Children, Incorporated was one of our first, big clients coming into 2010. We just put the final touches on their long-term strategic plan.
Our work with Children, Incorporated held important lessons. The importance of the journey, for starters – and of dreaming big.
Our journey was almost 10 months, and the organization experienced tremendous change while we explored new ways for Children, Incorporated to manage its programs, serve 14,000 children around the globe and maintain an emphasis on sponsorship.
As always, success lies in the hands of the employees and board members who felt the most invested in the process. A handful of key contributors helped to craft, reshape and influence the final planning document – pushing the 47-year-old nonprofit to create an ambitious, aspirational strategy.
But we couldn’t have gotten to that point without the engagement of every employee in the organization – even those who were skeptical of the process (or of me, the consultant). Multiple times during the process, the entire staff (and sometimes the board) came together to wrestle with big questions about the organization’s future direction, and how to strengthen their internal operations.
The ideas and insights – and even the skepticism and pragmatic push-back – that emerged in these sessions helped put shape to an ambitious, new vision statement: Children, Incorporated envisions a world where every child has the resources and opportunity to build a better life.
Building better lives for children. For every child. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.
Thanks to Marian, Kelsi, Ryan, Liz, Whitney, Luis, Renee, Dick, Dana, Elethia and others, Children, Incorporated is ready to turn ambition into action. The new strategic plan maps out fundamental steps toward an exciting, global future for one of Richmond’s best homegrown treasures.