In 2024, we set out to learn how our sector is centering equity in strategic planning. As part of this journey, we’re lifting up lessons and tools emerging from the field. You can read more about why we were interested in this topic and overall what we learned about equity-centered strategy in Part 1: Meeting the Moment with an Equity-Centered Approach to Strategy Development.

We invite you to explore the rest of our series as well including:

• Part 2: Priming Our Organizations and Ourselves: Readiness for Equity-Centered Strategy
• Part 3: Equity-Centered Strategy: The Process is the Work

In this post, we share what we have learned about who should actually be part of an equity-centered strategy process.

Who plays what role in equity-centered strategic planning?

Who plays a central role in strategic planning is fundamentally a reflection of where power is held in philanthropy. In traditional strategic planning, that answer is simple, yet narrow: the board and executive leadership drive strategic planning, with possibly a few additional inputs from staff and grantees through surveys and interviews. Equity-centered strategy flips that model on its head, and critically examines who participates in the process and where power and decision-making actually live. 
 

Community: From Consultation to Co-Creation

Centering impacted communities in strategic planning isn’t a novel idea in philanthropy, but too often those relationships have led to extractive and transactional practices. Community members — grantees, partners and sometimes impacted individuals — are interviewed and focus-grouped to inform the foundation’s strategy development. The role of community is limited to “giving input.” Rarely, if ever, are community members actually involved in helping with sense-making of the input, and using that to develop strategy.

Equity-centered strategy demands something different: authentic inclusion where community members are not just giving input, but actually helping to shape the strategy. And in a way that is not extractive.

The most successful examples of co-creating strategy with community include…

1. Recruiting board members or staff directly from impacted communities.
   In this way they have meaningful roles in the organization, and understand the context before engaging in strategy development. This is the least extractive way.
2. Including community members on a strategic planning committee, where they are compensated for their time. 
   While this is more transactional than the above, it is one strategy for foundations where the board and staff are not representative of the impacted communities being served. Ensuring they are adequately compensated ensures this is less extractive than otherwise. These individuals cannot speak for an entire community, but their presence shifts power and brings perspectives that would otherwise never reach the decision-making table. This approach creates intentional space for community members to hold power, influencing key decisions in the strategy development itself. 

Funder Highlight: The James Irvine Foundation built upon its already well-established relationships with community members and grantees to develop its Just Prosperity Initiative. The foundation began the process with relationships, including community members most proximate to the issues from the onset, which led the foundation and community to co-create a strategy development process rooted in solidarity, collaboration and trust.

A guiding question when working with the community should be: How do we engage the wisdom of those most impacted by inequity so that they will emerge with more resources, deeper relationships and long-term outcomes that they desire? When done well, this creates a foundation for deeper, more meaningful partnerships between funders and the communities they serve. 

Board and Staff: Flipping the Script on Who Owns the Process

Unlike traditional strategic planning that is led by the board with input from the executive leadership, equity-centered strategic planning asks the question: who is closest to impacted communities, who understands community needs most deeply and who is in closest relationship with community. Answers to these questions drive what role the board and staff play and who on the board and staff should lead strategic planning. Depending on the composition of the board and staff, their role could vary from little/no involvement all the way to driving strategy development. This could be a big step for many foundations where the board has traditionally held power and owned decision making. This requires trust especially from the board to recognize who is closest in proximity to the community and issues and let them lead.

Throughout all of this, power dynamics must be named openly, and managed so that community members, staff and board (if involved) can work side-by-side, productively. Centering equity takes intentional work to redistribute power in philanthropy’s inherently inequitable structure. 

Funder Highlight: The Pride Foundation is one example of a foundation that engaged staff to lead its strategic planning process. Their entirely staff-led process shifted power and decision-making to staff, all of whom are from the communities that Pride serves, including many prior grantees. 

Consultants: Capacity Without Control

The right consultant can be a tremendous asset, bringing expertise, expanding staff capacity and helping move the process forward. Their role looks and feels different here than in traditional strategic planning.

Rather than seeing themselves as an impartial third party, equity-centered strategy consultants show up with their lived experience and a genuine stake in community transformation. A consultant who is from the community and has lived experience, is best-positioned to have the trust of the community, engage authentically and center community voice in their research and synthesis.

Another critical way in which the role of the consultant is different is in sense-making. Instead of owning the sense-making, the consultant supports the strategic planning committee to deeply engage in sense-making. They hold space, guide and support but are not there to drive the work.

The right consultant values aligned, relationship-centered, and brings not just rigor, but also partnership, joy and gratitude throughout the strategy process. 
 

Consultant Highlight: Roanhorse Consulting is an Indigenous-led social enterprise consulting firm that partnered with the Waters Meet Foundation to develop an evaluation for their Equity Healing Framework. Given Roanhorse’s connection to the Indigenous communities that the Waters Meet Foundation serves, the process drew upon Indigenous knowledge and ecosystems, leading to deeper connections between consultant and client, and a framework centered around shared values.