.

They love all of the material tips and just knowledge that you so willingly sh.

And I'm excited to have you on the podcast today talking about this.

I think strategic planning is so important and it seems so big

And I, I wanna make make sure we.

Talk about how you make it so approachable, and then also the

resources and assistance that you have available for the folks if

they need more assistance there.

Starting out can you explain why strategic planning and having a strategic

plan is so vital for nonprofits?

Oh, absolutely.

So we're using the word strategic plan, but in the for-profit world, we

would be using the term business plan.

So my husband and I have a small construction company.

It's a for-profit company in addition to my consulting.

And if we wanted to go to the bank.

To take out a loan to maybe grow his gutter, cutting his gutter

installment side of the business, and we need a $30,000 loan for that.

The first thing the bank is gonna ask us for is, what do you need?

Why do you need it?

And they're gonna ask us for three very specific things.

The first is gonna be, what's your business plan?

Because they want to see, do you have a plan to actually repay

that loan and they're gonna get that return on the investment.

The second thing they're gonna ask is current capacity.

Where are you now?

You said you're gonna have 20 employees in two years, but you're

really a one person show right now.

What does that look like now?

And the third thing they're gonna ask is, what's your credit score?

They wanna see your history of successfully paying back, and we

see that and we just consider it the norm in the for-profit world.

But we don't stop to think that in the nonprofit world, our donors are investors.

They are looking for a return on their investment.

That return on investment might not be profit, but it's

purpose, it's meaningful impact.

So if I give you a thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars, I

wanna know that there's a plan to take those dollars and sew into the mission

and produce a return on investment in the terms of meaningful impact.

So when we look at planning for the future and cultivating donors

and growing our capacity, we have to have a plan to get there.

We know that only about half of the nonprofits in the country right now

have a written strategic plan, but a strategic plan is the greatest

tool in your fundraising toolkit.

It can double your chances of success if it's done well.

But it really keeps everyone on the same page.

So in our world, we tell people, just keeping people on the same page, the

nonprofit culture, there's a lot of turnover with board rotations, staffing,

and when we say, oh, we're going to California, California is a big place.

We may think we're talking about the same thing, but we can, there's

lots of ways to get to California.

So a strategic plan.

Confirms the destination for everyone on the team, board, staff, volunteers, but,

most importantly, if it has an operational plan with it, it provides the tools

and timelines to make sure that we're running a three red-legged race where

everyone's heading in the same direction.

Otherwise, it's one of those old school strategic planning races where

everyone's falling over each other.

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes so much sense.

I love that analogy too, of getting what it means to have

everybody on the same page.

You mentioned those three things that a strategic plan could answer.

Are those the key components or are there different components of

what constitutes a strategic plan?

There are, but I would venture to say any evidence-based

comprehensive process should answer at least these three questions.

The first one is, where are we now?

Because we really can't determine where we wanna be in the future

unless we know where we are now.

If we're standing at a national park and we're trying to get to the upper

falls, we have to look at that kiosk and agree, this is the path we're on.

Or you're gonna have lots of we should go left or we should go right?

So even though it sounds crazy, many board members, staff members, team members in

general, might not actually have a working knowledge or agree upon where we are.

We have the capacity to do that.

No, we don't.

So where are we now?

As the first question Every plan should answer.

That's usually done in the form of a, an analysis, a scan.

So you might have heard of a SWAT analysis, strengths, weaknesses,

opportunities, and threats.

That's an internal analysis at funding for good.

We don't do swat, we Dota, we end with achievements because who wants

to end a conversation on threats?

And I'm like, whoever the brilliant person was that said, let's end

the whole conversation on threats should revisit so we, Dota.

And it's a great way to celebrate the organization's achievement with

all the team members participating.

It might be an external scan, and those are well known in the community where

you're looking at the community around to say what's going on in the community.

So you have internal and external scans to answer the question, where are we now?

We have an article on funding for goods website.

If you go to funding for good.org and just use the little search bar

and put environmental scan, you'll see a breakdown on internal and

external in some of the models.

But the second question is, now that we know where we are now, the

second one is where do we wanna be in three to five years, or whatever

that designated timeframe is.

So where do we wanna be and that where do we wanna be in X number of years can look

different for different organizations.

In our strategic planning process, we tend to look up as far ahead as

an organization, looks comfortable.

