Maximizing Foundation Effectiveness: Aligning Program Strategy, Organizational Capacity, Strategic Planning, and Performance Assessment to Achieve Success

This paper outlines a framework for increasing the philanthropic performance of an organization by focusing on strategic planning and development of tight logic models for the organization's programs. Strategic planning gets broken down into five steps: meta-planning, evaluation of the internal/external environment, establishment of priorities and vision, development of the strategic plan, and implementation/refinement. Though this paper stresses evaluation and meticulous planning, it finishes by imploring organizations to "allow room for serendipity, improvisation, and intuition in the process, too.