Social Impact Advisory Meeting, October 2024
At our monthly Social Impact Advisory Group meeting, we wanted to learn more how strategic planning could be more inclusive. We invited panelists Dr. Renee Rubin Ross, Dr. Joseph Griffin, and Dr. Benisa Berry, to discuss how Youth ALIVE! built a bold, game-changing strategic plan for their nonprofit. The following panel presentation was edited for length and clarity in digital format.
Renee: We’re going to be talking with some fabulous people about how inclusive strategic planning helped Youth ALIVE! embrace energy, clarity, and vision. At the Ross Collective we design and lead inclusive, participatory strategic planning and governance processes. I also run the Cal State East Bay Nonprofit Management Certificate Program, teaching strategic planning and board governance for the program. I use she/her pronouns, identify as a white person and consultant.
I am joined by my colleague, Dr. Benisa Berry, Organizational Consultant, DEI Strategist, Facilitator, Trainer, and Mediator. Benisa Berry engages with individuals, organizations, and communities to work together creatively and productively for individual and collective success.
We collaborate and are both trained in participation and facilitation methods. She co-facilitated this strategic planning process as part of the Ross collective.
Dr. Joe Griffin, has a long time background in public health. He is currently the Executive Director of Youth ALIVE! He completed his doctorate in public health at UC Berkeley. His research focused on community level healing from community wide trauma. Something interesting about Joe is that he worked at Youth ALIVE! as part of the teen program, left, got a doctorate, and really dug into public health.
He now is an instructor at Berkeley and came back as Executive Director recently.
What is inclusive strategic planning? What have been some wins, challenges, and what is the value of doing strategic planning?
Joe: Youth ALIVE! has been around for over 30 years. We are a public health violence prevention organization located in Oakland and have an amazing staff of almost 60.
In total, we run seven programs across three strategies: prevention, intervention and healing. The work that we are going to share is really the work of our whole team.
Renee: I just wanted to say that as you know, somebody who lives in the East Bay, I was also really excited to amplify the work of Youth ALIVE!, which is really challenging and inspiring.
So that is one of the goals in addition to talking about strategic planning. We will assume you know a little about strategic planning, and really what this is about is the story of how we’ve been working with youth ALIVE!.
Why was Youth ALIVE! interested in doing strategic planning? What were your hopes for the process?
Joe: As Renee mentioned, I just came back to Youth ALIVE! almost two years ago as Executive Director. This is my third time working here; they just can’t keep me away.
I first started here as a frontline staff member, was a training officer right before I went back to get my doctorate and came back a couple of years ago. Initially, it was part of my contract: we needed to do a strategic plan.
But then through the process, we had to think about it more deeply, and the deeper answer was that during the pandemic lockdown, the organization nearly doubled in size, in response to the need for violence prevention work in Oakland and in Alameda County overall. While we were doing really great work and working in urgency, there was the underlying question of who are we becoming and who do we want to be?
The organization itself hadn’t undergone a formal strategic planning process. I was taking over for a longtime ED who had been in this seat for about 13 years, so it was time for us to think about where we want to go. That’s really what led us into the process.
Renee: I guess the question for us was, why do we want to work with Youth ALIVE? We felt like they were at an interesting inflection point, as Joe described in terms of new leadership, also growth, and figuring out how to manage that growth and the organization’s values aligned in terms of working on justice.
This is really an organization with a lot of heart and it’s as much about doing excellent work, but also the feeling and making sure that the staff feels really affirmed in this hard work.
Benisa: One thing that I would say is that in any consultant-client partnership, it’s an interview both ways. So just as Youth ALIVE! chose us to work with them in a consulting capacity, we also evaluate and assess, do we want to work with this client? First of all, they are really engaged in the nonprofit world and their vision and mission, as Joe outlined, in terms of a youth organization working with violence prevention was definitely up our alley.
Secondly, the need for a strategic plan. Because this organization had not had a strategic plan previously, we felt that the benefits of a strategic plan would help, especially with some of the issues that had been described, by Joe, in the sense of creating that clarity of vision and bringing everybody along with reaching that vision. We were trying to have responsive leadership but there needed to be a more systematic way to prioritize and let everybody know this is where we’re heading.
