Location
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Sector
Public & Human Services

Leadership at Covenant House Vancouver (CHV) had prepared an organizational strategic plan for 2021-2025. In 2021, the Development & Communications team was ready to create its own strategic plan that would dovetail with the organizational plan already in place. The D&C team wanted their plan to help inform decision-making from FY22 to FY25 so as to best support the broader goals of the agency by using past strategies and tactics that have contributed to success (i.e., the “Secret Sauce”) as a foundation, uncovering and pursuing opportunities within existing channels and activities, and exploring new opportunities.

The D&C leadership determined that using an outside facilitator would provide them with the structure and guidance needed to help the entire team develop a roadmap for their work over the next several years. In retaining outside counsel to facilitate the process, specific goals were established. The process should:

  • Identify and align the vision and goals to the current CHV strategic plan
  • Uncover overarching themes to guide D&C
  • Gain input from everyone within D&C and select other staff and key volunteers
  • Create an integrated strategic roadmap, including next steps, for all teams
  • Gain buy-in on plan elements to ensure broad team support and immediate action and impact
  • Implement data-informed recommendations
“Our collaboration with BWF meant that we were able to strategically review our ideas and goals for future years. This allowed us to create a fulsome and comprehensive plan that will help guide us through crucial projects and growth. This effort was successful because BWF provided us with guidance, insight, and best practices and also supported us to create, implement, and launch a new strategic plan that will help inform our fundraising, communications, and marketing work for years to come.”
Tracy Brown
Director, Development • Covenant House Vancouver

Facilitating the strategic planning process utilized a collaborative approach with the D&C team that involved data collection, stakeholder interviews, a task force retreat, staff survey, benchmarking study, and working group session. BWF took the lead in developing the strategic goals and objectives, which were further developed and finalized by the working groups as they built out the D&C 2021-2025 plan.

The D&C team at Covenant House Vancouver now has a strategic plan to guide their work for budget planning, programmatic and marketing decision-making, and fundraising campaign goals in the next several years. The team is now working their plan and will periodically review metrics and completion of tactics to meet their goals and objectives.