PlanPerfect: Redefining The Process of Nonprofit Strategic Planning

Article published by Gulfshore Business, written by Bill Wasinger.

Every company needs a business plan to establish benchmarks, track performance, and serve as a roadmap to success. Yet many nonprofits, despite having a bold mission, lack a strategic plan to guide long-term impact. That’s where PlanPerfect comes in.

Co-founded by Florida residents Sophia Shaw and Adam Wolford, PlanPerfect is software that helps small to mid-size nonprofits build strategic and enterprise risk management plans while empowering them to scale their impact and navigate change. It supports internal and external stakeholder alignment, donor engagement and clear performance tracking—backed by selective use of proprietary AI trained on Shaw's extensive, results-driven nonprofit experience as well as field-tested best practices.

The foundation of PlanPerfect is Shaw’s decades of leadership in the nonprofit field. That has included work with more than 200 organizations while leading the nonprofit board governance program at the Kellogg School of Management, and her role as president and CEO of the Chicago Botanic Garden. This subject-matter expertise is complemented by Wolford’s deep understanding of the tech sector and consulting for both mature and growth-stage companies.

While it forms the basis of PlanPerfect’s software, both Shaw and Wolford also note their previous experience is also at the heart of the company’s vision, which is for a professionalized nonprofit sector where every organization is equipped with the strategy, tools, and structures needed to grow their impact and foster a safer, healthier, and more loving world.

“We believe that nonprofit organizations play an important role in addressing global challenges and that every organization requires a strategic plan to achieve its goals,” Shaw says. “By fostering professionalism in the nonprofit sector, PlanPerfect will enhance the capacity of nonprofits, corporations, government, and individuals to become agents of positive systems change.”

PlanPerfect is designed for nonprofit leaders, consultants, foundations, associations and donors. It provides a dashboard to track goals and performance metrics tied directly to accomplishments and impact. The built-in Discover tool helps organizations engage staff, board, program participants and volunteers—gathering critical insights that shape the plan.

“The software helps you organize your thinking,” Wolford explains. “Then through discovery and engagement, you can build plans that reflect where you are—and where you want to go.”

In addition to strategic planning, PlanPerfect includes an enterprise risk management module to help organizations identify potential threats and build mitigation strategies. It also enhances the work of consultants by streamlining processes, increasing client ownership and allowing experts to focus where their time and expertise add the most value.

For foundations and donors, PlanPerfect enables cohorts of grantees to each create their own plans while learning from one another. It also serves mission-driven entities such as associations, clubs and other membership organizations.

Since launching in 2024, PlanPerfect has grown rapidly, with clients across the U.S. and internationally. The company serves a variety of sectors, including the arts, education, environment, adaptive sports and disability services, environmental and conservation advocacy, LGBT inclusion, Jewish entrepreneurship, affordable housing, tribal sovereignty and community engagement. Clients in Florida include Captains For Clean Water, The Reef Institute, STARability Foundation, Collier Resource Center, Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance and the Golisano Children’s Museum of Naples.

Ultimately, PlanPerfect brings greater impact, accountability and professionalization to planning. That, Shaw says, can help organizations move forward and raise more funds toward achieving their missions.

“Nonprofit organizations play an important role both in Naples and around the world,” she says. “Our goal with PlanPerfect is to help them clarify their direction, ensure their voice shines through—with input from the people they serve—and build plans they can actually use today and that adapt as change inevitably comes.”