Sometimes organizations think that it’s just the consultants that carry this out, but it is a collaborative effort.
I would say the third thing was the leadership of the organization. Sometimes organizations think that it’s just the consultants that carry this out, but it is a collaborative effort. It appears Joe’s and John’s leadership basically fit the bill. We sometimes call them our model client because they were very clear on what they were trying to do.
Renee: We talked about inclusive strategic planning and our process includes three stages. First, kickoff and discovery. And then we come together and create a vision together, do some planning, start getting into strategies and goals. But what does inclusive strategic planning mean? Joe, what does it mean to you?
Joe: So, for me and for us, it meant that everybody on the team needed to have opportunities to be a part of the strategic planning process. We have seven programs here. Most of our programs were created by members of the community. And then some programs were created external to Youth ALIVE! and now are part of our organization. Still other models that we use weren’t created here in Oakland, they are models from our other partner programs like in Chicago that we’ve worked with and we’ve adapted to us.
That’s kind of part of our spirit — we’re community driven. And I would say it was a challenge for me in my first year, but now recognizing it’s been a strength to come back to the organization without a vision of what I wanted it to be in five years. When people asked “What’s your vision for the organization?” I’d be like, “I don’t know”, because my style comes from community organizing as well. So, I needed to hear what my team had to say. I needed to see what they were seeing in order to start building this vision together. When we think really about inclusiveness, we really challenged Renee and Benisa to meet with our teams more than once.
We had individual focus groups, but we also had a day-long staff and board retreat, which was about 70 people, and everybody got input throughout that day on where we were going. Even now with our final draft, it’s going out to our board and our staff this week to get final feedback on the language.
Because we have to move together and the clearest way to actually have a plan that works for us and doesn’t sit on our shelves is to make sure that we all understand the direction we’re going in.
[We asked ourselves| questions like: “Is this clear? Are there things where you feel we lost?” Because we have to move together and the clearest way to actually have a plan that works for us and doesn’t sit on our shelves is to make sure that we all understand the direction we’re going in. So that’s really what the inclusive part of it has been for us.
Renee: I’m just adding on to that. I know that as we started meeting, and Joe and John Torres, who’s very involved in this process, said, okay, we want our whole staff to come to the retreat. Benisa and I were like, well, how many people?
This is going to be over 60 people and really, you know, are you sure? We had to think about what’s the right kind of design for the day, knowing that it’s going to be challenging for some of the people who are coming from all different kinds of backgrounds, for some people, it’s going to be really challenging, even just to sit in a room for a day.
How do we create a space where if somebody needs to step away, they can? We originally called it a retreat and then someone said no, a retreat happens at a spa, so don’t call this a strategic planning retreat. So, we had to call it a meeting and then we just had to think about how do we slow this down so that we make sure that we have the time and how we open up the space to hear a lot of voices.
I felt that our day at Temescal Beach House was really successful in the sense that almost every person in the room raised their hand and spoke sometime during the day, which was kind of amazing.
Benisa: I would say that, Renee, you mentioned earlier the process that we use, which is the technology of participation. One of the reasons that we both value that process is because it really breeds inclusivity. And it starts with just stakeholder engagement, who’s going to be impacted not just the organization itself but the community and others who are going to be impacted by what Youth ALIVE! does and their ability to be successful in the community.
It really includes stakeholders’ input at every stage of the process. In addition to Joe and John there was a design team that was established to ensure we were working with folks from the organization who reflected the stakeholders that were with us every step of the way as we were making decisions and as we were moving forward as to how this would be carried out.
It also meant a very robust discovery process that included interviews and focus groups where everybody in the organization was invited to these opportunities to give their feedback in a way that would feel safe and confidential to them and they could tell the truth around what it is that they were experiencing in terms of how the organization operates as well as what they would like to see the organization doing. That gives us more insight into how aligned folks are within the organization as we move into the strategic planning process.
