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E-Newsletter -- June, 2004
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In This Issue:
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Strategic Planning -- The Participant's Perspective |
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$350,000 Federal Grant Awarded to National Abstinence Clearinghouse |
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Quick Tip: Federal Grant Forms |
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Faith-Based Initiative Expanded to Commerce, Veterans Affairs, and the SBA |
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Please Share With a Colleague! |
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Featured Links:
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Strategic Planning -- The Participant's Perspective
Having facilitated numerous strategic planning processes and board retreats, it’s an intriguing change to be a participant rather than a consultant. Michael Wyland was a participant in two such planning processes in recent months. He used the opportunity to analyze what goes right (and wrong) as a participant.
First rule: a board retreat isn’t the same as strategic planning. The board retreat is only one component of an overall strategic planning process. There’s a lot of work that should be happening both before and after the retreat. Without these other steps, the retreat has little value as a strategic planning tool. The retreat participants have too little information and perspective to plan effectively. A plan based on too little information results in bad guidance and direction from the board to staff that makes operational success almost impossible.
Second rule: don’t assume. Planning participants should be guided through the organization’s mission, vision, and values, even if the planning is not explicitly designed to revisit these issues. Even board members and stakeholders need to be reminded why their agency exists as a prerequisite to charting a course for the future. One planning process Michael participated in skipped this step and ended up spending 90 minutes “catching up” during time initially allocated to future program directions.
Third rule: don’t stack the deck. A planning process dominated by one constituency (major donors, staff, etc.) or one point of view is doomed to groupthink, foregone conclusions, and/or tunnel vision that inhibits examining options.
Fourth rule: there’s a big difference between meeting and holding a meeting. Allow for both formal and informal interaction among participants. This blend allows networking and camaraderie to build while keeping a framework in place for the overall planning process. It also allows participants valuable respite from formal meeting time – respite that replaces energy and allows thinking and ideas to flow more freely.
Final rule: there are a lot of ways to get to the destination – as long as you make all the stops. Strategic planning consultants use many different techniques and tools in their practices, and the best consultants choose from a variety of processes and timelines to best accommodate their clients’ needs. There is no one best way to plan, but all good plans have common characteristics.
$350,000 Federal Grant Awarded to National Abstinence Clearinghouse
We are pleased to congratulate the National Abstinence Clearinghouse on receiving a $350,000 grant from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Clearinghouse will conduct a two-year national project to facilitate collaboration, coordination, and sharing of best practices in abstinence-until-marriage education and services among public schools, nurses, juvenile justice professionals, youth-based organizations, rural cooperative extension services, Public Health Service (PHS), Indian Health Service (IHS), social service agencies, community health centers, clinics, and similar organizations.
The National Abstinence Clearinghouse, founded in 1997, is the principal national organization dedicated to serving organizations and professionals with information, services, technical support, and resources on teen sexual activity, abstinence, and other related behaviors.
Quick Tip: Federal Grant Forms
If you’re applying for Federal grants, it’s very helpful to have access to the Federal forms in a format that allows you to fill them in and save them to your computer. Unfortunately, not all Federal agencies have these fill-in forms available online.
One agency that does have many of these forms online is the Department of Education. By visiting a single web page, you can view and download budget forms, assurance forms, and even the ED-424, the application face page unique to the Department of Education.
Faith-Based Initiative Expanded to Commerce, Veterans Affairs, and the SBA
On June 1, an Executive Order was issued creating Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initatives in the Commerce and Veterans Affairs Departments as well as in the Small Business Administration.
These three government agencies join the Departments of Justice, Labor, Agriculture, Education, HHS, HUD, and AID. Ten Cabinet departments and agencies, as well as the White House itself, now have a designated office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
President Bush's Faith-Based and Community Initiative is designed to promote access and reduce barriers to Federal grants and contracts by community-based and faith-based social service organizations.
Attempts to pass so-called charitable choice legislation, including changes in tax treatment for some charitable contributions, have been stalled in the Senate.
We've followed the history and related developments of this issue and posted some information and links on our web site.
Please Share With a Colleague!
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