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1. Background of the Strategic Planning Process

The following is a summary of the work done to date by

the Strategic Planning Committee of the Center for Nonviolent Communication. We recommend that anyone who is already familiar with CNVC’s history and background, as well as with the strategic planning process undertaken in the last 19 months skip directly to section 3, which begins our specific recommendations.

Description of the Committee

The committee was formed in January 2003 at the request of the Board of directors of CNVC. The people who have been members of this committee at different points over time are (in alphabetical order): Gary Baran, Dominic Barter, Thom Bond, Tom Caruso, Alex Censor, Jane Connor, Marika Havraniak, Rita Herzog, Miki Kashtan, Shari Klein, Barbara Larson, Mary Mackenzie, Lynn McMullen, Kit Miller, John Nicol, Hema Pokharma, Eva Rambala, and Martha Young. Kit Miller, President of the Board of CNVC, has served as chair.

The committee met regularly about twice a month by teleconference between March 2003 and May 2004. During this time it solicited and analyzed questionnaires to determine the needs of those served by CNVC, identified and discussed critical issues, and wrote a report with recommendations for the February 2004 CNVC Board meeting (see Appendix A for a complete list of the recommendations). At its February 2004 meeting, the Board adopted one of these recommendations, asking CNVC’s Executive Director, Gary Baran, to create a strategic plan for review by the Committee and, thereafter, to be submitted for approval by the Board.

In August of 2004 4 members of the committee – Gary Baran, Miki Kashtan, Kit Miller, and Martha Young, as well as board member Ike Lasater, met in person for 2 days (August 12-13, 2004) to complete the drafting of a strategic plan (joined for a few hours by Inbal Kashtan, Parenting Project Coordinator). Sharon Colby facilitated this meeting. This document was revised and new recommendations were included based on our work together during this time.

During this meeting we reviewed and summarized input from members of the CNVC network who responded to written questionnaires, held group meetings in various parts of the world and answered emails. Questionnaires had previously been translated into 4 languages and responses were translated back into English. Any interested party was invited to participate in strategic planning teleconferences over the course of the year and at meetings held at IITs. All members of the strategic planning committee were invited to attend the two day meeting in Oakland, California and if in person attendance was not possible, a 2 hour conference call was held on August 13, 2004 to solicit input from any person on the strategic planning committee or the Board of Directors who were not in attendance.

Challenges Facing CNVC and the Strategic Planning Process

As an organization, CNVC is in the stage of transitioning from a relatively small organization in which the most active members know each other personally, and which operates largely on the basis of informal arrangements, to a much larger and more complex organization relying heavily upon standardized procedures.

Many of our discussions revolved around issues related to organizational development and transition, which needed to be addressed before a comprehensive strategic plan could be developed fully. Given its limited amount of time together, and its lack of access to decision-making power, the Committee has been able to take the process of organizational development and transition only so far; in order to complete the plan, the Board must enter into the conversations and make foundational decisions. See Appendix B for a list of the organizational development issues that the Committee has identified.

Additional discussion points related to these organizational development issues are contained in subsequent sections of this report. The major organizational development issues related to various parts of CNVC are listed below.

Some of the organizational development issues

identified relate to the Strategic Planning Committee itself such as:

1. What is the scope of work to be done by the Committee?
2. Who has the authority to make decisions, and or recommendations?
3. Who defines committee membership?
4. Who leads this committee?
5. What is the relationship between the Strategic Planning Committee and the CNVC Board?
6. What is the future of the the Strategic Planning Committee and how can it be supported?

Other

organizational development issues related to CNVC as an organization

include commitments to:

1. Have the CNVC organization function in harmony with

   the principles of NVC; and make the necessary transitions without sacrificing the values associated with close personal connections and in a way that will demonstrate consideration for the needs of all

   concerned.
2. Have clear priorities. CNVC has often tried to be all

   things to all people; greater clarity is needed to decide which opportunities to say “yes” to, and which to say “no” (or “not yet”) to.