And then also as Renee mentioned it’s the whole concept which does not usually happen where every single person in the organization was invited to attend. We have retreats that may include representatives of an organization stakeholder, which may be 12 to 15 people for two or three days.
We were trying to work with 60 people in one day. That was a little bit of a challenge, but very much one that was embraced because they were going to know where this came from. I’ll also say that one of the things that we did at the retreat to create a level playing field was something that we called a journey wall or historical scan.
There were people that had varying levels of experience and longevity within the organization. Just a few who were long term and some who were very new and then some that didn’t have that much history. This journey wall is something that was developed that helped people understand the historical mapping across the organization and the development of [why it started] and [how we ended] up here.
It created the opportunity for everybody to hear the story of the organization. So that was the storytelling stage.
Joe: That journey wall became just an amazing part of the morning and backing up a few days before that, we had a small committee of folks who were working on the retreat agenda and we were getting a lot of pushback on the value of that activity and I got worried and I asked Renee and Benisa [if we could] talk a little bit more?
I [said] “I don’t know if this is going to land.” That’s why I have to learn just to trust the process. I was [said], “We’re here, let’s just trust in it and let’s go with it.” As a new ED, I [thought], “I don’t know, what am I getting us into? Then I just have to trust that we’re going to the right space.”
To Benisa’s point, it was great because it suited everybody within the organization, and it really leveled some of those power dynamics where it was like, maybe I can’t say something because I’ve only been here a year or two.
I had our longest tenure board member, and I had our hometown hero fellow, who is our newest staff member. And so it was amazing to have that type of conversation with them in our small group.
Renee: What successes and wins have emerged?
Joe: I think one success last night was when Renee came and presented at our board meeting. We do board training the hour before every board meeting. We meet six times a year. I think being able to see where our draft is now and seeing how clearly it read and we challenged our board to say where they see themselves as part of this work.
I thought that was a great success. With the vision part, I feel much clearer about where we’re going and what we need to get there. So even one of the recent “Aha” [moments] for us is really thinking about the realization that we didn’t have the capacity to do this on top of what we currently do.
Then now having some of that shared language to go to our development team and say, okay, this is where we need to fundraise for capacity to make this strategic plan come to life. The bigger piece for me is having Renee and Benisa be able to hold the process.
John Torres is my Associate Director, and we get pulled into the weeds a lot right now. Without having someone to hold us accountable in the process, I think, we definitely would have got lost along the way. But in other areas of our work, we started bringing other strategic planning thinking, so now we use scenario-building in our budgeting process which has been super helpful because our funding environment is changing rapidly.
It has changed some of our conversations and it’s created more space for us to have more of that long-term versus putting-out-the-fire type of conversation.
Benisa: I think Joe is the one who can talk about what success has been. From my perspective, one of the things that stood out for me was how they had been doing this work. There are many organizations doing [similar] work. Now, there is a lot of attention on it, but Youth ALIVE! was doing this work from the very beginning. One of the things that I was hoping was that they would take their place and take their role because they had so much to contribute to the conversation, not only at the local level, but at the state level, at the federal level and national level in terms of how we work with this issue that’s getting worse instead of better. I thought their voices should be heard.
In identifying the issues that Joe and John were experiencing in their leadership roles, [we asked] “How do we take this growing organization and get everybody on the same page?” So, I think that the process resulted in a clear roadmap as to where we’re going.
People understand where it came from, they were part of developing it, so when they are presented with “Can we do this? Or can we do that?”, it’s not just this one individual making the decision, but they can point back to working collaboratively on these priorities.
People understand where it came from, they were part of developing it, so when they are presented with “Can we do this? Or can we do that?”, it’s not just this individual making the decision, but they can point back to working collaboratively on these priorities. “I don’t think that we have the bandwidth to do that. Let’s keep that in mind for the next iteration.”
It doesn’t make people feel as though [leadership] are just coming up with decisions and they like one person’s suggestions and not another’s because they were trying to accommodate everybody. [They] just really respected the input that the staff had. [They] created this clear roadmap in terms of decision-making that everybody really understands.
