Charms Collaborative
Strategic Plan
February 2002
INTRODUCTION
This document presents the strategic plan for the Charms
Collaborative. This plan establishes a long-range direction for the collaborative,
provides a clear focus for future pursuits, and identifies priorities
for improvement.
Strategic Planning is a process for creating an organization's
preferred future. It is a long range
planning process for organizational renewal and transformation that provides
a framework for
improving programs, management functions, and evaluation of an organization's
progress.
Strategic planning helps organizations think and act strategically, develop
effective strategies,
clarify future directions, establish priorities, improve organizational
performance, build
teamwork and expertise, and deal effectively with a rapidly changing environment.
The strategic planning process involves a series of steps that moves an
organization through:
- understanding relevant external trends and their implications;
- assessing organizational capacity to change and improve;
- developing a mission and guiding beliefs;
- establishing goals, objectives, and action plans designed to move
the organization to
where it wants to be;
- setting a strategic direction to follow to achieve its mission and
objectives;
- communicating its mission, beliefs, and goals/objectives to all stakeholder
groups;
- implementing the action plans it has developed; and
- monitoring progress, solving problems, and renewing action plans.
Organizations implement strategic planning to effectively deal with change
in a proactive rather
than reactive manner by establishing a common purpose, a sense of direction,
priorities for
change, and a blueprint for action. This plan resulted from an analysis
of the collaborative's
strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats anticipated
from current trends and future conditions. Based upon this analysis, a
mission, guiding beliefs, vision, and goals and objectives were established
to guide the collaborative during the next three to five years.
This strategic plan is the culmination of analysis and work by a strategic
planning committee
consisting of members of the Board of Directors, the Operating Committee,
administrators,
parents and school committee members. |