3. Work within a global context: in order for our

   strategic plan to be realistic and to provide useful guidance, it must take into account current and future global environmental and

   geo-political developments.
4. Function effectively as a global organization, serving

   as many and as diverse a group of people as possible. We recognize and acknowledge a painful controversy within the organization about the question of creating regional offices, and have some recommendations below about how to handle this set of issues. We consider finding a resolution to this dilemma to be an extremely high priority that affects the viability of the organization. We therefore devoted a whole sub-part of this plan to strategies we recommend for addressing this

   issue.
5. Deal with “Founder’s Syndrome”, i.e., transitioning

   from an organization centered in, and dependent in several ways upon, Marshall Rosenberg to one that has an identity based in the process of

   Nonviolent CommunicationSM.
6. Become financially sustainable, with a significant revenue stream independent of income generated by Marshall’s trainings.
7. Allocate resources effectively; we would like to use our resources most effectively.

We hope that the current plan and an ongoing

strategic planning process will help us meet these challenges and do so with considerable alignment among those who support the mission of CNVC.

Comments from Rita Herzog:

In hindsight, if I knew then what I know now, I would have used up whole Board meetings for one purpose, and one purpose only:

1) To explore these questions:

--What do I understand as to the role and purpose of the Board in relation to CNVC?

--How do I see my role as a CNVC Board member?

--What needs am I meeting as a member?

--What responsibilities am I willing to undertake?

2) After getting all this out on the table, then the hard work begins --to listen to each other, to marvel at the diversity of it all, and then how to come to a mutual understanding, so that everyone has the same intent, is on the same page. Only then can the Board hope to come to a place of speaking with one voice to Gary, to Marshall, and to the NVC community.

All this before discussion (and disagreements, of course) of issues begins. Otherwise, the investment of time, effort, and expense of coming together for five days will not be protected, and the same agenda items might appear over and over again at ensuing meetings. One last challenge will be to agree on the group process used to conduct meetings, including a specific process on how decisions are made.

2. Overview and Purpose of the Center for Nonviolent Communication

The Center for Nonviolent CommunicationSM (CNVC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, incorporated in 1984 in the State of Texas and headquartered since 2001 in La Crescenta, California. CNVC is an organization, operating worldwide, whose vision is a world where all people are meeting their needs and resolving their conflicts peacefully. In this vision, people are using Nonviolent CommunicationSM (NVC) to create and participate in networks of worldwide life-serving systems in economics, education, justice, healthcare, and peacekeeping. Our mission is to contribute to this vision by facilitating the creation of life-serving systems within ourselves, inter-personally, and within organizations. We do this by living and teaching the process of Nonviolent CommunicationSM.

Major Aims

CNVC operates as a model of a life serving organization, functioning in harmony with the principles of NVC, and sees this as an important contribution we can make toward inspiring change toward a social order in which people everywhere are reliably and peacefully getting their needs met.

CNVC has the responsibility to maintain the integrity of the NVC process, e.g. through certification of trainers of NVC, oversight of translations of Marshall Rosenberg’s works by those CNVC trusts to have a firm grasp of NVC, and protecting his intellectual property.

Comments from Rita Herzog:

3. I want to support consensus around this statement, "CNVC has the responsibility to maintain the integrity of the NVC process, e.g. through certification of trainers of NVC, oversight of translations of Marshall Rosenberg's works by those CNVC trusts to have a firm grasp of NVC, and protecting his intellectual property." If the Board is educated about, understands, and agrees to this commitment, this will preclude, for instance, unplanned discussions at Board meetings about whether or not to continue trainer certification.

CNVC functions as a resource for people who are interested in learning, using and spreading NVC, and we make available training and educational materials to support CNVC’s mission. We expect CNVC certified trainers to provide much of this training and to continue to develop training materials. We also expect much learning of NVC to occur by individuals and within self-organizing practice groups, using materials developed and distributed by CNVC.

