How CMON is Leveraging Stakeholder Surveys to Shape Its Strategic Plan

“It actually was really, really positive because it allowed us to separate feedback into two components: big overarching things that we want to work on as part of the strategic plan and then the others are ongoing things that are essential to what we do on a day-to-day basis.” - Jonathan Foerster, CMON Chief Executive Officer, on PlanPerfect’s Stakeholder Survey feature

Executive Summary 

Golisano Children’s Museum of Naples (CMON) is dedicated to making “an exciting, inspiring environment where children and their families play, learn, and dream together” accessible to all children in Naples. They are using PlanPerfect’s development tools, especially the survey function, to understand the needs, expectations, and goals of their stakeholders. 

CMON has collected over 300 survey responses, which PlanPerfect’s survey analysis tools have made easy to understand, so they can incorporate community, staff, and board feedback as they begin developing their strategic plan. 

Client Background

Founded in 2002 and opened for play in 2012, CMON has created a dynamic, educational space for children and families of all backgrounds to engage in childhood fun and play together. CMON encourages the natural curiosity of children from infancy through elementary school with exhibits ranging from a veterinary clinic, which uses props to give children an opportunity for career exploration, to an imaginary boat trip through the Gulf of Mexico, where they can learn to fish and explore the wonders of the ocean. 

“A place for parents to appreciate the easiness of just letting kids be kids. Where children and their families play, learn, and dream together.” 

The Challenge 

CMON is in the process of developing its strategic plan, and they want to ensure they are moving forward with crucial stakeholder input. The team needed a tool that could collect data, analyze it, and make it easy to understand and implement. 

The Solution

CMON found PlanPerfect’s development features, especially the survey tool, to be exactly what they needed at this stage in the process: 

• Easy survey creation and distribution to key stakeholders

• Automatic SWOT analysis on survey data

• Reliable AI-generated insights from data

The Results

CMON was able to collect a large amount of data and easily communicate it to the strategic planning committee to decide how to move forward with their organizational efforts. 

They were able to:

• Collect over 300 responses from stakeholders, including museum attendants, membership holders, and frontline employees 

“I wanted to see what the commonalities were across the groups, because each of those groups has a very specific interest in mind.” Even if the feedback does not directly go into the final strategic plan, “It's definitely something I want to pay attention to and know, and it was great feedback for me.”

• Present data to the strategic planning committee using the automatically generated SWOT analysis and AI insights

“The strategic planning committee was very grateful to not have dive into and do data analytics for all of the surveys.”

• Confidently move into creating their strategic plan using community feedback 

“It was good to have those reinforced … saying, OK, here are the things you can do to move the organization forward, and here are the things you need to do to keep it going as you're doing that.”

Moving Forward: 

They are now moving into drafting their strategic plan, confidently knowing what community members need from them, what new avenues they can explore, and what is already working well for their organization. They are also using the feedback to revisit earlier projects that still have strong community interest. 

About PlanPerfect

PlanPerfect is a strategic planning platform built by and for mission-driven leaders. Combining human-centered design with AI-assisted tools, PlanPerfect supports nonprofits in developing, implementing, and tracking strategy—so they can spend less time managing plans and more time creating impact.