As 2025 winds down, a lot of teams are tired, short on time, and still expected to “get strategic” before January.
The good news: effective planning for 2026 doesn’t require a 40-page document. The most useful plans right now are clear, short, and tied to real decisions your team has to make in the next 12 months.
Recent guides on strategic planning in 2025 all point to the same core ideas: revisit your mission and vision, pick fewer priorities, use evidence not guesswork, and connect long-term strategy to near-term execution.
Here’s a simple planning flow you can use with your board, leadership team, or small staff as you head into 2026.
1. Start with the real picture, not the ideal one
Before talking about goals, get honest about your current reality:
- What actually worked in 2025?
- What clearly did not?
- Where did you spend time and money that didn’t move the needle?
Nonprofit and sector reports going into 2026 show ongoing pressure from fundraising challenges to higher demand for services. Rather than treating these as background noise, name them. A 2026 plan that ignores constraints will end up in a drawer by March.
Working session idea:
Hold a 60–90 minute meeting with three flip charts (or digital equivalents): Wins, Pain Points, Patterns. Capture insights from across the team before you try to set any new goals.
2. Re-check your mission, vision, and values
Several 2025 planning resources urge organizations to revisit their mission, vision, and values (MVV) before locking in a new plan.
Ask:
- Does our mission still match the community or customers we actually serve now?
- Is our vision specific enough to guide real tradeoffs?
- Do our values show up in decisions, or only on the website?
If the answer is “not really,” you don’t have to rewrite everything. Sometimes a light refresh in language is enough to sharpen focus and clear up confusion.
Working session idea:
Host a short MVV review with key stakeholders. Keep it to three prompts:
- What still feels true and energizing?
- What feels vague or outdated?
- What needs a clearer promise or sharper focus for 2026?
3. Choose 3–5 priorities for 2026 (not 15)
One of the biggest themes across 2025 strategic planning guidance is focus: the organizations that make progress pick fewer, clearer priorities and tie them to measurable outcomes.
Instead of listing everything you’d like to do in 2026, choose 3–5 strategic priorities that move you toward your vision, such as:
- Strengthen a core program or product
- Improve financial stability
- Grow or stabilize your team
- Upgrade systems or data
- Deepen partnerships in a key region or sector
For each priority, define what success looks like by December 31, 2026. Then turn those into specific goals with numbers, timelines, or clear outcomes.
Example:
- Vague: “Grow our donor base.”
- Clear: “Increase the number of recurring donors by 25% by Q4 2026.”
4. Turn big goals into 90-day action plans
Research on effective nonprofit and business planning in 2025 emphasizes that strategy only sticks when it is translated into shorter execution cycles with clear ownership.
Once you’ve set your 3–5 priorities:
- Break each goal into 90-day milestones.
- Assign one clear owner for each priority.
- List 3–5 key actions that must happen in the next quarter.
For example, if one 2026 goal is expanding earned revenue:
- Q1 milestone: Pilot one new earned-revenue service with 3–5 customers.
- Actions:
- Interview 5 current clients about needs.
- Build a simple test offer and pricing model.
- Run a small pilot and gather feedback.
This keeps your plan actionable and prevents the “we’ll get to it later in the year” trap.
5. Use evidence, not hunches
Several 2025 strategic planning guides stress the importance of data and evidence assumptions.
That doesn’t mean you need a full analytics department. It does mean:
- Look at real numbers from 2024–2025 (revenue, retention, program results).
- Use trend data in your field when possible.
- Check your assumptions about what’s working or not.
Even simple dashboards—built in a spreadsheet—can help align your board and staff around the same picture.
Working session idea:
Create a “2025 at a glance” one-pager:
- Top 5 metrics that show program or business health
- Top 5 financial metrics
- One or two people-centered metrics (turnover, engagement, satisfaction)
Use this as a starting point when finalizing 2026 priorities.
6. Involve more than just the leadership circle
2025 best practices also highlight the value of bringing multiple perspectives into planning: staff, board, volunteers, and sometimes even clients or community partners.
This matters for two reasons:
- You get a more accurate view of what’s happening on the ground.
- People are more likely to act on a plan they helped shape.
You don’t have to turn planning into a months-long process. A few focused listening sessions and surveys can go a long way.
7. Make the plan visible and rhythmic
Many organizations finish a plan and then tuck it away. The more effective approach (highlighted across multiple 2025 resources) is to treat strategic planning as a living rhythm, not a one-time event.
Some simple ways to do that:
- Review your 3–5 priorities and 90-day milestones in at least one standing meeting each month.
- Use a simple one-page dashboard to track progress.
- Adjust timelines or tactics when reality shifts, instead of waiting until the end of the year.
The goal is not perfection. The goal is to keep strategy and day-to-day work in conversation with each other.
Closing thought
Planning for 2026 doesn’t have to be complicated. A lightweight, honest, and focused process can do more for your organization than a glossy binder of goals no one reads.
If you:
- Tell the truth about where you are,
- Re-align around a clear mission and vision,
- Choose a small number of meaningful priorities,
- Break them into 90-day moves, and
- Keep checking in as you go,
You’ll be in a much stronger position to grow, adapt, and lead in the year ahead—regardless of what 2026 brings.