History and Celebration of Accomplishments

For many years (roughly 1984 to 1996) CNVC was a very small and informal organization. A handful of volunteers organized training for Marshall Rosenberg, who traveled around the world introducing people to NVC. Although organizational meetings were held occasionally, little emerged in the way of organizational structure until the late 1990s when the Board launched the Genesis fundraising campaign. The original intent of the campaign was to use the funds raised to hire a development director, however, the Board decided instead to hire Gary Baran as Executive Director, initially on a part time basis. At the time (June, 1998), CNVC headquarters was a 450 square foot office in Sherman, Texas, with a staff of two (supervised remotely by a CNVC Board member) who were even then often overwhelmed by the growing workload generated by Marshall’s trainings.

Much has changed since then. Some of these changes were the result of the publication of Marshall’s book (first published in English in 1999) and the growing interest in NVC this produced. Other materials were also developed, such as new audio and videotapes, and the number of certified trainers also increased significantly.

In 2002, we estimate that approximately 250,000 people received some training in NVC. Marshall’s book has now been translated into more than 16 languages. Awareness of NVC and sales of educational materials has increased dramatically. There are now more than 150 certified trainers, and CNVC offers about a dozen International Intensive Trainings (“IITs”) annually, in addition to an ongoing heavy training schedule for Marshall.

The headquarters office was relocated to California in 2001 (just a few months prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, which dramatically increased requests for our materials and training). We now have a much larger administrative staff, both paid and unpaid (9 full time including Marshall and Gary, and 14 part time, including project coordinators and some other staff who work off site) than a few years ago, although we are still struggling to keep up with the increasing number of requests for what we have to offer.

We have also been remarkably successful in making NVC training—including International Intensive Training—available to a wide variety of people throughout the world, despite what are sometimes the financial challenges of doing so; few people have been denied access to what we have to offer because they didn’t have the money.

Although much remains to be done to improve connections between the central serving team and people in the global NVC network, and to meet needs for inclusion and contribution, much has

already been done that we want to celebrate. Examples include:

• Local groups have held NVC conventions in several locations
• The Board has met in

  various locations around the world, enhancing connections to local

  groups in those regions
• The Board has welcomed observers to participate in its

  meetings, and authorized financial support for at least one member who

  would not otherwise be able to serve as a board member
• Most CNVC committees meet by teleconference (e.g.,

  strategic planning, mass media, resource generation, research) and have

  been open to anyone who wishes to participate.
• Various projects (both geographical and theme based) have been undertaken often involving people from throughout the network

Organizational Components

of CNVC

Following John Carver’s model for board governance (see, for example, Reinventing Your Board by John Carver and Miriam Mayhew Carter, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997), we distinguish between governance and management, with the board of directors responsible for the former and the Executive Director responsible for the latter. If Board members play roles dealing with management issues, they do so as individual volunteers who report to the Executive Director. The Board recognizes its responsibility to monitor the performance of the Executive Director, to see that Board policies are being implemented and that the organization’s purpose is being achieved. The Board also is committed to playing an active role in fundraising and strategic planning.

The CNVC Board currently consists of 8 members who serve as volunteers and who (with one exception) cover their own expenses for attending board meetings. CNVC bylaws (which are in the process of being revised) allow for a board of twelve. See appendix C for detailed information about board members.

In recent years the board has become slightly more diverse and representative of those in the expanding NVC network, but the Board would like to move much further in that direction. Where lack of resources (for example, money) and other challenges of coordinating a geographically diffuse group make this difficult, the Board and staff (comprising the central serving team) are committed to finding other ways to hear the varied voices of those who are committed to CNVC’s mission and supportive of the organization, and to enable such people to play a more active role in our organization and participate in decision-making.

Then only current Board committee is the Strategic Planning Committee. The current strategic plan calls for the establishment of a number of new committees, some reporting to the Board and others reporting to the Executive Director. See Appendix C for a full list of existing and proposed committees.

See Appendix C also for a full list of CNVC staff, paid and unpaid.

Values and Priorities for Contribution

CNVC wants to be transparent in how it operates. This includes transparency about finances. Financial statements, budgets, etc. are available upon request and will be posted on our website when we are confident they are accurate.

