What is the Content of Your Strategy?

Here is the opening of an article in Forum magazine that is about developing a “Non-Dues Revenue Generation Strategy” for your association:

Your board has just concluded its latest strategic planning retreat. The chair informs senior staff that in order to preserve the financial health of the organization, a serious effort must be made to develop additional non-dues revenue opportunities. In fact, this was a major objective of the new plan.

So let me get this straight. Your organization has a retreat in order to figure out what will drive its success in the future, and their answer is “more revenue.” Or, more specifically, “more revenue, beyond the invoices we know we will send out at the end of the year.”

If this is the content of your association’s strategy, then I feel sorry for you.

Comments

[Sue Pelletier]

This just hurts my brain. This isn't an example from a real organization, is it?

[Jamie Notter]

Well, technically, no--the example was just a hypothetical presented by the author at the beginning of his article. But I am quite confident that there are plenty of real organizations who have that in their strategic plan. They also probably have "increase membership" as a major part of the plan too.