NAWA has a new brand, and we are in the process of creating a new strategic plan. To envision the future, we are reviewing our past and getting community input in the present.
We’ve come a long way! You can see our most recent strategic plan, our 2021 Annual Report Video, and our new identity statement (crafted in tandem with our rebrand) on the strategy page of our new website. We have also completed our 2021-2022 learning year, including our largest ever Washington State Nonprofit Conference with 983 registrants.
We are also thrilled to celebrate our “Slack-iversary.” Yes, NAWA’s Community Slack is a year old. It has over 500 members and lots of great information-sharing is happening—if you aren’t yet signed on, consider joining us.
As the uncertainty caused by the pandemic decreases slightly, it feels like a good time to build on the identity statement and create a plan for the coming three years. We are melding the approach to planning outlined in our Strategic Planning for Nonprofits (SPiN) curriculum with some techniques recommended by David La Piana in Nonprofit Strategy Revolution, such as the identity statement exercise and framing of “big questions” facing NAWA. We’ll keep our plan at a high level to allow for the adaptation we know has become a fact of life in the modern world, especially for nonprofits.
We have also been soliciting input from member organizations to guide our planning. We are grateful to 26 nonprofit leaders who took the time to meet with us for in-depth interviews earlier this year. Their thoughts are summarized in this 2022 Listening Project Summary Report. Our planning will also be informed by ongoing listening such as feedback received following learning programs and our conference, input from community engagement partners and equity ambassadors, and reflections following an all-staff DEI training by Equity in the Center using the Awake to Woke to Work framework. Our board and staff will use all this information to have generative conversations and chart our course during the summer and fall, creating our plan by the end of 2022.
If you have hopes for NAWA, or feedback we need to hear, please email me. We are a network of nonprofits and allies, and we are here to serve you. So, we truly want to hear what you have to say.