CNVC acknowledges that, to create the world we envision, we will need to work collaboratively and synergistically with other groups whose vision is aligned with ours. We are not sure at this point what structures and people will be needed to do this.

CNVC wants to cultivate a conscious process of choosing priorities and areas of focus. As part of this process, and in order for our strategic plan to be realistic and to provide useful guidance, CNVC will need to take into account current and future global environmental and geo-political developments in order to form an informed approach as to what needs of which groups of people

CNVC will concentrate its resources on fulfilling.

3. Summary of the

Strategic Plan

The following plan was drafted following our in-person meeting in Oakland on August 12-13, 2004. (See section 1 for more details about the meeting). During this meeting we identified several

broad categories for strategic planning:

1. Sustainability of organization (includes

   fundraising, board development, office development, succession plan, staff development, website, global connection, promotion of the

   organization and NVC.)
2. Education (includes training, trainer

   development, trainer certification, trainer agreements, developing applications, website, materials {development, dissemination,

   translation and legal issues}, promotion, research)
3. Applications of NVC (NVC groups, website, connections in network, areas of focus/projects)

Based on these categories, and the organizational

development challenges which CNVC is currently facing, we identified a general set of priorities going forward in time. The plan which follows is a 5-year plan. We describe actions and goals for the first year with the most specificity, while for years 4 and 5 we only offer a general direction and preliminary ideas for consideration. This type of planning provides for changes in the details of planning for years further in the future to take into account the changing needs of CNVC and its network of supporters and changing global conditions.

Comments from Rita Herzog:

1. I strongly agree that the priorities as stated are essential to the effectiveness and credibility of CNVC. Trying to do too many things, for too many people, for too many years, without a reality check as to our organizational abilities, has stimulated frustration and despair, leading to lack of trust and connection. I believe this is at the heart of the issue for Europeans and others who feel at odds with the American CNVC office. (And just being an American in the world today is problem enough.)

I do feel skeptical about the organization's ability to stick with the proposed priorities; Gary has been known to say "yes" when a "no" (with empathy, of course) was called for, considering priorities and resources. I recommend a plan to support him: he will need some very specific guidelines as to how to spend his time, and may need actual practice in saying a giraffe no", with lots of empathy for himself, too. (Gary has given me

permission to talk about him.)

organization
It is our strong recommendation that CNVC put a moratorium on new initiatives (with few exceptions noted below), and concentrate its resources in the first year of this plan solely on creating sustainability within the organization. We are concerned that without such a focus the organization will not be able to fulfill its mission in the long run.

 Year 2-3: Supporting the international network
Given the stupendous organizational challenges that CNVC is facing, especially as a global organization, and the level of controversy about how to address them, it is our recommendation that CNVC focus its resources on finding ways to nurture and support the international network to increase its capacity to contribute tolobal transformation. We recommend the immediate creation of an international committee to devote attention to finding models and strategies that address the many needs we have identified, both within the Central Serving Team and in the larger network. This committee will be asked to plan a significant

Year 3-4: Promotion of NVC process

Once sustainability has been reached, and organizational issues have been addressed, we recommend that the next priority be effective promotion of the NVC process, and suggest several approaches and strategies towards this goal. We reiterate our strong recommendation that for the first one to two years current activities be continued without initiating any new activities.

Year 4-5: Areas of world we want to contribute to

For the past year, CNVC has identified 5 areas of focus of systems we would like to affect: education (including parenting) systems, restorative justice systems, economic systems, health care systems, and peacekeeping systems. For the last year of the proposed plan we recommend that CNVC focus its priorities on finding ways to align its activities and priorities more fully with these areas of focus. Preliminary directions for this intention are included to guide further discussion.

4. Plan for Addressing

the Challenges Regarding CNVC’s Global Functioning

In our meeting we have identified this area as key to the continued functioning of the organization, as well as an area where significant controversy exists within the organization at present.