Renee: I would add that this is the third plan that Benisa and I have worked on together and we’ve talked a lot about how this work is really culture change. It demands culture change you’re going to do it in the right way. It seems like what’s happened in planning as we get closer to [implementation], Joe was saying, “There are there questions around – What is our staffing model?” [What is] amazing about Youth ALIVE! is that they’re an organization of people who jump up and respond.
But sometimes in that responsiveness, there is a need to slow down and say, “Alright, how is this working?” We heard that so much in the focus groups and interviews in terms of overall support for the increased complexity, given that this is a staff of 70 people.
I think the culture change that is starting to happen in terms of how the plan is going to be implemented is around hiring that needs to happen so that a staff of 70 feel supported, which is very different from the web of relationships from a staff of 30.
Joe: Last time I worked here as a staff member, we were 25 [people]. Then when I came back, we were 70 with a board. Half of those folks came on during virtual work, and so it’s been a lot of culture change. I’m fortunate that I have a great relationship with the ED before me and from knowing her, I also know that personality wise, we’re very complimentary but very different.
There’s been a lot of change and then going through this process, I think that’s where the challenge is. I shared with Renee yesterday that one of my lessons I learned is that everyone wants change, but no one really likes to change because change is hard, you know?
Me being a [first-time Executive Director], I don’t want things to feel like it’s “Oh, he changed his mind and now it’s whiplash this direction and now whiplash that direction.”
Why are we doing these things? Even if they feel like they might be separated, they all point towards the same direction. It gives us more of a common language and it’s something we’re working on a lot because we have very strong program cultures. We’re trying to build a stronger organizational culture. So that’s the exciting and the challenging part of doing this work.
Renee: What is the value of doing strategic planning?
Joe: I think the value for me, especially for us being a direct service organization is to be able to take a step back and say, “Where are we going?” We are also in a great situation where there are a lot of opportunities for us to impact our community. And we can say yes to any of those opportunities, but we can’t say yes to all of them.
We’re not always going to agree, but at least we have a starting place and some language to go back to and say this is where we said we want to be.
Having the strategic plan really is going to help us figure out [the answer to] “Does this get us closer to our vision for Oakland and what our vision for our organization is?”. We’re not always going to agree, but at least we have a starting place and some language to go back to and say this is where we said we want to be. Let’s figure out if we’re still moving in that right direction.
Benisa: I think that sums it up for Youth ALIVE! That value of the collaborative visioning, the ability to take a methodical approach to which opportunities you want to grow in as an organization, how you want to identify yourself, and the impact that you want to make on the community, creating alignment for everybody to go there, and then demystifying the process for this organization, because only 30 to 50% of nonprofits actually go through a strategic planning process.
So now it’s demystified. It includes the opportunity for accountability so that the organization can track what it’s doing and then say, “Yes, we did it [or] no we didn’t and identify learnings from moving forward”.
I have heard from Joe that they’ve had some exciting news in terms of different funders and there’s a real clarity around what is the work going forward. That definitely feels like a win. I’m just looking at the language of the strategic plan: Prioritize a culture of learning, love and growth to have a thriving team. To me that’s like, okay, how do we make our workplaces feel good?
So that starts from the work that we’re doing in our organizations and going out from there. From my view, that’s what we need everywhere. I see that as a win too.
How many interviews did you conduct and did the Ross Collective team do all the interviews or did you have other organizational leaders do that?
Renee: I think we did about eight interviews with different partners and some staff and board members and then, as Joe mentioned, we did four focus groups that were different. Everyone on the staff was invited to be part of a focus group. Which meant that by the time we had our daylong meeting, we had met almost everyone on the staff, which is great.
Joe mentioned prevention, intervention, healing. I’m curious to hear about your advocacy work and how you are aligning all the program components as part of your strategic roadmap?