It could be 10 years, it could be eight years, it could be 20 years.

But we really create actionable goals for the next three to five years.

Automobile industries, cities, municipalities might need to look

further ahead if there's a lot of infrastructure involved or organizations

working with infrastructure, because you can't just look two years

ahead on major infrastructure.

But we involve a vision process where we want to be in X number of years.

And then finally, the third question we always answer in our

process is, how do we get there?

And that's the strategies and the timelines and all of those things.

So where are we now?

Where do we wanna be and how do we get?

There are the three overarching questions.

Every really good plan should answer.

I've been involved in a couple, board retreats.

Strategic planning and I always have to coach myself before and I

go in there cuz I'm, I I may take over, I may not speak up, I may

do too much, not enough, whatever.

Everybody has different personalities and different.

Comfort with participating in these types of planning processes.

So how do you have any areas or tips of advice for how to make a level

playing field for everyone involved?

Absolutely.

That's gonna come down almost completely to your facilitator.

So choosing a facilitator is a huge part of the process.

This isn't a pitch to say, oh, we're gonna facilitate for you, happy to do that.

But then you may have someone on your team, you may have someone in your

community, a volunteer, someone in your community foundation, but choosing

the right facilitator is going to be imperative when you're looking at leveling

that playing field for several reasons.

I've never actually facilitated a process in which I was the executive

director of the organization.

Because it is impossible to be a neutral facilitator and open up the conversation

while being an active participant.

It's just impossible.

So if you are an active participant or want to be, then it is probably

a time to say I should step back and not serve as the facilitator.

Regardless if you have someone who will do it for free or you invest in a facilitator

who's qualified, I highly recommend, first of all, getting a facilitator.

We do have a whole training on that, on strategic planning processes, and we

say what to expect from a facilitator.

Also, if you click on that little search bar on funding for.org.

There's what I call the holy Grail of strategic planning articles,

and there's a breakdown on what to expect from facilitators,

how to put a call out for rfp.

So I won't get into that now, but first is the the facilitator.

The second is to recognize that in every room you're gonna have

your abrasive and your persuasive.

And as a facilitator, I always enjoy both.

People go, but you don't want the abrasive.

I do.

I want a little bit of push pushback.

Maybe not too much.

We have to keep it in check.

But persuasive can be just as dangerous as abrasive or just as

harmful because when people get pulled along blindly, they make decisions

they might not have otherwise made.

Someone could be very convincing and abrasive.

People can get bulldozed and strong armed into making those decisions.

Abrasive and persuasive can pull conversations in particular directions

and encourage the group to make decisions that might not be the soundest choices.

So always look for the abrasive and the persuasive.

Identify those pretty early on.

We make sure that we have kites and the kite flyers in the room.

So I've never heard this analogy, but it makes sense to me and

hopefully it will to you.

Our kites are those people who say, we can be flying a thousand feet in the air.

Look at all the amazing things we can do.

And our kite flyers are the ones that are like, yeah, but we got

500 feet of string, not a thousand.

They're firmly grounded.

And these are the realities in which we're operating.

And when you just have the kites, you have dreams that aren't

really attached or grounded.

And if you just have the kite flyers, you don't have the visionaries.

So capacity building is about adding to your spool of kite string, and a

strategic planning process gets the kites and the kite flyers in the room and

says, how can we add more to the spool?

So maybe we won't get to a thousand feet in this planning process, but

maybe we'll get to 700 or 750 feet.

So the planning process allows our kites and our kite flyers to add to that

string and get a little bit out of their comfort zones each and in their own way.

And then finally, we have introverts and extroverts.

So we have abrasive and persuasive.

We have our kites and our kite flyers.

And then we have just the way people communicate, which is our

introverts and our extroverts.

And if I open up a question and say, where do we wanna be in three years?

Extroverts, we can create 20 responses.

I'm an extrovert, as you can tell, but they're not gonna be our best thoughts.

They're just gonna be stream of consciousness.

Introverts, by the time they've organized a really beautiful response, we've moved

on, the conversation's already passed.

So we use an evidence-based facilitation method that we're trained in called

the Top Method, and it stands for technology of participation.

There are lots of evidence-based models out there.

I highly encourage organizations to look for facilitators who have a

wealth of knowledge in facilitation technique, evidence-based models,

lots of experience because the facilitator is a big chunk of success.