As we solicited input from the network in the form of questionnaires we distributed as widely as possible (see earlier reports from this committee), we heard from many people, and especially those from outside the US, a strong plea to address the persistent perception that CNVC is essentially a US organization and not a global organization as it would like to be.

Some of the strategies that have been proposed include moving the CNVC headquarters outside the US, and/or establishing CNVC branch offices in Europe and elsewhere. During the Board meeting in Munich in August 2003 those present participated in attempts to re-design the organizational structure of CNVC. The various designs indicated a desire to find an alternative to our present structure (as understood).

At the same time, CNVC’s Executive Director as well as some others in the organization, are deeply concerned that any strategy thus far proposed will not be viable for the organization given its limited resources, and would like to find other ways of addressing the needs and concerns of those who want branch offices.

Our time together did not suffice to complete this discussion, nor did we feel comfortable making a decision for the entire organization without representation in our meeting, and to a large extent in the committee itself, from other countries.

Accordingly, we recommend strongly the formation of an international committee to include representatives from all continents to explore and address the needs and concerns of all in the organization. We recommend the committee be chaired by Miki Kashtan, and include the following: Gary Baran, Martha Young, Kay Singer, Godfrey Spencer, existing regional project leaders, Margarita Martinez Duarte, Keld Kobborg Andersen, a representative from the Middle East, and representative from Australia/New Zealand. While this number of people on one committee is larger than we anticipate a working group can sustain, we also anticipate this committee will divide itself to smaller working groups to address the many issues on its plate, and re-convene only to complete its recommendations following the research period.

The main charter of this committee will be to prepare the ground for creating and supporting structures for network connections, especially across cultural and linguistic barriers. We recommend the committee address the following issues and discussion items:

Comments from Rita Herzog:

2. I am confused by the discussion about branch offices. The plan for them to raise their own money, sell materials, and offer training, sounds like a regional NVC group, committed to spreading NVC. Why will they be called "offices" rather than the network groups already existing and newly forming?

I recommend that the NEEDS relating to the strategy of branch offices be fully explored, and checked out with Europeans and others first. In other words, what are the purposes and intended outcomes of establishing branch offices? What activities would they engage in that would meet the needs expressed? Only then can I imagine a productive dialogue on the three discussion items and numerous questions listed.

a. Location of headquarters and establishment of branch offices

DISCUSSION ITEM #1: As the organization grows and develops, we can consider establishing a branch office in Europe and perhaps elsewhere, especially if such offices could quickly become financially self-sustaining. A proto plan for this: CNVC provides seed money, in the form of an interest free loan, to start such an office; the local office then raises funds, sells materials, and offers training to sustain its activities, and repays the loan. Does the committee believe that this strategy will meet more needs than the current structure?

DISCUSSION ITEM #2: One way to increase trust that CNVC is truly an international organization might be to move the HQ outside the U.S., after a North American regional office is established. Is this something the committee wants to endorse? And, if so, can it agree on a suitable location that would likely meet more needs than the current one?

DISCUSSION ITEM #3: If the committee recommends that branch offices be created, what kind of relationship does the committee envision between the branch offices and the headquarters, and among the branch offices? For example, do the branch offices constitute the organization? How does the headquarters or central office coordinate efforts of the branch offices? Is it preferable to have branch offices, as many are recommending, or is it preferable to have local offices self-organize to support the spread of NVC, and to operate autonomously and separately from what would still be one CNVC, as Gary Baran and some others prefer? Does the committee see the establishment of smaller branch offices as potentially allowing for the sense of personal connection in the organization to be rekindled?

DISCUSSION ITEM #4: Financial support for regional offices.

b. General issues pertaining to language and culture

We are also aware (sometimes painfully so) of the challenges associated with operating internationally (which includes efforts to protect our logo and organization’s name in countries throughout the world), and establishing and maintaining nourishing connections across cultural/linguistic boundaries, including the logistical challenges associated with the need for translations. We have often underestimated the various resources necessary to handle this level of complexity in a way that is satisfying to all concerned, and we are committed to finding such resources.

c. Nurturing a global community

Whether or not the committee recommends the establishment of branch offices, we would like the committee to find ways to encourage and support in suitable ways the creation of regional councils of people using and spreading NVC. Some ways of doing this are: making it easy for various groups to share best practices on our website, offering training and consulting services to such groups in how to use NVC effectively in group process, and publicizing in-person meetings and finding other ways to encourage and endorse such meetings.

