STRATEGIC PLANNING

Bloom specializes in comprehensive strategic planning that prioritizes long-term visioning, a stakeholder-inclusive process, and detailed implementation planning. Our five-phase strategic planning model has been fine-tuned over decades of experience working with a variety of nonprofits and schools and is customized to every clients’ needs.

Our Process

The discovery phase establishes a strong foundation of data-gathering and inclusivity on which to build your strategic plan. It offers multiple opportunities to engage your key stakeholders through a variety of research activities including interviews, surveys, and focus groups, plus, when relevant, a customized landscape scan.
This phase culminates in robust, polished research reporting and a facilitated research review workshop with planning team members. Clients gain valuable insights into the current state of their organizations and can pinpoint strengths to leverage, areas for growth, and visionary opportunities for change.
Grounded in the discovery phase outputs and the rapport-building to date, Bloom supports leadership in creating a detailed long-term vision for impact that serves as an inspiring “north star” for the forthcoming planning work. This leads to the articulation of key priority planning areas (“big rocks”) that serve as the superstructure for detailed planning work.
Through multiple rounds of facilitated planning sessions across each identified planning priority, Bloom supports your team in building out strategic initiatives, SMART+IE objectives, milestones, metrics, and detailed year 1 action plans.
In this critical “insurance policy” phase, Bloom guides leadership through activities to ensure the necessary structures are in place to support implementation of your strategic plan.
Activities include articulating initiative ownership and implementation timeline, planning a rollout and communication approach, defining an implementation management infrastructure, developing a risk management plan, and prioritizing metrics and measures to gauge progress to goals.
Your final strategic plan will be copy-edited, polished, and shared in Word and/or slide deck format.
The plan is accompanied by an interactive implementation tool that helps keep your change management on track and ensures key stakeholders, including board members, stay informed and invested as your plan becomes a reality.

“Working with the Bloom team is a total pleasure. Thanks to their expert guidance, persistence, and care, we've completed a strategic plan with a clear implementation plan that we are exceedingly proud of. ”

- Executive Director, North10, Philadelphia

Our Approach to Strategic Planning

We approach strategic planning as your partners in the work. You are the expert on your organization and the people you serve. We bring our expertise in project management, process facilitation, and the best practices and tools to ensure your efforts translate into a living plan that drives your organization forward towards meeting your long-term goals.

Snapshot of Sample Implementation Tool Dashboard

Whether your organization is a large school district, a small nonprofit, or a complex consortium, we can adapt our process to fit your needs.

Additional services:

In addition to presenting the polished plan to your board, Bloom can also design and facilitate a reflective session that presents recommendations for deepening alignment across governance and management functions, especially as they pertain to successful strategic plan implementation.
Bloom can also administer our proprietary board self-assessment tool that elevates governance best practices and articulates the skillsets and gaps that the current board possesses. Through a guided reflection of these results, Bloom supports the board with setting its own strategic priorities and goals for the next one to three years.
Bloom facilitates leadership through a series of structured sessions designed to articulate clear decision-making processes across your organization’s staff and board.
In addition to valuable discussion and process, this activity set results in the creation of a durable, flexible, user-friendly reference tool that captures clear ownership of key decision rights (e.g., input, make, ratify) across your organization’s management and governing bodies.
Bloom offers multiple avenues for engaging members of your organization’s broader community including open houses, surveys, focus groups, workshops, and forums. Bloom designs and facilitates an inclusive and accessible approach to ensure your plan invests the necessary people and invites their voice into the process.
Organizations often use strategic planning as an opportunity to also consider their organization’s identity elements including mission, vision, theory of change, values, and theory of action. Bloom facilitates essential conversations to develop or refresh these critical elements. This is especially relevant during times of significant transition, threat, and opportunity.
Bloom works with your finance lead to build and populate a multi-year financial modeling tool to support organizational leadership in forecasting for program, staff, and fundraising decision-making.
The completion of a strategic plan is only the beginning. Bloom serves as a powerful accountability “buddy” to keep your plan’s implementation adaptive and on track.

Don’t see what you need? Just ask! We are always expanding our offerings and love to get creative.

Get in touch.

Whether you’re ready to start planning tomorrow or next year, now is the time to reach out! We’ll connect with you to understand your needs and provide you with a customized proposal outlining the scope of work, projected timing, expectations for leadership and stakeholder involvement, and a budget-by-phase so you can make an informed decision about your planning partner.

Strategic Planning Project Spotlights

Client names have been withheld to respect confidentiality, but client references are always available upon request.

“This was the best strategic planning experience I have ever had. The timing, facilitation, resources, tools and outputs were all excellent.”

- Executive Director, First Up

Strategic Roadmap

Experienced Nonprofit

A 50-year-old nonprofit in the early childhood education sector sought a three-year roadmap for the expansion and sustainability of programming and initiatives, and to leverage potential new funding opportunities.

With Bloom’s assistance, the nonprofit’s planning team analyzed research, reviewed stakeholder feedback, and set future priorities with a clear focus on ensuring early childhood educators, families, and providers are positioned to advance the future of the children in their care.

Building on the nonprofit’s strong foundation, this strategic planning process strengthened and refined the organization’s capacity for advocacy and continued support of educators, families, and programs in providing the highest level of education for their youngest learners.

Growth Planning

Expanding Charter Network

A single-site, project-based learning charter school in Hawai’i partnered with Bloom to conduct a feasibility study and strategic planning process to make informed decisions about the future of the school, including the possibility of multisite growth.

Over 10 months Bloom gathered input from over 430 staff members, families, alumni, and community members through in-person interviews, focus groups, and online surveys. Bloom worked closely with the charter’s governing and foundation boards to articulate a five-year vision for growth and impact and a detailed plan for the first three years of implementation. Furthermore, this plan included a multi-year, multi-scenario financial model and implementation tool to track progress across planning areas.

New Leader’s Vision

School District

A school district serving over 3,800 students and supported by over 500 faculty and staff members was starting its second year with its new superintendent.

To articulate a clear vision for the district, leadership chose to partner with Bloom Planning to embark on a strategic planning process heavily focused on increasing equity across their district’s schools.

Combining internal audits, interviews, surveys, focus groups, and Bloom-facilitated planning meetings, the district was able to refine their focus areas and produce a strategic plan with high levels of staff and community engagement and buy-in.

The final plan included a polished executive summary, presentation deck, and interactive implementation tool.