Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations
ALIGN YOUR ORGANIZATION AROUND A SHARED VISION FOR THE FUTURE
We bring almost 20 years of strategic planning experience to your decision-making table.

Since 2007, we’ve partnered with hundreds of nonprofit organizations to create strategic plans that drive meaningful change. Our approach has helped small local and large national nonprofits align around shared purpose, strengthen their programmatic focus, and build the relationships and infrastructure needed for sustainable impact.

Our role as nonprofit strategic planning consultants is to facilitate an informed and inclusive process that balances comprehensive strategic thinking with practical implementation, so you end up with both organizational clarity and an action plan to advance your mission.

(If you’re looking for shorter-term advisory services, please explore our Strategy Development services.)
What makes Fio’s strategic planning approach effective?
We create information-rich and inclusive processes that help leaders learn and make strategic decisions together.
A Process Rich with Information and Engagement
Built around Fio’s Strategic Management Framework
Aligned with Your Values and Equity Commitments
Articulated and Organized for Adaptive Implementation
“Fio was an exceptional partner in developing our multi-year strategic plan, bringing clarity, structure, and deep insight into a complex process. They balanced flexibility and thoughtfulness with steady forward momentum, helping our team reach alignment and confidence during a pivotal moment of organizational change and opportunity.”
—LAUREN ELICKS McCORT, Executive Director, Youth Inc.
Learning to inform your change agenda.

We believe leaders make better decisions with a well-rounded base of objective information and relevant community insights.

We’ll build on what you already know and gather the voices and information you need to assess your current conditions, explore trends, and identify key issues and opportunities.

The result is a shared understanding and a lasting strategic framework that keep staff and board aligned with goals, even as conditions change. Plus, you’ll get an adaptable plan to develop your programs, relationships, and organizational systems over time.

The tools we can use
We have a lot of assessment and engagement tools in our toolbox. We’ll work with you to select the mix that best supports your organization’s unique needs, learning priorities, timeline, and budget.

  • Board Functioning and Input Survey
  • Workplace Functioning and Climate Survey
  • Organizational Learning Survey
  • Staff Focus Groups & Listening Sessions
  • Financial Trends and Health Assessment
  • Program Profiles
  • Client Journey Mapping
  • Client Perception and Input Surveys and Focus Groups
  • Management Systems Assessment

  • Key Stakeholder Interviews and Surveys
  • Field/Industry Trends and Expert Interviews
  • Community Perception Surveys
  • Market Scan, Competitor Analysis and Comparison
  • Focus Groups & Listening Sessions
  • In-Depth Community Input
  • Needs Assessment
  • Customized Qualitative Research

  • SWOT Analysis
  • Program Portfolio Analysis and Refinement
  • Logic Models and Theories of Change
  • All-Staff Retreats
  • Leadership and Board Retreats
  • Strategic Frameworks
  • Strategic Plans
  • Custom Decision-Making Frameworks
  • Implementation Plans
  • Capacity Building Plans
  • Key Performance Indicators
Fio’s Nonprofit Strategic Planning Process
Context Assessment & Design
We start by understanding your organization’s current strategic position, readiness for planning, and specific context. This includes reviewing existing plans, assessing organizational capacity, and understanding your timeline and priorities. Together, we design a planning process tailored to your needs.
Comprehensive Information Gathering
We build on information you already have and focus on what you need to learn. Using our assessment toolkit, we gather insights about your internal operations, external positioning, and stakeholder perceptions to create a shared foundation for strategic decisions that everyone understands.
Inclusive Stakeholder Engagement
We bring board, staff, community members, and partners into the planning process meaningfully. This can include strategic retreats, listening sessions, surveys, and facilitated conversations to ensure diverse voices shape your strategic direction.
Strategic Framework Development
Working with your leadership team, we synthesize all of our learnings and facilitate decision-making conversations around vision, mission, strategic priorities, and organizational development needs using our strategic management framework.
Roadmap Creation & Implementation Planning
We translate the decisions you make into actionable, multi-year plans with clear phases, responsibilities, and success metrics. (Deeper implementation support and ongoing advisory services are available upon request.)
Launch Support & Learning Systems
We help you communicate your strategic plan to all stakeholders and establish systems for monitoring your progress and continuous learning. This ensures your plan becomes a living document that guides organizational decision-making and evolution.
“Fio Partners is collaborative and thoughtful. They supported Connecticut Foodshare through the development of two strategic plans at critical times in our history. Fio thoroughly learned our model of operations, collected input from key stakeholders, and facilitated crucial workshops to ensure our roadmaps were realistic yet bold. We are incredibly grateful for their partnership!”
—BRITTNEY CAVALIERE, Senior Director of Strategy & Community Engagement, Connecticut Foodshare
Act in alignment with what matters most.
When your staff, board, and community align around a clear set of needs and priorities, your organization can feel confident in its future direction.
FAQs

Strategic Planning is our most common engagement. It’s a comprehensive process that results in a multi-year roadmap for your organization. It’s about establishing vision, mission, goals, and priorities through extensive stakeholder engagement.

Strategic Development & Leadership Advisory is a broader category of work that encompasses strategic planning, as well as shorter-term planning activities such as targeted scenario and action planning, community needs assessments, and other customized decision-making processes. Think of Strategic Development as the umbrella that covers all the different ways we help organizations learn what they need to know to make strategic choices, while Strategic Planning is the full-scale, long-term version of that work.

Strategic Development is about what you want to accomplish and how you’ll get there. This includes scenario planning, needs assessments, and other decision-making processes that help you set direction and priorities for your mission.

Organizational Development is about who you are as an organization and how well you function internally. This includes leadership coaching, team effectiveness work, culture surveys, board development, and change management.

Organizational Development work often falls under our Strategic Development services. During most Strategic Development engagements, we assess organizational health through culture surveys, leadership evaluations, and board assessments to inform your strategic decisions. Sometimes that assessment reveals you need dedicated OD work. When appropriate, Fio can connect you with subject-matter experts in these fields.

We’ve developed comprehensive assessment tools, including board surveys, organizational growth guides, staff climate assessments, program portfolio analysis, stakeholder perception surveys, financial trend analysis, and much more. Together, we’ll determine which tools will be most valuable for your specific planning process.

Strategic planning engagements typically take 6-12 months, depending on organizational complexity, stakeholder engagement needs, and the depth of assessment required. We work within your timeline while ensuring thoroughness and meaningful participation.

We handle all facilitation and analysis while keeping your team engaged at key decision points. Staff involvement includes participating in assessments, strategic retreats, and feedback sessions. Board engagement focuses on strategic retreats, priority-setting conversations, and plan approval processes. For more complex projects, we recommend that clients designate an internal project manager to coordinate scheduling and event logistics.

Our process is designed to help you understand both organizational strengths and development priorities in a constructive way. We frame assessment findings as opportunities for strategic growth and help you prioritize the most important areas for strategic development going forward.

Yes, we customize our strategic planning approach for organizations from emerging nonprofits to established institutions. Our strategic management framework and assessment toolkit scale to match your complexity and stage of development.

We use flat-fee pricing based on organizational size, complexity of stakeholder engagement, and scope of assessment needed. We work with you to design an approach that fits your budget while meeting your strategic needs.