More generally, we would like the committee to discuss and come up with recommendation for supporting the development of NVC groups and communities.

d. Geographical Projects

Currently CNVC sponsors geographical projects covering four regions: Africa, Eastern Europe, Portuguese Language areas, and South Asia. We would like the committee to decide when and how to establish geographical projects in the following regions where NVC is being actively spread, and which are not currently coordinated by project coordinators:

Latin America

North America

Western Europe

Australia/New Zealand

Middle East

Far East

e. Board Membership

We would like the committee to discuss the possibility of inviting the geographical project coordinators (currently estimated at 10-12 if all regions have coordinators) to find someone from their region to recommend to join the CNVC Board. If such recommendation is adopted, Board meetings will then become gatherings that are more fully representative of the people of the earth. (The Board may want to change its bylaws to mandate that a certain number of its members reside in different parts of the world.)

In its deliberations on this recommendation, we would like the committee to discuss how to balance the natural affinity of such board members with the regions they represent with the desire to have these people be committed to the global vision of CNVC and able to harmonize CNVC’s local and global organizational needs.

f. Learning from experiments in novel organizational forms

We would like the committee to study the various experiments in developing local and regional organizations and groupings that exist within the network (e.g. French speaking network), as well as those existing in other organizations (e.g. United Religions Initiative) as part of its efforts to address the challenge of global functioning. We would like recommendations for organizational structure and functioning to arise from such learning.

In addition, we would like the committee to propose ways of sustaining ongoing learning within the organization.

g. Membership, decision making, and board selection

Feedback to the Strategic Planning Committee suggests that one of the critical issues for the Board to address is who makes what decisions, and how, and to find ways to ensure that those who will be impacted by any decisions have the opportunity to have a say in them and to participate in as many of them as feasible. In this sense, we would like CNVC as an organization to be in the forefront of a worldwide democratization movement, which we see as implicit in the NVC commitment to connecting in a way that enables the needs of all concerned to be met peacefully.

One area of decision-making pertains to who serves on the Board and how that is determined. The Board has struggled with this issue for several years and has tried to create a process making it easier for everyone in the network to have input into this. Nevertheless, as before, the Board continues to be self-selecting. The notion of membership that the Board has endorsed (anyone can become a member of CNVC who is willing to express a commitment to the mission of the organization) has not been very widely publicized; nor does this notion of membership seem to carry any special power, such as being able to vote for Board members.

All this relates to the issue: Who is part of CNVC? Who are its members? These issues have remained unresolved and there has been no clear mandate about how to proceed to resolve them.

On the one hand, we would like our organization to reflect the diversity in the NVC network (and in the larger world we are aiming to serve), and to offer those who are committed to CNVC’s mission the widest opportunity possible for them to participate in activities in support of that mission. On the other hand, although the (current official) policy allowing anyone to be designated a member who expresses a commitment to the mission of the organization is inclusive and democratic, this policy provides no assurance that such people have more than a superficial grasp of what that means. So they may not be well prepared to assume the responsibilities inherent in leadership or in selecting leadership. For the purpose of selecting board members, Gary would like to see something more required for membership, something that makes it likely a person appreciates the power and potential of NVC and hence the significance of the mission of CNVC to support the spread of this process. For the most part, this is something that comes through participating in IITs or comparable intensive training, and often over several years. Consequently, we offer the following recommendations regarding membership in CNVC and for the selection of board members:

In seeking to fill vacancies

on the Board the Board will:

1. invite and encourage

   regional project coordinators to find potential board members from

   their regions;
2. create a Board endorsed

   slate of candidates that (when possible) gives significant weight to geographical, racial, ethnic, class, gender, and other forms of

   diversity;
3. create an election process

   by 2005 whereby Board members are elected by the members of CNVC, defined for now as: CNVC Board Members, CNVC project coordinators, CNVC

   certified trainers, CNVC staff, and IIT graduates.

