ABOUT THE PROJECT
Community Voices Heard (CVH) celebrates its 30th Anniversary in 2024 and, to help mark that milestone, the organization seeks to create and implement a new strategic plan to guide its next phase of development and work. CVH’s last strategic planning process took place in 2013, resulting in a plan that was implemented in 2014 through the current period.
CVH, with this upcoming strategic planning process, aims to develop a 3-5 year plan to guide the strategic development of its organizing and organizational growth, to maximize CVH’s ability to carry out its mission. As part of this process, CVH hopes to:
Ensure substantive participation and leadership of members in the development of the vision, strategic directions and plan for CVH’s next period.
Build the organization’s unity in future vision, and plan to achieve that vision. The plan should address key organizational questions, which may include:
Where should CVH go in terms of growth? E.g. expand issues/locations, deepen work on core issues, and/or consolidate issues/campaigns? Should this include service delivery as a strategy, or should this be considered separate?
Goal and process of increasing involvement of young people. Key questions include whether this is to build youth organizing or to increase youth involvement in current campaigns?
Depending on the answer, follow up strategic questions may need to be addressed. Including how to implement a unified strategy to increase involvement of young people given CVH’s multiple sites, campaigns and projected capacity.
Examine how to best complement and utilize our voter engagement work, particularly in tandem with our CVH Power c4 work.
CVH engagement with coalitions. There is a desire to develop a system to assess CVH’s engagement with various coalitions and alliances including which to continue participating in, towards what goals, and at what levels.
"What does it mean to be member-led?"
How to be seen a statewide organization vs an organization in 4 places across the state.
How to be seen as a player nationally in organizing eco system
There are two pieces of past/current work that may help to inform the future strategic planning process:
2013 strategic visioning session with staff and board. Results from this should be considered as a starting point for developing an organization-wide vision.
2021 strategic conversations with members.
Proposed Scope of Work
CVH seeks to work with an outside consultant to help develop and implement the strategic planning process. The consultant would work with a multi-stakeholder strategic planning team, comprised of representatives from the membership, staff and board. This strategic planning team would guide the overall process, and ensure that various organizational perspectives are taken into account during each step of the process. The consultant would report to and meet regularly with one main contact person, to be determined by CVH.
PROPOSED APPROACH & TIMELINE
We are envisioning five phases for this project. Below are some envisioned components, though they could be modified based on the ultimate approach, and organizational need and desire. Proposals should encompass services for items 1-4. We have also included projected timelines.
Planning preparation and assessment (Projected time: 1 month, May 2023). Meet with key senior staff and/or planning committee to finalize overall timeline and approach.
Visioning and mapping (Projected time: 2-3 months, June-August) This would include scheduling and facilitation of some/all of the visioning/focus group sessions with wider group of Board, staff and members, and identify and speak with additional key stakeholders (e.g funders, coalition partners, allies).
Planning (Projected time: 2-4 months, depends on organizational capacity, July –October). Facilitate the development of the strategic plan including committee meetings and possible weekend retreat.
Finalize & adopt the plan (Projected time: 2-4 months, depends on organizational process and capacity, September 2023/February 2024). Gather all input from the process into a draft plan for planning committee and board review.
Implement, monitor and revise the plan, as needed.
Prospective consultants should send proposed approach, timelines, and deliverables with bid via email to michelle@cvhaction.org with subject line “Strategic Planning RFP”. CVH may follow up bid submissions with a zoom interview before making a final selection.
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