Onward to Issues!

On Monday, the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) met and voted on four "issues" that will form the basis of our strategic plan.  In our lexicon, the issue is the largest category of interest--call it a domain or focal area.  Identifying issues is the grossest step in a process we will fine tune over the coming weeks--with your help.  Our issues:

The long view.

• Programs.  While all the other issues support one another, programs really knit everything together with the mission and vision.  The programs KCC offers will create a fabric that includes those that happen at both the Portland and Goldendale sites.
• Facilities.  The physical space where the programs happen, these must be mutually supportive of one another.
• Financial resources.  This includes the financial plan and funding strategy.
• Organization and staffing (including volunteers). Particularly in the SWOT, we heard many issues related to the organization and staffing.  This includes communications, the way we tie volunteerism into our practice as a center, and making sure we are able to support all our programs.

While these four issues may appear to be the definition of obvious, the committee spent a huge amount of time discussing them, expanding them, contracting them, and  deciding which were not really parts of other issues.  Should we separate SCOL and the urban center when thinking about facilities?  Should communications--clearly a critical issue--be considered separately.  Finances and funding models also have a complex of related issues.  Sometimes you have to wander a long time around a neighborhood before you wind up at the place you expected to go.

Next Up
In the strategic planning model we've adopted, the next level of fine-tuning is coming up with "goals" and "strategies" under each of these issues.  This is where we'll turn for Sangha input.  A goal is "an outcome, an overall accomplishment, a projected state, or an end point."  A strategy is an "approach, plan, or way; how we accomplish the goal."  The SPC will collect together a menu of goals and strategies that Sangha members can discuss at the Leadership Retreat later this month and in Sangha meetings.  Many of these will be mutually exclusive--we'll look at our current situation, look at the options, and make choices.

Take the issue of fundraising as an example.  (These is a total hypotheticals that the committee hasn't yet discussed, and shouldn't be considered actual goals and strategies.) We might say that it is a goal for KCC to have a stable source of funds that come from outside the structure of dues and program-generated revenue.  One strategy is to hire an Executive Director who will work half-time as a fundraiser in order to achieve a more focused, robust major donor fundraising effort.  A different strategy is to create a revenue stream out of teachings and other publications. 

There's a Sangha meeting this Sunday (March 11), when we hope to spark some discussion about these items.  The SPC meets again on Monday the 12th, and then the Leadership Retreat begins Thursday, March 22nd.  We will definitely keep you posted as we make progress on goals and strategies.

Categorized SWOT Questionnaire Responses

Below is a rather detailed document collecting together all the responses we received to our questionnaire prior to the Sangha-wide SWOT meeting.  Bonnie M. and Dora D. worked together to sort the responses and put them broadly in like categories.  Within those categories, responses are divided into their respective categories--strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats/challenges.  These are the general categories Bonnie and Dora identified:

• Teachers 
• Programs and Teachings
• Sangha
• Volunteer/Staffing
• Organizational
• Facilities
• SCOL
• Larger Community
• Miscellaneous

This is a brainstormed list and represents the broadest group of ideas we have to work with.  Over time, we'll hone it down to five or six items.  Beginning in late March or early April, we'll begin to have sangha focus groups to focus those larger categories into strategic items.  (Under facilities, the strategic item may be "secure a larger urban center with a commercial kitchen and rooms sufficient to host study groups, the children's program, and offices," for example.)  The document is long, but if you have some time, scan through it and notice the depth of thinking from the Sangha and also areas of anxiety, opportunity, conflict, and inspiration.  They are all excellent grist for a juicy strategic plan!

(Also, note that there is a button that allows you to download the document so you don't have to read it in the window on this blog.)

Categorized Responses to SWOT Questionairre

After the SWOT, Formulating Issues and Focal Points

On January 14th, the KCC Sangha met to discuss KCC's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats/challenges (SWOT).  This work was a preliminary step in beginning to hone down the major categories of strategic focus.  As a way of transitioning into that next step, meeting organizers asked attendees to fill out 3x5 cards and identify the areas that seemed most pressing to them.  It was a good time to get a first sense of things--the SWOT items and discussion were freshly in mind.  Peter F graciously agreed to take the cards you filled out and collapse them into categories.  There were, of course, a lot of answers given by just one or two people.  (Peter's chart is at the end of this post.)  Four responses, however, were given by large numbers of people, and two others were also mentioned frequently.  Have a look:

1. Communication (28)
2. Fundraising and financial transparency (27)
3. Volunteers; organizing, management, mentoring (27)
4. Urban Center (22)
5. Program and practice groups (13)
6. Succession (11)

On Monday following that meeting, members of the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) met and we spent the majority of the meeting further discussing these categories.  One of the difficulties is thinking about how to frame these categories conceptually.  With little effort, we can divide KCC's activities into major areas--facilities, finances, operations, volunteers, programs, communications.  But these categories alone don't suggest a strategic orientation.  It's easy enough to imagine that the strategy for one or more of these categories is just "continue with current practices." 

A panoramic view of the January 16 meeting of the Strategic Planning Committee.

Take the urban center as one example.  We have known for well over a decade that the current site at 73 NE Monroe is inadequate--too small, too few meeting rooms.  But what is our strategic goal?  Do we merely want a bigger center, or do we want a different center, and if so, what kind?  Asking these questions is more useful than just identifying categories--they help bring the larger category in to sharper focus. After kicking ideas around for an hour, members of the SPC began to get a deeper sense of what we were actually looking for--and realized we had a lot more work in front of us.

What are your thoughts?  If you were limited to five or six strategic initiatives over the next five years, what would they be? 

At the next SPC meeting (Monday, Jan 23), the committee will step back from this discussion in order to try to lay out a firmer timeline of events, with members identifying how much time and work they can commit to the process.  Then we'll be back at it, focusing back in on the strategic plan.


A document containing the aggregated list of suggested topics for KCC's strategic direction are below the jump.