Moments of disruption, such as those many nonprofits are currently facing, raise the kinds of questions that strategic planning is meant to answer. What matters most? What activities can we pause for now or stop doing completely? While working on a strategic plan may not always be the right next move, a focused, fit-for-purpose process can help nonprofits navigate complexity with greater clarity, confidence, and connection to mission.

Drawing on insights from a Bridgespan-hosted webinar featuring partner Meera Chary, principal Nathan Aleman, and guest speaker Wendy-Anne Roberts-Johnson, president and CEO of the Philadelphia Youth Network, the following is a practical framework to guide strategy work in uncertain times by prioritizing progress over perfection and courage over control.

Click the image to see a detailed overview of the strategic-planning process.

Start with Scope: Define the “Why?” and Set Intentional Questions

Before jumping into the how of strategic planning, it’s important to start with the why. In times of uncertainty, it may be tempting to rush into action without fully pausing to ask: What is the core purpose of this planning effort right now?

For some organizations, the aim may be a full strategic reset in response to seismic shifts such as a major funding loss or leadership change. For others, the goal may be a more targeted refresh to align on near-term choices, adapt to new policy conditions, or make tough resource trade-offs. Either way, getting clear on the scope and intent of your planning effort is essential, not only to focus your energy but to manage expectations and allocate limited time and resources wisely.

One practical way to clarify scope is to anchor the planning process in three to four specific decisions your team needs to make. These intentional questions should guide your process design choices—such as whom to engage, what data to gather, and how long the process will take—and ensure that the strategy work stays actionable.

In uncertain times: It’s worth keeping in mind that a strategic-planning process in its full form may not be feasible, which makes scoping even more important.

If you have a set of critical decisions, but you can’t address them all due to limited resources or time (or other external factors), prioritize based on which decisions are the most important to the moment. A fit-for-purpose process, anchored in purpose and shaped by the right questions, can be more than enough to move your organization forward when you need it most.

Engage Stakeholders Intentionally—Not Performatively

When uncertainty hits, it can be easy to deprioritize community engagement, especially when time, energy, and trust are in short supply. But engaging a diverse set of stakeholders doesn’t have to mean pausing for a months-long input process. Done right, it can be one of your most powerful tools for shaping better strategy, building alignment, and fostering resilience.

That said, not all engagement is created equal. Stakeholder engagement is only meaningful when it’s tied to a clear learning goal such as exploration, validation, or risk reduction. Engagement for engagement’s sake can leave people feeling tokenized or unclear about how their input will be used.

Start by asking:

• Who is closest to the issue we’re trying to solve?
• Whose voice is often missing from strategic conversations?
• What do we hope to learn from each group we’ll engage?

This might mean involving frontline staff to pressure-test implementation plans, inviting board members to reflect on risk appetite, or listening deeply to community partners and program participants to understand their lived experiences and unmet needs.

In uncertain times: Stakeholders are often facing their own disruptions, which makes transparency and trust even more critical. Setting expectations up front—that this will be an ongoing conversation, not a one-and-done event—helps create the space for candor and shared problem solving. Build trust with stakeholders by being clear about what you’re hearing, what’s still evolving, and how their input will help shape decisions.

Clarify Intended Impact and Theory of Change

Before diving into priorities and tough trade-offs, take a moment to zoom out. What is your organization ultimately trying to achieve? And for whom? It can be easy to focus on the immediate decisions at hand, but without clarity on your intended impact and theory of change, even the most well-scoped plans risk drifting off course.

A strong impact strategy acts as your organization’s north star. It guides decision making, helps reveal misalignments, and anchors your efforts in purpose, even as external conditions are shifting. Reaffirming (or even redefining) your impact goals and target populations is the foundation on which strategy should be built.

This is a good moment to revisit your organization’s intended impact and theory of change statements—or to draft them if they don’t yet exist. These tools help clarify:

• Who is the population of focus?
• Where will the organization do its work?
• What specific outcomes do we want to achieve?
• How will the organization achieve its intended impact?

In uncertain times: If you don’t have time to do a full exploration of your intended impact and theory of change, consider what’s changed most in your context. Are the needs of your community evolving? Are there new systemic gaps that your organization is well-positioned to fill? Are there near-term constraints to delivering on your existing programs?

