Mindful of the future: Strategic planning ideology and the culture of nonprofit management

Human Organization, Fall 1999 by Mulhare, Eileen M

Nonprofit Managers in Southeastern Michigan

My principal informants in southeastern Michigan were members of the Michigan Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives (NSFRE), a professional association for nonprofit managers. I was active in the chapter from 1982 to 1990, first as a member and later as an officer. During these same years I was employed full-time as a nonprofit manager in metropolitan Detroit (Mulhare 1984,1991). Most of the 200 chapter members worked in the seven-county area surrounding the city of Detroit. Only 40 percent were employed mainly in fund raising. One-quarter were the chief executives, presidents, or vice presidents of their NPOs. This group included former corporate executives who accepted positions in NPOs after retirement. Three percent of the chapter members were consultants. The remaining 32 percent were primarily responsible for other NPO functions, such as community affairs, public relations, or marketing (Mulhare and Wright 1988:6,8). The membership represented a broad range of NPOs: education (30%), health care (25%), social service and youth activities (21 %), as well as religion, the arts, wildlife and the environment, and public broadcasting (Mulhare and Wright 1988:4).

Through the chapter's monthly luncheon meetings (September to April), annual conferences and special events, I came to know most of the members on a first-name basis. My contacts also included some 30 nonmember guests, that is, people who attended chapter programs but did not pay dues. To obtain nonprofit managers' views on SP I used participant observation, open-ended interviews (especially oral history), small-group discussions, and informal opinion polls. I received hands-on experience in 1988-1989 as in-house coordinator of my employer's SP project (Mulhare 1990).

As of 1982 the only NPOs in the region engaged in formal planning seemed to be universities, major hospitals, and the regional offices of national charities. Nonprofit managers called it long-range planning (LRP) then. They did not switch to the label "strategic planning" until 1985-1986. A leading, local proponent of LRP/SP was the United Foundation, the southeastern Michigan affiliate of United Way of America (UF 1982, 1987). Early users of LRP/SP were nonprofits that relied on the United Foundation's annual appeal for major funding. By 1985, the Detroit office of a national accounting firm was actively marketing LRP/SP consulting services to local nonprofits. In October 1985, a consultant from this firm led the first presentation on LRP/SP ever sponsored by the Michigan Chapter of NSFRE.

The local SP movement gained force in 1987 when a foundation organized the Detroit Strategic Planning Project (1987) in January and published the final report in November. More than 260 prominent citizens formed the various task forces, committees, and advisory councils. Notably, another national accounting firm paid the costs of printing the final report. By the fall of 1987, many of the region's major donors-foundations, corporations, and individual philanthropists-expected to see a strategic plan enclosed with any request for funding. NPOs without a written plan were at a distinct disadvantage (see also Grace 1996:2).