Strategic planning

What are your goals? Every organisation has some. But not every organisation has a strategic plan. And that can end up causing major problems.

The term ‘strategic planning’ can sound overly corporate to some, vague and confusing to others. Basically, strategic planning is an exercise in prioritising your resources so you can reach your goals.

Any organisation that wants to be truly effective needs a plan to reach their goals. There is no set standard for what these strategic plans should include. They vary a lot depending on the organisation’s resources and the national/political context.  What matters is that organisations themselves agree on a joint vision of what is important, set objectives for their work, think about what the most effective strategies could be, and decide what steps need to be taken to achieve all that.

People can become motivated to work on LGBTI issues for all sorts of reasons –personal and political. The sense of purpose you get while working for a meaningful cause inspires passionate activism. But the incredible workload that many activists take on, combined with an often unequal (and sometimes inseparable) work/life balance, can ultimately result in a high risk of burn-out.

This scenario can be avoided with better strategic. The process keeps organisations and individual activists healthy. Unfortunately, is a process whose benefits can often be overlooked or undervalued.  

Strategic planning is the magic word and ILGA-Europe are providing the space and resources to bring activists together in sessions on how to plan better. We get organisations to ask themselves the right questions – especially, is this realistic?

Through peer-to-peer learning activities, we make sure that activists don’t have to reinvent the wheel, while finding creative ways to create change. These thought processes support the movement by aligning their resources and objectives. The sessions are sometimes facilitated by ourselves, and sometimes we ask experts to bring in their expertise.