And one of the things that the top method requires and that we appreciate

is it levels the playing field by giving everyone a focus question.

We only ask one question at a time.

We give everyone a set amount of time to quietly.

Collect their thoughts because how can we collect share our best thoughts if

we haven't taken time to collect them?

So that could be three minutes to four minutes or five minutes.

And then we move into small groups.

So once we've collected our thoughts using very specific instructions

we provide in writing, we move into small groups because it's.

10% harder to achieve consensus for every person after seven in the room.

So if you're dealing with 21 people in the training session, it's gonna

be hard to get that agreement.

So we move into small groups of three and four, and when they can agree, they're

saying the same thing and I have three or four groups, then we come back together

and we have four groups of maybe three now we just have to get four groups to agree.

So breaking into, it's in the educational world called Think, pair, share.

We use that think pair share model in our strategic planning to level the

playing field, and it's been really successful to manage all those different

personality and processing types.

Wow.

Wow.

I love that.

And I love the language and you're not saying one type is better than the other,

so people will feel validated, they'll feel their role and the importance

of it and what they're bringing to the table and that type of a process.

And yeah, I

everyone, We need the pushback.

We need that pushback to challenge.

We need the persuasion to say, let's get out of our comfort zone.

We need all those personalities in the room to get the best product because

the method we use is consensus based.

And it's based on the premise that the best plans come out of

diverse diversity in participation.

That the better the participation, the more diverse the participation,

the better your plan will be.

That's great.

That's great.

And I don't know if this ever happens cuz I I haven't participated

using that method, but I have seen.

Whiteboards filled with ideas and does that ever come outta or happen,

often in these planning strategies and then it's just overwhelming.

I have an idea of how I would organize it or but sometimes it's just overwhelming.

And how do you bring that into, what should we focus first?

What should we ignore?

What,

the really awesome thing about the evidence-based

model that we use to facilitate is it takes into consideration that.

First we need to collect our thoughts.

Then we need to share them.

Then we need to agree upon them, but then we need to organize them.

So our process actually goes through a, what we call a clustering process

and we all those ideas, instead of just putting 'em on the board,

we then say, for example, if it's accomplishments, we'll say which

ones of these shares similar intent?

And we start clustering them.

Or if we're talking about barriers, it might be which

ones have a similar root cause.

So we provide a prompt to our participants to help them cluster.

So we're not just saying, which one of these make sense together?

Because I can say we're gonna have a marketing strategy.

If we're talking about strategies, I can say we're gonna have a marketing strategy.

What's the intent behind it?

Is it to raise awareness?

Is it to raise dollars?

Is it to do something else?

So the intent behind something is just as important as the strategy put to it.

So we provide very particular prompts that's only one prompt on a time on

the board, and everyone helps cluster.

And then we go through a naming process to say these are the things

we said we wanna see in five years.

Looking at the contribution in this particular column,

what are we talking about?

And then we agree on the name.

So our process actually walks through and helps organize that.

I always felt sorry for the scribe in strategic planning processes.

Like how do you, it's like collecting stars, shooting stars in the sky

and getting 'em in a document.

I believe that the value that a facilitator brings if they've done it

and done it well, is having a template.

That and a way, a methodology to collect the information and then put it into

a written document that can be used.

So while I'm facilitating another team member is typically scribing all the

information, so there's no, no one has to actually take time to scribe.

Every participant from the organization is highly involved.

Our team members typing everything up and we have created a

template that I like to call the development director's best friend.

Because we both worked in development.

Mandy and I have backgrounds in development and program management,

and we have created a template that's very visual that you can extract for

marketing, you can extract for development work, you can extract for programming.

So taking the ideas and then putting 'em in an editable user-friendly,

visually appealing document is another part of the process.

And we see a lot of.

Organization said, we went through this process, but we got all these notes.

We don't know where to go from there.

And that's why when we talk about in our articles and also in our trainings on

strategic planning, if you ever look at strategic planning, the process, it's on

our website and it's also in our vault.

We walk through very particular slides on what to ask your facilitator,

like what should you be asking?

What is your methodology?

What is your process?

What is included in the end product?

How are we getting there so that you know what to expect?

Because honestly, one size doesn't fit all.

The questions you're asking are great, and every facilitator will have a

different way of getting to that end goal.

And one size doesn't fit all.