(We want to note that although IIT graduates may be

affluent, scholarships and parity rates allow for less affluent people to take part in IITs. Also, we can imagine the Board wanting to expand the above definition of membership, after a trial period, to more fully include those who have not participated in an IIT but who have, in other ways, demonstrated an ongoing involvement in NVC and commitment to CNVC’s mission.)

[DISCUSSION ITEM #5: There are several issues we would like the committee to discuss related to this section:

(1) We may want to distinguish between (a) people we would be comfortable PARTICIPATING IN SELECTING Board members (“members of CNVC”), as opposed to (b) people we would be comfortable SERVING ON THE BOARD. If so, we will want to establish criteria for each group, requiring more stringent criteria for (b).

(2) If there are people who have had relatively little exposure to NVC but could help CNVC raise its profile, would we be open to making exceptions to the criteria for Board membership and, if so, would there be a committee and/or process established to approve this exception?

(3) Do we want to establish an advisory board and, if so, what steps do we want to take in that direction and when?

h. Report from French Speaking Team

Our discussions have been deeply affected and informed by the French speaking team’s responses to us. We included, in some fashion, all the major categories they mentioned in our plan, and a number of specific items. Nonetheless, we did not include each specific strategy, because the main categories will be assigned to committees to complete plans for them. The level of specificity of the French speaking team did not always match the level of detail we wanted to include in this plan. As a result, we highly recommend that the committee read, absorb, discuss, and evaluate each and every recommendation offered by the French speaking team in its efforts to

address its charter.

5. Detailed Strategic

Plan

The following several pages provide details about the plan itself, in skeleton format, according to the categories and timeline discussed above in sections 3 & 4. Additional notes, thoughts about directions, and initial recommendations to those assigned to do the work are included in section 6 of this document. The

specific line items included in this plan came from 4 different sources:

• The themes we collated from input provided by the

  network and included in our report to the February 2004 Board meeting (see appendix A for the February 2004 report, which describes in detail

  the questionnaire process).
• The French-speaking team response, which was appended

  to that report, having arrived too late to be integrated (included in

  this appendix as well).
• The previous drafts of this strategic plan prepared by Gary Baran.
• Further discussions we had in our in-person strategic planning meeting on Aug 12-13, 2004.

For each of these items we

made a recommendation as follows:

1 – We recommend this item be attended to in the first year. We are satisfied with the discussions we have had, have arrived at a clear recommendation of specific action and a specific person responsible for the action, and would like the board to approve our recommendation.

2 – We recommend this item be attended to in the first year. We have identified a clear action plan that’s already known and that Gary Baran has agreed to take on personally.

3 – We recommend this item falls in year 2 or later, and we have not had sufficient discussion to come up with clear recommendations. At the same time, we have reached consensus that this item needs to be addressed, and have a broad sense of general direction about it. Accordingly, we recommend this item be addressed by a future configuration of the strategic planning committee.

4 – We discussed this item, and recommend that it be dropped from this plan. For some items in this category we recommend they be picked up after year 5, and for others we recommend dropping them altogether, as they don’t fit with our current sense of mission and priorities.

5 – This item surfaced, and we had preliminary discussions about it without reaching consensus even about general directions. At the same time, we believe this item to be significant, or received input that it is important for a significant portion of our constituency. We therefore recommend that it be assigned to the Executive Director, the board, or a future configuration of the strategic planning committee for further consideration and to develop a plan or recommend dropping it. For some items we state to whom we would like it to be assigned. In other cases we have not had sufficient discussion to make that recommendation, and leave this decision to a future configuration of the strategic planning committee.

(This plan continues with 3 Excel spreadsheets describing the plans for year 1, years 2-3, and years 3-4. The plans

for years 4-5 as well as section 6 are in another Word document).