To support this step, look at both internal insights (program data, staff reflections, financial viability) and external signals (community feedback, policy shifts, peer benchmarking). You don’t need perfect data to move forward, but even directional and qualitative evidence can sharpen your strategy and make your purpose actionable.

Set Strategic Priorities

In resource-constrained environments, trying to do everything is often the biggest risk. Strategic planning is ultimately about focus: deciding what matters and letting go of what doesn’t.

Many organizations fall into the trap of building long wish lists or comprehensive plans that attempt to address every issue or stakeholder need. But this kind of exhaustive prioritization rarely leads to clarity. Instead, it dilutes attention, stretches capacity, and can stall implementation.

A stronger approach is to define three to five high-leverage initiatives that align closely with your mission, respond to current context, and have the potential to drive meaningful progress.

These initiatives should best achieve your intended impact and align with:

• Organizational capacity (staff, systems, and leadership bandwidth)
• Financial sustainability and funding flexibility
• Urgency or time sensitivity
• Risks of inaction

This part of the process may call for hard decisions. Some programs may need to be established, adapted, paused, or even ended. But saying “no” is often what allows you to say “yes” to what truly matters.

In uncertain times: Making strategic trade-offs is not just an analytical exercise; it’s an emotional one. When every program serves a meaningful purpose and is championed by devoted staff, the idea of prioritizing one over another can feel deeply uncomfortable. In these moments, a structured exercise like a program strategy map can help bring clarity and consistency to the process. By assessing each initiative’s alignment with mission and financial sustainability, leaders can ground decisions in shared purpose, not perceived worthiness. The goal isn’t to do more with less, but to have the most impact with the resources available.

Resource to the Strategy, Not Just the Budget

With your strategic priorities in place, the natural next question becomes: Can we afford this? Starting with the budget alone, however, can lead to short-term, constraint-driven decisions that unintentionally undercut long-term impact. Instead, the challenge is to resource your strategy, rather than back into a strategy based on your existing budget.

This doesn’t mean ignoring financial realities. It means beginning with what’s most important, then determining what it will take to deliver. That includes not just dollars, but people, systems, relationships, and time. It also means being clear-eyed about trade-offs, especially when facing volatile revenue streams or rising operating costs.

Ask yourself:

• What resources are needed to advance each strategic priority?
• What will we need to build, stretch, or shift to support implementation?
• What elements of work are non-negotiable in advancing our mission?
• What gaps or risks should we plan for?

This is where scenario planning becomes a valuable tool. Rather than locking into a single path, scenario planning allows you to prepare for multiple realities—best case, likely case, and worst case—and to identify what’s core and what’s flexible across them. This helps ensure that your strategy is resilient, not just idealistic.

In uncertain times: This is a moment to lead with values. In resourcing tough decisions, nonprofit leaders often face tensions between mission and money. Naming those tensions openly and anchoring back to purpose can guide courageous decisions about what to protect in the face of challenges, where to invest, and what to pause.

Plan to Implement: Operationalize, Reflect, and Adapt

A good strategy on paper is only the beginning. To drive impact, you need a clear path to implementation, paired with humility and discipline to reflect and adapt as you go. Particularly in dynamic or uncertain contexts, strategic plans must be both directional and flexible—able to provide structure without becoming a constraint.

Start by defining what success looks like for each priority. What milestones will signal progress? What metrics or indicators will help track results, even if imperfect? Where are you most likely to hit bottlenecks or need course corrections?

Rather than trying to predict and control every detail, focus on building the conditions for responsive execution:

• Assign clear ownership for each priority or initiative, with supporting roles defined
• Set a cadence for reflection that creates space for real-time learning
• Flag which areas of your plan are stable (and can move into steady execution) versus which are more uncertain and may need iteration or re-scoping

An adaptive implementation mindset also means embracing a learning agenda. What are the biggest questions you still need to answer to be successful? What assumptions are you testing? How will your team gather insights and revisit decisions in light of new information?

Implementation of your strategy is not the final step—it’s an ongoing cycle of action, reflection, and realignment. By embedding it into your planning process from the start, you give your team the clarity and confidence to move forward, even in imperfect conditions.

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Strategic planning in times of uncertainty is not about having all the answers. It’s about asking the right questions, making decisions, and staying anchored in what matters most. When done with care and clarity, it can help nonprofit leaders move from reactivity to intentionality, from overwhelm to focus. No single strategic plan will eliminate all complexity, but investing in such a process can help your organization to move forward, even in the face of tumult and change.