So ask the questions, have someone in the room that maybe has facilitated,

but maybe won't be facilitating because they wanna be an active participant.

But at the end of the day, there's so many evidence-based processes for

action planning, consensus building.

There's no reason that a really high caliber facilitator wouldn't have

some type of training in that area.

That's great.

I am wondering at this point is with your experience, cuz you not only train on this

and have all these great resources, but you do a lot of the strategic planning

work together and I just wanna watch your work after hearing all these different

techniques, I wanna see you in action.

Do you have any just averages that you've seen in terms of.

If you are a group of 10 or so how long, or, I know it probably depends,

but what does it depend on and how much time should you give to this process?

So it really depends on what's involved in the process.

We, when we first started out, we were learning and we

wanted to give people options.

So we would say, here's your strategic planning retreat.

Because everyone's asking, they call us up and say, we're having a board retreat.

We want you to facilitate strategic planning.

So many moons ago, we would go and we would do these goal setting.

Just the basic knowledge and agreement on where we are.

We would start to goal set in a particular area.

We'd say afterschool program, and they'd say, we can do this.

And someone would say no, we can't do that because, and we

kept, it felt like a yo-yo.

And it just kept going back and forth and it was then they would say, you know what?

We're gonna do it at every month.

Board meeting.

You lose momentum that way.

So we found that strategic plans fail for lots of different reasons.

We have an entire article on that called Reasons, top Reasons Strategic Plans

fail, encourage you to look at it.

And we have looked at the reasons plans fail, right?

People aren't in the room.

Maybe it's it drawn out too long and we lose momentum and people say,

but we need to finish this before we can get through and actually plan.

I say, there is no better time to plan than now if you're in the middle

of a sticky situation, a pandemic.

That is your current reality.

There's nothing wrong with your current reality.

It just is what it is.

We start our planning where we are, whether that is good, bad, or ugly.

So our process that we work through with clients, we've rebuilt to include

things that not all processes include.

So ours includes a visioning session, so it's strategic thinking,

which I'm actually teaching today on a webinar at 2:00 PM Eastern.

So we're talking about how strategic thinking drives strategic planning.

That strategic thinking is like that big picture, that visionary piece,

that where do we wanna be the why?

We do that in the form of the visioning session, and we review the organization's

core, their vision and their mission

. Then we move into the environmental scans.

Where are we now?

We used to tell clients, oh, if you can do that, then we'll come and plan.

We learned if they weren't always equipped to do that, so now that's automatically

a part of our standard process.

We do visioning, we do the environmental scan.

The third piece that we engage them in is stakeholder feedback.

They may not have the budget to do a really comprehensive

$30,000 market research.

We, so we meet people where they are, our standard process, guides them

through some important conversations with stakeholders, and then we

facilitate a two eight hour day strategic planning retreat back to back.

It's a hard ask.

We have a whole fax on why we do that, but we have truly learned that it keeps

the momentum, it keeps the focus, and by the end of that two day retreat,

Within, we tell them five business days, but it's almost always within 24 hours

they have their written hand in plan.

So while our process is intense, it also gets you to that end product.

And then we offer a follow-up support call within 30 days because they've

had time to digest, re look at it and say, Ooh, we left something

out, or we need to tweak something.

So we provide support.

We provide them a suite of tools and templates so that they

don't have to create a common director's report reporting tool,

all of those types of things.

So we provide them with the things that we believe will position

most nonprofits to be successful.

And then we also send them a plan of these are additional ways we might support.

One thing I don't see with other a lot of other groups is creating an annual

operational plan to get groups started.

So we have organizations contact is that completed a plan with someone

else and they have those lovely, wonderfully crafted 1, 2, 3 year goals.

They're like, where do we go from here?

So we actually on the second day of the retreat, break down

the first year into quarters.

Break down each quarter into their accomplishments, and then we actually

model a 90 day implementation plan and give them an editable edible PDF as part

of their get started suite of documents so that everyone knows when they walk out

of that two day retreat, not just where they're gonna be in three years, but

where they're gonna be in three weeks.

And we found that including the implementation model is one of the biggest

contributors to success of our clients.

I could see that.

All of this is great and you feel so accomplished after you got it done,

and then you wanna go on vacation.

And, but continue that momentum and even if you do, have a little break.

What is, what's next?

What's first, what's, I love that.

