What Strategic Planning Methods are Most Related to Higher Capacity Organizations: An Empirical Investigation

Considering the controversy around strategic planning effectiveness for nonprofits, we first ask, “Does strategic planning matter?”. A survey was administered to 1,256 nonprofit organizations to determine a. their capacity to plan and b. what strategic planning processes they used. Using regression analysis, it was found that the presence of a strategic plan acted as a statistically significant indicator of higher organizational capacity. Next, strategic methods were evaluated to determine which ones were associated with higher capacity scores. This research makes two main contributions. First, it enhances, using a large national sample the academic debate as to the usefulness of strategic planning. Second, for practitioners, this research demonstrates which strategic methods were found to be associated with the highest performing organizations, using our capacity indicator. Based on these findings we believe that nonprofit managers can optimize their resources and focus on those methods that provide them with the highest return on their strategic efforts. Additionally, nonprofit faculty now have data to suggest what strategic planning methods should be taught in our classrooms.