Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits How to Create a Strategy That Is Focused Understandable Embedded and Living First Edition Charles Moore pdf download
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Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits How to Create a Strategy
That Is Focused Understandable Embedded and Living
First Edition Charles Moore Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Charles Moore
ISBN(s): 9781003499619, 1003499619
File Details: PDF, 4.15 MB
Year: 2024
Language: english
Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits
Most nonprofits approach strategic planning in ways that take too much time
and effort, focus on the wrong issues, and set up the plan to be something that
gathers dust on a shelf rather than being implemented. If you want a different
approach, this is the book for you.
This book shows nonprofit leaders and organizations how to conduct stra
tegic planning processes that deliver both a great strategy and an organization
that can drive strategic change and continually refresh its strategy. It introduces
a new framework—Strategic FUEL—and shows leaders how to map their
organization’s strategic situation to a planning approach that addresses the
most important opportunities and challenges, without wasting time and effort.
It also shows the actions leaders can take during strategic planning to increase
the odds of successful strategy implementation. The core content of this book
was developed while working with nonprofit leaders on strategic planning, so it
converts the best research and ideas to practice and step-by-step guidance.
This book will be a valuable resource for nonprofit CEOs and their teams,
foundations looking to support their nonprofit grantees, and students in non
profit management courses and programs. While the book is focused on the
nonprofit world, the lessons are also applicable to any leader trying to drive
strategy effectively.
Charles Moore is the CEO of Thrive Street Advisors and a trusted advisor and
strategy consultant to nonprofit and for-profit leaders. He is an adjunct faculty
member at the Georgetown Center for Public & Nonprofit Leadership and has
served on the boards Father’s Uplift, EdFuel, SchoolTalk, and Monument
Academy. Charles holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard and
an MBA and master’s degree in Education from Stanford.
“Good strategy for uncertain environments, I’ve always suspected, should be
more “search algorithm” than ‘itinerary.’ In this book, Charles provides a
compelling plan for organizing around that principle, full of hard-won wisdom
on how to rally your team to make it happen.”
Paul Niehaus, Ph.D., Founder, Give Directly
“As much as we might want a strategy to be ‘done’ and crossed off our to-do
lists, it must constantly evolve to deliver value. This book offers an insightful
framework for elevating your organization’s approach to strategy and keeping
it relevant.”
Clarence Wardell III, Ph.D., Senior Program Officer, Gates Foundation
Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits
Charles Moore
Designed cover image: Getty
First published 2025
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2025 Charles Moore
The right of Charles Moore to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
Typeset in Galliard
by Taylor & Francis Books
This work is dedicated to all those who labor to create a better
world.
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments x
About the Author xi
Figures
I.1 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 2
3.1 A Traditional Planning Process 34
3.2 Planning with Priming and an Action-Orientation 35
4.1 Roles in the Strategic Planning Process 45
5.1 Steps 1 and 2 of Crafting the Strategy 59
5.2 Strategy Map for a Social Justice Organization 63
6.1 Steps 3 and 4 of Crafting the Strategy 73
14.1 The Elements of Strategic FUEL 154
A1 Net Promoter Score Responses 160
A2 Share of Promoters by Department 160
A3 Employee Reports of Psychological Safety 161
A4 Employee Engagement and Intention to Stay at the
Organization 162
A5 Employee Value Proposition Attribute Map 162
A6 Employee and Leader Ratings of Leadership Effectiveness 164
A7 Leader Ratings of Organizational Capabilities 165
B1 Analysis of Current Forums 171
Acknowledgments
Thanks to you, the reader, for taking the time to read and engage with this
book. Your interest, feedback, and support make writing a truly rewarding
experience.
This book required the contributions of many people.
Thanks to the colleagues and friends who shared their experiences and
provided feedback as I developed and refined the ideas for this book. They
include Amir Ali, Anne Marie Burgoyne, Lindsey Cooksen, Mary Kate Cun
ningham, Abby Davidson, Rick DeJarnette, Kevin Dowdell, Suzanne Ehlers,
Erin Fiaschetti, Erin Frackleton, Adriane Gamble, Natalie Guillen, Alix
Guerrier, Tara Hofmann, Monica Hopkins, Steph Itelman, Roshni Jain,
Brooke Jones, Justina Lai, Simmons Lettre, Mark Lockwood, David Osei,
Bisi Oyedele, Mason Pan, Amit Patel, Erica Phillips, Jacqui Purcell, Guilia
Salieri, Shalini Shybut, Liz Simmons, Norm Smith, Spencer Smith, Rebecca
Taber Staehelin, Jonathan Tate, Aoife Toomey, Anika Warren Wood, David
Williamson, and Jessica Wodatch.