Even people agree on the goals.

Agreeing on first steps can be challenging, so we just, after many

years of doing it, realized if we can model it with them and they can actually

create their 90 day implementation plan for the first quarter of their plan.

We walk through it, we send them into small groups who's

involved in this particular achievement, this particular goal.

And then they come and report.

We tweak it.

We say, how might we adjust this?

They've walked out actually doing it, and then they have that 30 day check-in.

And then we've provided the tips and tools, and then we

also have follow-up plans.

We have a lot of clients that go ahead and book those for their

annual accountability and review.

But again, those are different questions you'll ask facilitators.

We're seeing a lot of calls for RFPs and many of them are saying we want

an operational plan because people are realizing the end goals are great,

but we need some type of way to put it into action for that annual planning.

Yeah.

Cuz if you don't have the capability of doing that yourself and getting

all that consensus on what we're gonna do first really again helps

people exercise those newly formed muscles of what they just learned.

So the environmental scan and the stakeholder input that happens

before the two day separate.

Okay.

absolutely.

We wanna make sure that they're taking into consideration information that could

or should impact their future decisions.

And we talk about stakeholders, anyone who has a vested interest

in the organization, but there's lots of different ways to do that.

We identify the stakeholders.

We talk about what we need to, what we need to know from them.

And most people say, but we wanna talk to everyone.

It's not necessary to talk to everyone before the strategic plan retreats.

Some of those conversations are needed to.

Confirm the framework and the major directions others are gonna be.

We need this feedback to implement this step really well.

Like we want a membership program.

What do people want in a membership program that would come after

you've determined, we're doing X, Y, or Z, because you already

know that's being requested.

But you might send out a survey to all your stakeholders and say, what would you

like to see enhanced in our membership program once the plan's approved?

So you have to figure out what are the front end and what are

the implementation and stakeholder conversations that to be had so you

don't get overwhelmed in the process.

Yeah.

Yeah, I could see that.

Oh my gosh, there's so much I wanna ask for.

Stories of difficult situations, how you resolve 'em, all this.

But as you're talking you keep on bringing up these resources that you have.

And I know from working with you, the vault isn't

something that you keep secret.

The vault is something that you have full of resources that you offer.

Folks.

I first wanna give you a chance, is there anything really critical about

strategic planning that you also wanna say as part of the element that I

might not have asked you about yet?

I think the getting the buy-in is really important because,

we see staff calls and say, we've been charged to do this, or the board saying

We're doing this without the staff, and that's like having your kites or

your kite flyers in the room alone.

It doesn't really work well.

So we've actually.

Turn down clients that are willing to book us because we did not feel

like they were gonna be able to get the right people in the room.

Like we don't have to have a hundred percent of board members or a

hundred percent of staff, but you need that diversity of opinion.

And we didn't wanna take their money and invest their time in a process

that we did not feel was going to produce the best results for them.

So I would say buy-in is very important and understanding that strategic planning

is an investment that you should see a return on that investment in organization.

We've had, I've checked in with three of our groups this week and.

Just said, what's working well, and they said the way that we structured

the plan, they use it every staff meeting, the implementation tools

and you know that buy-in and that follow through is important.

It is an investment.

It's gonna take time and it does not need to take tons of time.

It doesn't have to take years like some people think, or even a year

time, and it could take money.

So you need to be thinking about it before your next budgeting

period and looking at prices.

A lot of people call us and say, we wanna do this next week.

Most facilitators will be booked out a little ways, and they wanna make

sure that you've gotten the pre-work done before any planning retreats.

So start early, even if you think it may be the end of next year, go

ahead and start those conversations.

Start getting potential prices.

And start looking at your budgeting so that when it's time to engage

in strategic planning, you have all of those ducks in a row and

can make better informed decisions.

Oh, that's great.

That's great.

So with your free resources, I know you train, you mentioned you have a

training going on today about strategic thinking and can you explain what

offerings you have and how your.

Because I think you have a whole bootcamp on this.

Who are you training potential facilitators or people that

wanna do it on their own?

Who do you train and who do you, you go out in the field and what

kind of programs do you offer?

If you could give us an overview of that.

So we have our kind of what I call our good, better, best.

Anything that's free and is accessible is good.

When Mandy and I started, we had a commitment that we wanna

have something for everyone, but we are a for-profit business.