Joe: Our advocacy work team is called Advocacy for Change. Our policy platform is centered on ways that we create healing and healthier environments that support individual behavior change. Currently, we’re working on Measure NN, which funds violence prevention in Oakland. In terms of how our work fits into this specifically on the program side is our first priority of ways to strengthen and enhance the coordination of our work and the trauma informed care nature of our work.
Our advocacy work doesn’t exist separately from our direct service because with our work, we talk about transforming pain into purpose. So many of our participants who are in a more healed space do come back and participate in our advocacy efforts.
Could the panel speak to the challenges of the process? For example, the balance between the board and the staff objectives and if there was some conflict there?
Joe: Not many between the board and the staff. I would say that we’re fortunate that there’s a lot of trust among the board as far as like, what do we need to do on the program side of things?
There are many challenges. I think first and foremost keeping this on people’s plates, right? Our team is already taxed. We work in trauma work and first-responder work. So, when people land in [a] space, it takes time to get them out of that reactive mind and into the more executive thinking and forward thinking. So that’s always a challenge because you never know what type of urgency or emergency someone [who] just arrived into the space from dealing with -whether that is meeting a survivor of gun violence at the hospital bedside, having just responded to a shooting in the community, or having just worked with a family of a homicide victim.
So that was something that we always keep in mind, “How do we land in space?” I think communication is something that we could have done better on honestly, it’s something that we’ll keep working on and we’re figuring out what is our communication plan once all of this is done.
Even though we felt like we gave all these opportunities to participate, there’s still people [who are] like “Wait a minute, when did we talk about that?” We gotta work on our communication so that people feel involved because that’s just a big part of our culture.
I think that’s probably the biggest piece for myself and John Torres also when we land you know, even though we sit at the executive seats, we’re still a community-based organization that has just grown to this size. To make sure that we’re working on this and not depending on Rene and Benisa to give us the answers.
We’re pointing in a direction, but it’s not a prescriptive process that’s coming out of this.
Renee: I have written on the Ross Collective blog about the Youth ALIVE! board [that] several of the people on the board were part of different Youth ALIVE! programs in the past. It’s very much working alongside in a very collaborative way, similar demographics to the staff.
It feels like there’s a lot of support. And even as Joe was mentioning the meeting last night, the board just said, we want to support in whatever way we can these different pieces. There was a lot of interest in how we can become ambassadors for the strategic plan.
Joe: I would say one thing that came out of the board meeting last night is I think the strategic plan is making the why for the recommendations we have for increasing our organization’s capacity just makes more sense so our board talks a lot about increasing our visibility and getting the word out about what we do.
One of the things that we have identified as staff is we need a communication specialist. So now the why makes more sense why we’re doing that. We’re digging deeper into our evaluation and impact. So now the why for bringing on an evaluation and impact coordinator makes more sense as part of a whole vision. The why is now embedded into where we want to be.
Benisa: When you have diverse stakeholder perspectives, which are required in an inclusive process, then that can create conflict and complicate decision making.
One of the things to ensure high engagement levels is, at the very beginning, getting everyone’s perspective. Of course, that brings up time constraints, which is also a challenge of the process. Joe and John were wonderful in terms of working with the commitment to the time to ensure that there were differing opinions and priorities identified.
[Once] everyone is on a level playing field so at least people are aware of what the issues are, the visioning process we used is one that’s more of a consensus building visioning, where no ideas are discarded. All of that data is identified. Everyone’s ideas are included and connected, and it comes up in the process of the final vision. Then it gets down to “Now what are we going to prioritize? What is our actual plan going to look like?” Everybody has the background to have an informed decision-making process that considers many facets.
Joe: One thing I would add now that we’re getting closer to the finish line is that in the leadership position there had to be moments where we embraced that we need to synthesize and bring this together.
We took in everyone’s feedback but some of that feedback conflicted with each other. We had to be comfortable enough with synthesizing and making it cohesive from a leadership standpoint. That’s a give and take. It’s definitely not a perfect science. It’s more an art. A big part of it has been creating space where people feel like they could say, “I don’t agree with that. Is there a disagreement that we can move forward with, or do we really need to talk this through because something is fundamentally wrong?”
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