I was asked “in the before times” to shepherd our wonderful arts organization here in Martinsville VA, the Piedmont Arts Association, through its upcoming strategic planning process. Piedmont Arts, accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, is a cultural hub for our small town and was a major selling point when we decided to leave Kentucky to move here. Another plug for Martinsville (halfway between Greensboro and Roanoke in SW VA) - we have the Virginia Museum of Natural History too which is a Smithsonian affiliate - and great neighborhoods full of lovely homes for frankly, dirt cheap prices, although the word is getting out about Martinsville and those houses are being snatched up now. But I digress ……

Leading organizations through their strategic planning process is consulting work I enjoy, and have facilitated with boards and staff for organizations large like the Surface Design Association to small, such as the Estill County Arts Council.

With Piedmont Arts, we made the decision to do the work virtually. This consists of three primary meetings I had/have with the board and staff - about 25 people approximately. We had an intro session in August, will have a working session mid-September focused on envisioning, ideation, and analysis, and then the Long Range Planning Committee will take the raw material from the working session and begin the construction of the 2021-25 strategic plan in October. The hope is to have a final draft to the board in November, and the plan approved in December for implementation January 2021. While I have a fair amount of experience both facilitating, presenting, and teaching virtually, this will be my first time doing it with the strategic planning process. It’s going to be exciting and I expect to learn much from the process.

In the working session - you can find the slide deck and other resources I have created for the process here - you can see we use some basic entrepreneurial mindsets, tools, and activities like the Business Model Canvas, SWOT analysis, market research, understanding our value propositions, audience avatars, and so forth. While I think these tools are beneficial (obviously!), they do need translating for a non-profit and/or cultural context. So, some of the worksheets in the folder were adapted by me - like the audience avatar doc - because I could not find a personae activity sheet that was the right fit.

When I take on consulting jobs like this, it has to complement and feed my work teaching arts administration and entrepreneurship at UNC-Greensboro. This time since both my teaching and consulting are virtual now, I can directly take this strategic planning slide deck and related docs to lead my Fall 2020 students through their upcoming strategic planning assignment as well.

Please check out the resources I shared about this virtual process - I will be continuing to update the blog with the opportunities and challenges associated with virtual strategic planning! Oh, and if you are looking for a good basic book on the subject, I recommend THIS BOOK.

Take care!

Jennifer