We actually feed our families with our income.

So we wanted to make sure that we had really good options for people that just

aren't at a point where they can invest.

You can find those free options under the resource tab if you

go to funding for good.org.

And you look at the resource tab, you will see templates, you'll

see some paid ones on there.

I will tell you that those right underneath there are close

to 50 free templates at any given time on that template.

So if you need budgeting templates, if you need getting started, top

questions to ask your board about strategic planning, those are on there.

So we have an entire library of articles and video videos on

strategic planning, board development, fundraising, all those things.

So that's really good option for everyone.

And then if you go to the training tab, we're always offering free

trainings through our partners, such as Found It or, sometimes we're

with grant station or small business development centers across the country.

So you can look at those free trainings.

We never click bait.

You'll see free and large capital letters beside anything that's free.

Anything that's not free, we then, we have our better, we have some paid trainings.

They're usually about $47, and they're very specific topics.

And the great thing about those is you do get the recordings, you get the handouts,

you get all of those nifty tools always.

We have editable templates or things in there as well, so that's a better option.

And then we have the Vault, which is all of our digital resources under one roof.

And it comes up to about, we say less than a hundred dollars a month, but it's a one

time subscription for the year and has all the trainings, everything in there.

As far as custom work, the best option.

So we have good, then we have the better, a little bit more tailored

to what you're looking for.

You can get it on demand, and then the best option is that custom work.

So we do work with clients to facilitate strategic planning and

we're happy to share our approach.

We can send that and say, here's how we work.

It's all in writing.

You can share it.

We can share references.

We work with consultants because we know that there's lots of amazing

consultants out in the communities that are trying to grow their businesses.

So we actually have bootcamps for consultants.

Some of them are growing their strategic planning services, their

grant writing services, fundraising services, and we do particular trainings.

We've had a ton of free trainings for consultants.

We have camps, and then we have a wonderful.

Two day nonprofit consulting com conference coming up in August.

That's specific to consultants.

So if any of the audience is out there and they say, oh, we work, or we know

some amazing consultants, the nonprofit consulting conference is an amazing way

to get great information and network with people from all over the world.

So those good, better, best.

Check out the website, the free stuff, the paid stuff is always really reasonable.

And then all the custom stuff we work with you to create something that's

gonna get you to where you wanna be.

Great.

Great.

This has been so helpful and I wanna thank you so much for sharing

all of this with our community.

This is a topic that can.

Really make a difference for a nonprofit organization.

But you're right the time is now to plan and budget and really do what you

need and make sure that you have the resources and time set aside to do that.

And so I'm.

I've learned so much I'm sure our community has as well about the

strategic planning process and how important it is for long-term success.

I wanna remind our listeners that we will be including Marie's contact

information as well as the funding for good website where you could learn

more and where you could access these resources about environmental scan

and the process of filling out rf.

P and where that resource tab is, we'll provide you a nice link and I really.

I really appreciate how open you are and not that scarcity mindset.

The, we have sponsored and worked with funding for good on your nonprofit

consulting conference last year, and we're happy to do that again this year.

And so really encourage any consultants or.

People thinking about being a consultant to check that out, heard just rave

reviews from people who did go to that.

So we appreciate you taking the time outta your busy schedule to join us.

Do you have any final thoughts or advice to leave our listeners with?

No, just, get, start looking around at the

strategic planning processes.

Again, go to the website, strategic Planning Services.

We have a free checklist to get started in the strategic planning process.

You can go to, Funding for good.

Look at the strategic planning tab.

There's a free editable checklist as well.

Again, there's no shortage of resources.

So start the conversations and if you're not where, sure where to start, but

you think you might wanna be moving forward and needing a consultant,

you can always schedule a call.

Tammy's gonna share the links and all of those good things and it's on the website,

but we look forward to seeing, hopefully you all on other found events, maybe

at the nonprofit conference or online.

We're in person soon.

So thanks for having me today, Tammy.

It's been a lot of fun to connect with you.

It's always great to see you.

Same to you.

If you have learned something from today's Connected Philanthropy podcast,

please share it with others who might also enjoy and benefit from it.

Maria and Mandy, you have so much available and we're so glad to be part

of sharing that out, and we look forward to connecting with our community and

also with you, Mandy and future webinars, podcasts, and community discussions.

We will include all those links in the show notes and we

wish you all the best success.