You don’t need to sit in the room during nonprofit strategic planning to feel its positive or negative impact. When BairStories started in 2022, I was trying to find our way. No formal roadmap. Just instincts, prayer, and experimentation. While that season had its purpose, I can now see where we were drifting. Our values weren’t lived, our vision wasn’t clear, and our story was still forming. Even when the plans were developed, it felt like building a plane while flying it.

Why Do Most Strategic Plans Fail?

First-hand experience has taught me that strategic plans don’t fail because of bad ideas. They fail because of three recurring issues:

• Failure in execution and implementation (George et al., 2019; Hu et al., 2014)
• Lack of adaptability and inability to stay relevant (Lucid, 2024; Freeland, 2002)
• Unrealistic planning without resources to support it. (MCN, 2025; Hu et al., 2014)

In other words, the strategy isn't the problem; it's everything around it.

Yet there’s one more failure point that doesn’t get named enough. It’s a failure due to a lack of a guiding story for the strategic plan. This article will focus on storytelling and its intersection with nonprofit strategic planning.

Storytelling's Connection to Nonprofit Strategic Planning

Storytelling is what ties the vision to real action. It’s the guardrails for leadership decisions. The through line for messaging and the emotional core of a unified culture. Without it, you feel the disconnect everywhere:

• Messaging shifts depending on who’s at the mic
• Team members treat the mission like a chore
• Fundraising becomes a grind instead of an invitation

Like cottonwood tree barks floating in the Mississippi River, your organization drifts. It wanders away from its target due to external pressures and internal misalignment. This drift reminds me of the Hebrew word “khata" (חָטָא), which is often translated as sin in the Bible. To khata as a verb means to miss the mark. The end mark or target is what a good strategic plan clarifies, helping others see who you are becoming.

What Makes a Good Strategic Plan?

Try Googling “nonprofit strategic plan PDF" (if you haven't already). You’ll see various examples in different shapes and lengths. Some plans feel inspiring, while others feel like studying for the bar exam. Thus, there are many ways to achieve the result. But what are the core parts of a strategic plan? From my research, most strategic plans include:

• Mission, Vision, Values = the core of who you are, where you're going, and what you stand for (MCN, 2025; Hu et al., 2014)

• Environmental Scan = a look at external threats and opportunities (Lucid, 2024; Freeland, 2002)

• Strategic Issues = the tensions that need resolving (Freeland, 2002; George et al., 2019)

• Goals & Objectives = the measurable, time-bound stuff (MCN, 2025; Brown, 2025)

• Strategies & Tactics = your plan of action

• Implementation Plans = timelines, accountability, and ownership (Lucid, 2024; Strategic Planning in Behavioral Health Orgs, 2014)

• Evaluation Frameworks = how you’ll track and measure progress (MCN, 2025; Hu et al., 2014)

Now, Here’s Where Storytelling Comes In:

Plans gather giga-dust when people don’t see themselves in the plan or believe the plan connects to the deeper “why". That’s why every section of a strong strategic plan deserves a narrative approach.

Mission and Vision? 

That’s your organizational desire—the thing you long to see realized.

Values? 

That’s your uniqueness—what sets your approach apart from others doing similar work.

The “why” behind it all? 

That’s your motivation—your root conviction about what’s at stake.

By story-thinking this way, your strategic plan becomes a living story you can tell. Additionally, your plan invites others to see what you're building and be inspired to join in.

Sidenote, desire, motivation, and uniqueness are essential for emotional depth. They are the big 3 characteristics we look for in compelling people for the stories we tell. We detailed the big 3 in our article, Why Your Fundraising Video Lacks an Emotional Punch. 

The Benefits of Strategic Planning (When Story Is Present)

Some people treat nonprofit strategic planning like a box-checking exercise. Others avoid it altogether. They believe strategic planning is too expensive, not applicable, or not urgent. Despite these worldviews, planning is a form of stewardship.

Strategic planning helps you clarify your purpose and why it matters. Storytelling woven into that process makes the plan liveable through your people. Research confirms that grounding identity in strategic planning helps organizations become more resilient, aligned, and trusted (George et al., 2019; Hu et al., 2014; MCN, 2025).

When storytelling is present, strategic planning helps organizations:

• Clarify identity
• Clarity in roles and responsibilities
• Align the team
• Improved team morale and ownership
• Greater adaptability and resilience
• Anchor decisions in the mission
• Reinforced internal culture and external credibility
• Sustain emotional momentum
• Build culture from the inside out

Why Story Belongs Before Goal-Setting

I don’t think you need a completely polished story before setting goals. But you do need an understanding of who you are, organizational motivation, and what makes you unique. Otherwise, your goals can end up disconnected from your identity, busy work disguised as strategy.

Several sources emphasize the importance of clarifying vision, values, and mission before establishing objectives (Freeland, 2002; MCN, 2025). The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, for example, emphasizes that planning should align with mission and values to guide decisions and sustain relevance over time. Likewise, Zakiya Brown’s refresh framework begins by asking whether your current focus is still aligned with your deeper ambitions.

That’s why, in our process, your story comes before goal-setting. We don’t jump to what you’ll do. Instead, we begin with who you are, who you aspire to become, and what kind of transformation you aim to lead.

We ask questions like:

• What’s the deep desire driving this work?
• Why does it matter right now?
• Who are you uniquely called to serve—and how?
• What’s in the way? What are you up against?

When organizations pause to reflect on these questions, goals become more than metrics. They become moments in a larger arc of transformation. A story that team members can feel part of. A roadmap that funders can emotionally invest in. A direction that aligns with their deeper “why.”

