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Create a Strategic Plan
Strategic planning is an organizational blueprint you can use to create a uniform vision and purpose that is shared by all SART members. The fundamental benefits of a strategic plan? You can use it to improve the quality of victim services you provide, set priorities, and determine the best direction for the SART's future. The plan is ultimately a set of decisions about what to do, why to do it, how to do it, and who will do it.
Strategic planning implies that some organizational decisions and actions are more important than others—and that much of the strategy lies in making the tough decisions about what is most important to achieving success. The process itself, however, promotes communication by bringing together multidisciplinary agencies with a common goal. Although there may be difficult discussions, strategic planning accommodates differing interests and values in the decisionmaking process.
Strategic planning assumes that a team must be responsive to a dynamic, changing environment.
Long-range planning assumes that current knowledge is sufficiently reliable to ensure a plan's reliability over the duration of its implementation.
As with any other organizational tool, you can do a little planning or a lot of planning. You'll know you have planned enough when team members understand and have consensus about the SART's direction and action steps. However, strategic planning doesn't necessarily end once the first plan is developed. Although strategic planning takes a long-range approach, it helps you determine progress, assess the validity of the plan, and make adjustments based on changing circumstances and emerging opportunities. Ultimately, a strategic plan is essential for enhanced service delivery and continued funding support.
The Community Toolbox Offers step-by-step instructions, checklists, and related resources to help in the strategic planning process.
Strategic Planning Toolkit Covers preparation, implementation, communication, and evaluation.
You can create a strategic plan at any point of SART development, whether you are forming a team or have a team already established.1 First, assess the current response to sexual violence (see Collect Data for more information). Then, begin the strategic planning process:
- Create the SART's vision and mission statements.
- Develop goals and objectives.
- Develop protocols to institutionalize the SART's objectives.