Thanks to those brave and generous souls who read rough—sometimes,
really rough—drafts. I appreciate their candor, encouragement, and thought
partnership in refining the core ideas. These folks include Jessica Bieligk,
Martha Blue, Noah Eisenkraft, Lauren Hult, Melissa Kessler, Kofi Kumi,
Gerard McGeary, Garrett Ulosevich, Jeremy Utley, and Clarence Wardell.
Thanks to this book’s editorial and publication team for their guidance,
artful nudges to keep going, and for helping me sound like a reasonably intel
ligent person who paid attention to grammar lessons in grade school. The
team includes Trisha Giramma, Maura Grace Harrington Logue, Bethany
Nelson, Meredith Norwich, and Kammy Wood.
Finally, thanks to my wife, Erin, for indulging the effort and giving grace for
the evening and weekend writing sessions.
Thank you all for your invaluable contributions and for making this book
possible.
About the Author
DOI: 10.4324/9781003499619-1
2 Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits
What do customers say when you ask them for feedback about what they value
most in the service? What else do they want from you?
For what specific reasons do customers choose you over competitors?
Can you show me the last few quarterly employee surveys that indicate what the
employees need from the organization?
In the body, metabolism is the process by which the body converts the fuel
of food and drink into energy. When we have high-quality fuel and efficient
conversion, we have the energy to achieve our goals.
In strategy, the high-quality fuel comes from consuming ideas from outside of
the organization and understanding the needs of customers and other stake
holders. That creates a continual source of ideas for effecting strategic impact—if
you build routines to do so.
That means adopting tactics like:
The “efficient conversion” in strategy comes from all of the processes that help
the organization turn those ideas and insights into action. For the most stra
tegic organizations, these are embedded in organizational routines. That’s
what helps those organizations be truly dynamic.
When I was a kid, my sister and I would spend several weeks each summer
with my grandparents in Selma, Alabama. Unfortunately, my grandfather—the
first Charles Moore—didn’t believe in using air conditioning, even as the
temperatures reached oppressive levels, and he’d turn on the oven and stove at
3:00 p.m. to cook dinner. His instruction to deal with the stifling environment
was to “let up the window.”
Strategic FUEL is fundamentally about helping your organization let up the
windows, enable the fresh air of ideas to come in and circulate, and keep its
strategy dynamic and relevant as a result.
Leaders hold special “strategic planning You build strategic thinking into ongo
meetings” to build the strategy ing organizational routines
Planning committees focus on building You create a healthy debate that helps
consensus, which can result in watered- people wrestle with the challenges and
down or confusing strategy make clear strategic choices
Leaders develop a “rollout plan” for You create an ongoing dialogue in which
communicating the final strategy leaders share what they are learning,
share emerging strategy ideas, and ask for
feedback. By the end of the planning
process, everyone understands both the
what and the why of the strategy
The organization waits until next year (or You continue to evolve the strategy as
five years from now) to engage strategy you learn so that it is always relevant
questions again
When a team uses the planning process to practice new ways of working
together and starts to build strategy into its existing organizational routines, it
is set up for greater success. These are not mere “implementation” issues to
shoehorn at the end of the planning process. Indeed, they are central to
creating a more strategic organization.
In this approach, the consultant plays a support role like a fitness trainer—i.e.,
facilitating, coaching, and training team members where relevant—but the
organization’s leaders have to lift the weights.
If you’re doing the work well, you shouldn’t have to hire a consultant next time!
truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap
people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.”2
As you implement this approach, you’ll likely find that it:
1 Most nonprofits approach strategic planning in ways that take too much
time and effort, with uncertain impact
As a consultant, I regularly read nonprofits’ requests for proposal (RFPs) for
creating a three- or five-year strategic plan. Too often, my reaction is, “These
folks are about to waste a lot of time and money on a long document with
fancy words that never gets used.”
The first giveaway is that the RFP lists requirements for the project that reads like
the “Steps in the Process” section from a Wikipedia page on strategic planning. But
the most important sign of a potentially wasteful process is when there’s no clear
sense of the opportunities the organization wants to pursue or the challenges it most
needs to address. Often, our last plan was five years ago is the primary motivating
factor. A process based on that rationale is likely to create a confusing strategy.
If that’s your motivation, you can close this book now.
This book will help you design a planning process that directly addresses the
most important opportunities and challenges—with the right amount of effort.
This book will help you diagnose your organization’s strategic situation and
show you alternatives to the time-consuming big process approach that also
achieve better answers. If you still need the big process approach, this book will
show you how to achieve the political aims of alignment without the downside
of a confused strategy.
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