Nonprofits are Messy: Strategic Planning for Nonprofits: Simple, Agile, and Real (with Sophia Shaw and Adam Wolford)

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When someone mentions strategic planning, what do you think?

If your first reaction is something like, “we don’t have time for that…” or “we tried that and it went nowhere…” you’re not alone.

In this episode, Glennda sits down with Sophia Shaw and Adam Wolford, co-founders of PlanPerfect, to challenge the biggest myths about nonprofit strategic planning – that it’s expensive, time-consuming, overly complex, or only for large organizations with deep pockets.

Those myths may be compelling, but in this conversation, they uncover that the opposite is true. Sophia and Adam argue that the problem isn’t strategic planning itself, but how we’ve been doing it.

Too often, planning becomes a one-time event. A lengthy consultant engagement, an 80-page PDF, a retreat full of sticky notes, and then a document that quietly gathers dust. Instead, this episode proposes thinking of strategy as an operating system – something living, flexible, and revisited regularly. 

Mission and heart matter deeply, but impact requires structure. This conversation reframes strategic planning from a burdensome obligation into a practical, empowering tool.

TUNE IN TO LEARN:

• Strategic planning myths – busted: Why it doesn’t have to be expensive, exhausting, or reserved for big organizations.

• Why small nonprofits need strategy most: How clarity prevents wasted time and resources when margins are tight.

• From document to operating system: What it looks like to treat strategy as something living and revisited – not a one-time event.

KEY QUOTES:

• “[I]f you don’t have a plan now, it’s not your fault. More of a fault of our, you know, a system, leading up to this moment….it’s now this remarkably beautiful moment where all voices can be heard if we’re listening, and that really, that is a very powerful way of making a difference.” – Sophia Shaw
  
  

• “[N]ow you’re not just stuck with a PDF document of your strategic plan. It lives in the system where she can start to farm this out to her team and her board to go execute it.” – Adam Wolford
  
  

• “[Y]ou have to have the heart and the passion and the drive, but you also have to have the plan and the outcomes and the impact that you’re trying to measure. So just, while, we’re myth busting, I guess I’ll throw another one in there which is nonprofit folks can plan really successfully.” – Glennda Testone