What Happens When You Don’t Refresh Your Strategic Plan?

First, what is a strategic plan refresh?

A strategic plan refresh is a focused check-in and update to your existing plan. It’s not scrapping everything and starting over. You’re reassessing what’s still true, what’s changed, and what needs to shift based on current realities. This may involve:

• Reworking goals,
• Revisiting your vision,
• Updating timelines, or
• Redefining roles and responsibilities

Think of it like updating your GPS after a detour. Same destination (unless that has changed), but a new route, new roadblocks, or new construction you didn’t account for before.Several sources recommend making regular plan updates part of the organizational life rhythm.

What happens when you don’t refresh?

You don’t always notice it right away. Yet, over time, the plan becomes less helpful. When a strategic plan goes untouched, the symptoms are rarely loud. They show up as the drift discussed earlier, which sources describe in different ways, but join on these symptoms:

• Messaging that sounds different depending on who’s talking
• Staff unclear on what success looks like
• Leaders are stuck in survival mode, reacting instead of directing
• Old programs are eating up time but not moving the mission
• Funders asking: “What’s changed since the last plan?”
• Teams confused about priorities

Without a rhythm for reflection and revision, even a strong plan becomes obsolete. Internal growth, leadership turnover, and external shifts, such as changes in political or funding environments, need ongoing recalibration (MCN, 2025; George et al., 2019).

That’s why it’s not a matter of “good practice”; it’s stewardship. Regular refreshes, done annually or even biannually, help keep the plan aligned with reality. And when you pause to ask questions like, What’s still true? What’s changed? What needs to evolve?

Can You Handle Strategic Planning In-House?

Yes, but only if you have the right people, the right mindset, and the capacity to tell yourself the truth. Keeping things in-house can work for those with strong internal facilitation skills.

Research confirms that internal planning processes can be effective. But only when there is exact alignment, a disciplined structure, and a shared commitment across staff and leadership (Hu et al., 2014; MCN, 2025).

DIY strategic plans fall short because people either:

• Rush the process
• Avoid the hard conversations
• Don’t have someone to keep the group honest and focused
• Struggle to connect strategy to the deeper story
• Plans lack ownership or follow-through
• Vague goals and no clear metrics
• Weak alignment between strategy and daily operations
• No process for revisiting or updating
• Leaders avoid naming deeper tensions or misalignments

These pitfalls are patterns seen in both small nonprofits and large organizations. As stated earlier, plans often fail due to poor implementation and a lack of ongoing review (Freeland, 2002; George et al., 2019). On the flip side, strategic plans are more likely to succeed when the team already has internal alignment, trust, and participation in place (Hu, Kapucu, & O’Byrne, 2014; Becker, 2015)

In-house planning makes the most sense when:

• You already have internal trust and shared language
• Your team is willing to slow down and reflect
• You’re not navigating influential organizational change
• You have someone skilled in asking hard questions and listening well

If your team is stuck in reactive mode or struggles to get aligned, it might be time to bring in help. A story-driven consultant can align your story with your goals. As Amanda Becker puts it, organizational development (OD) consultants can “help improve performance by guiding organizations through positive change using facilitation and education.”

Most orgs don’t need more ideas. They need clarity, alignment, and a consistent story that doesn’t shift every time a new leader walks in the door.

How We Bring Story into Nonprofit Strategic Planning

At BairStories, we don’t do nonprofit strategic planning, and we’re not trying to. We approach things through a narrative lens. This lens helps you clarify the story first so that the strategy sticks.

What we offer is a story-driven strategic plan refresh. This is phase 1 of our larger transformation practice, Holistic Organizational Storytelling. The strategic plan refresh is a structured way to help you re-ground yourself in your core story. Everything doesnt needs reimagining.

Phase 01 Overview Broken Into 3 Parts

1. Story Audit
2. Leadership Alignment
3. Story-Driven Visioning

1. Story Audit

We assess your organization, what your team says, what your materials communicate, and what people feel when they engage with you. Questions we explore:

• What narrative are you currently operating from, explicitly or implicitly?
• What values are actually being lived, not just listed?
• Where is your messaging aligned? Where is it fractured?

🧠 This audit draws inspiration from the Muse Storytelling Process, focusing on the People and Place pillars: who you are and where your story unfolds.

2. Leadership Alignment

This is where we consult why this work is important now and what tensions need addressing before moving forward. We explore:

• What’s your organization’s true desire?
• What internal or external conflicts are you navigating right now?
• Are people on the same page about what you’re called to do?

🧠 Rooted in Muse’s Storytelling Process, Purpose and Conflict: the “why” and the “what’s in the way.”

3. Story-Driven Visioning

Only after clarity and alignment do we begin to shape the future. We help shape strategic priorities as story beats with arcs, stakes, and transformation. We focus:

• What’s the next chapter for your organization?
• What journey do we need to go on?
• What does success feel like, not just look like?
• How will we know we arrived at the target?

🧠 This visioning part integrates Muse’s Plot structure and Jab (the lasting takeaway).

Aim for Clarity and Alignment

Clarity is something people feel. It shows up when a team starts moving in sync, when staff know what to say and mean. When funders see the deeper why and impact behind the work. That’s the difference between a plan that gets executed and a story that gets lived.

Also, a strategic plan conveys who you’re becoming in the process. The organization you are today will not be the same organization you are when you fulfill your mission. Your plan should guide that transformation. During external uncertainties, the story you tell is your compass. That story, which you have the most control over, helps you weather the inevitable industry and political tides.

Want to feel confident about your orgs's storytelling? 

Take the story blind spot quiz to discover the stories you're not telling. 

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