Workshop Minutes for March 28th Session

S TRATEGI C P L ANNING
C AP ACI TY B UI LDI NG W ORKSHOP M I NUTES
March 28, 2015
Irvine, CA
Participants:
 Audubon California: Travis Abeyta
 Kern Audubon: Debra See, Bill Moffat, Kevin Fahey
 Sea & Sage Audubon: Doug Lithgow, Carolyn Noble, Janet Baumann
 El Dorado Audubon: Janice Dahl, Mary Parsell
 Whittier Audubon: Linda Oberholtzer
 Pasadena Audubon: Jared Knickmeyer , Deni Sinnott
 Laguna Hills Audubon: Eva Lydick, Paul Klahr
 Los Angeles Audubon: Garry George, Krista Sloniowski
Facilitator: Paquita Bath, Aligning Visions
Welcome –
Travis Abeyta provided a quick presentation on the role of the California
Chapter Network Team and opportunities for future partnership with
chapters.
Agenda and Introductions –
Quick review of the day, approaches, and expected outcomes. Participants
introduced each other and their hopes for planning and the obstacles they
have confronted. Their discussion:
Why Plan?
o Engage new people/volunteers
o Never developed a strategic plan or have one that is not
systematically implemented
o Prioritize goals
o Move from strategy into implementation
Additional items in later discussion included:
o More focused fundraising
o Guide resource decisions
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Professionalize the chapter
Engage the full team in strategic direction
Expand the impact of the chapter
Look to the future
Raise the bar
Help us focus on strengths and learn what to say ‘No” to
Strategic Planning
Presentation by Paquita Bath on Strategic Planning linked to her book “Aligning
Visions Participatory Strategic Planning - A How-To Manual”, available on
www.ca.audubon.org/capacity-building. We discussed the four key questions
addressed in strategic planning and what have blocked chapters in the past.
Major blocks include:
o Lack of worker bees
o Too many projects; hard to prioritize/cut back
o Communication technology; old vs new members
o Resistance or that’s the way we have always done it
o Lack of leadership succession
o Lack of support from the board for planning – resistance;
o Having a plan but then no follow up
These blocks were addressed with a problem-defining tool and a Situation Analysis
later in the day as well as through tools for ensuring that the planning exercises
would result in tangible and practical next steps.
Who Are We?
VISION: Participants discussed how a positive vision for the future of their region
could be helpful. While NAS and most chapters do not have a Vision statement – we
discussed other vision statements and particularly Golden Gate Audubon’s vision:
“North America’s most bird-friendly urban community”.
MISSION: We then looked at mission statements comparing chapter’s missions with
other examples from around California and the country.
VALUES: Finally, the chapters shared their ideas of what values are important and
the benefit of articulating those for attracting new members and living the values in
their meetings and strategies.
These values include:
o Passionate
o Credible
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o Sincere
o Diversity
Where Are We Now?
Paquita covered this section quite quickly with 3 major tools:
1) SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
2) A History Timeline – getting people to talk about the history of the
chapter by focusing on best programs, great people who made a difference,
the ideas that had the biggest impact etc.
3) A trend chart – getting the group to brainstorm major types of trends that
are impacting the chapter (development pressures, economic changes,
demographic changes, technology, - you define the major trends you want to
explore)
There is more information on these tools in Paquita’s “How-to-Guide” mentioned
above or feel free to call her for setting up the use of any of these tools!
We also introduced the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (also
sometimes called Conservation Action Planning by The Nature Conservancy). This
tool is a great strategy development tool that is science based for conservation
impacts. Some Audubon chapters may have the opportunity to participate in these
for key target species and it ties in well with science-based strategic direction.
Where Do We Want To Be?
The group spent quite a bit of applied time in this arena using the following tools:
1) Hedgehog
2) Prioritizing goals using the Flywheel (triangle!)
3) Defining the Blocks
4) Situation Analysis of one issue you want to pursue
5) SMART Goals
By the end of this session all chapter’s had a situation analysis of a problem or
program they wanted to work on.
How Do We Get There?
The rest of the afternoon was spent in this area particularly exploring how to use
the following tools and developing a clear results chain for their program:
1) Theory of Change
2) Logical Frameworks and Results Chains
3) Developing a results chain for your program
4) Benchmarking
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5) Tough Love review
6) Next steps.
Next Steps
We then discussed how to make these SMART goals a reality:
1) Paquita will write up the minutes, incorporate the roster, and send this out to
all participants
2) The Califonia Chapter Network Team has already posted the strategic
planning ppt on the CA Capacity building web site:
www.ca.audubon.org/capacity-building.
3) Paquita will be in touch with each chapter over this 6-month period to help
you advance your SMART goal. Please feel free to send her questions/ call
her (best # so I get the call if I am out of the country is 530 214 0565 or
email: Paquita@aligningvisions.com. Chapters that use her services – and
check in:
a. Advance their goals a lot faster;
b. Get a “thinking partner” – paid for by CA Audubon!; and
c. Help with case studies that can be shared to build all of Audubon’s
chapters!
4) Paquita will send best practices as requested from other chapters (and yours
if you have great stuff to share!!) – so we are not all reinventing the wheel!
She will also be updating her How To Manual with a focus on CA Audubon
chapters! We need your best examples!
5) This capacity-building program is a 2-year program. The first six months
was focused on governance (10/14-3/15)– now we are focused on Strategic
Planning (3/15-9/15) and we will begin a fundraising program in the Fall of
2015.
Evaluation of the Day
All participants were asked to indicate what they liked – or would suggest changing
for future capacity-building workshops. We are offering this program in Richardson
Bay in 2 weeks so these comments are extremely helpful!
What did we like about the workshop?
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Brain exercises outside of our normal box – very expanding!
The exercises were excellent to help us focus on the problem and the way
forward.
Opportunity to experience planning activities with other board members.
I liked the sharing with other chapters.
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Took complex idea of strategic planning and broke it down to be
understandable and usable for Audubon chapters.
Reviewing other chapter’s goals/plan. Explaining and defending our
chapter’s goal/plan. Good interaction.
Sea and Sage
The planning and analysis tools gave a good structure to this process.
Well organized and presented
Liked input from other attendees and that it was encouraged by Paquita
Travis’ presentation
Clear steps how to achieve goals
How to go from idea to a final goal and doing the paperwork.
What should we change for future workshops?
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My brain got a bit tired – need IQ vitamins at lunch
Sometimes I did get lost in what the task was – whether broad or specific
Would have liked a 10 minute birding break in the afternoon
I didn’t realize that there needed to be at least two members from chapter to
be an effective working session. Kind of hard to work on worksheets alone.
Some of the slides with several comments on them were difficult to read in
the time allotted.
One unreadable comment – maybe: I was tired to da’t???
Thanks to your feedback I have incorporated these suggestions for the upcoming
Richardson Bay workshop. I also have 3 handouts at the end of the ppt show in
black/white so you can easily copy them for use with your boards. The others are in
the email!
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