Nonprofit success planning may be a better fit for today’s volatile operating environment than the traditional three-year strategic plan. Jeffrey Wilcox, President and Chief Learning Curator at Third Sector Company, challenges nonprofit leaders and boards to stop treating planning as an event and start treating it as an ongoing organizational process.
“Strategic planning is an antiquated term. What we really are talking about now is success planning,” Jeffrey says. That distinction changes a lot! Instead of organizing a plan around departments, fundraising, programs, governance, and other organizational functions, Jeffrey encourages nonprofits to identify the forces that will either lead them toward (or away from) success.
That means defining the achievements the organization actually wants to create, understanding its role within the community ecosystem, listening to stakeholders, examining financing rather than simply fundraising, and being willing to confront uncomfortable organizational truths.
Leadership transition becomes part of that strategy.
Jeffrey explains why transitional leaders should not be viewed as nonprofit “substitute teachers” keeping operations moving until the next CEO arrives. Their job can be much larger: build organizational capacity, reduce future executive attrition, establish shared truth, challenge assumptions, build stakeholder buy-in, and prepare the runway for the organization’s next leader. “You are the runway. You are not the jet”, he adds.
Third Sector Company typically views this intentional transition as roughly a 9-to-14-month process and not a quick executive search. Jeffrey also shares that its Interim Executives Academy has trained 850 nonprofit professionals across 47 states.
The larger business lesson is provocative: planning should not end when the strategic plan is finished. Nonprofits operating amid changing funding, public policy, workforce expectations, community needs, and leadership turnover need a management process capable of learning and adjusting as conditions change.
Key Takeaways:
Shift organizational planning from functions and activities toward the forces that drive success.
Define success before hiring the leader expected to deliver it.
Treat planning as an ongoing management process—not a completed project.
Establish “shared truth” using data, organizational reality, and stakeholder perspectives before choosing direction.
Use transitional leadership to build capacity and create a stronger runway for the permanent successor.
Expect meaningful leadership transition to require sustained work; Jeffrey describes a roughly 9-to-14-month process.