Strategic Planning Update

As we enter the summer months, the Friends board and our committees have been checking in with our work plans. At our annual Strategic Planning meeting in February, when it was only a little colder than it was a couple of weeks ago, the board spent an afternoon sharing food, celebrating the successes of our organization, and discerning how we would like to grow, strengthen, and improve our work.

We voted to match our fiscal year to the calendar year, and to extend our planning cycle to two years, with the current cycle being 18 months to catch us up with our new plan. We then had to decide how to focus our work in those 18 months.

After brainstorming a list of projects and initiatives of interest to board members, we spent a long time discussing where our energies would be best spent in the coming years. You can see in the pictures how many ideas our board is excited about, and how important it was for us to determine to focus our resources in order to effectively live into our mission.

We employed a new-to-the-board activity, using stickers, to create an impactful visual statement of what board members deemed our most important activities. Each board member was given just three stickers, and asked to place them in any arrangement (one per idea, all three on one, being sneaky and tearing one in half, etc.) by the project(s) she or he thought most needed our attention. After valuable back-and-forth the discussion and some difficult individual decision making, the board came quite organically to something close to consensus on our strategic priorities.

In the coming months Friends will be looking to focus much of our energy on our sponsorship of the Blue Ridge Regional Park, engaging the public and our membership, expanding participation in our activities, and developing an endowment to support our work and help us expand the Jane Pratt Education Award. As we make progress toward these newly defined goals, the board is grateful for the support of FBRM members and friends.

Our board and committees came away from this Strategic Planning session, with new foci for creating committee work plans and commitment to our organization’s mission. As the year speeds by, we have committed to regularly referring to those plans to ensure we keep on track. We value our members’ input, and will keep all our friends and members updated on our progress and activities. We look forward to continuing to work with you for years to come to protect our mountains.