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We're passionate about adaptive planning. Not because BoardSource says it's a best practice, not because it's the hot thing in the industry. We believe in it because we've lived it. On boards we've served on, leadership teams we've been part of, and in our own company.
Our Assumptions
Let's use StratSimple as an example. In January 2024, here's what we thought we knew:
- The biggest problem we'd be solving is helping leaders set better key results
- "Low-code" tools would be enough to build the software we needed
- Software alone could close the nonprofit strategic planning gap
- If we built it, they'd come, and sales would take care of themselves
Our Reality
Two years later, reality has had other plans:
- The planning gap in nonprofits isn't one problem. It's several. Organizations struggle to do real community listening. Costs are high. Too many plans end up on a shelf. And even good plans fall apart without help building new habits.
- Our first version of the software wasn't up to the job. We scrapped it entirely and rebuilt on custom code.
- We learned what many of you already know: software without a skilled facilitator doesn't get you where you need to go. Buy-in and prioritization don't happen in a platform. They happen in the room.
- Marketing and distribution turned out to be harder than building the product itself. By a lot.
Now think about how much changed for us in just two years. Most organizations are writing three-year plans and some of them for 5+ years out!!! That just doesn’t realistically work when most nonprofits are navigating even more volatility than we are.
So why the new website?
If you haven't been to StratSimple.com lately, it looks different. Until now, we mostly talked about our tools. But what we keep seeing, engagement after engagement, is that when the job is building a plan that actually drives progress against your mission, technology alone isn't enough. The best outcomes come from pairing great technology with great consulting and facilitation.
And here's what we believe about that pairing: the best outcomes come from the right match between consultant and client. So we're leaning into our curated directory of consultants in nonprofit strategic planning who share a belief in community listening, who practice adaptive planning, and who care as much about what happens after the plan as they do about delivering it. Pair that kind of partner with our platform, and we think planning in the nonprofit sector can look very different.
How we describe our work has changed. Our mission hasn't:
To make high-quality strategic planning accessible and affordable, empowering more organizations to acheive their own missions and drive positive change.
