Strategic Plans
The Future of Belonging Project reviewed 35 strategic plans from community-focused organizations in Simcoe and Muskoka, and their alignment with the Community Capital Framework and UN SDGs to identify common themes and gaps in these plans and explore ways they can better collaborate for greater social impact and equity in the region.
Public and nonprofit organizations’ strategic plans uniquely steward an organization’s mission—which is ultimately a delivery of social impact or community good—while holding in tension the fiscal accountability and sustainability of the organization. Like a compass, a good plan orients a nonprofit or public organization to adapt to the changing needs of its beneficiaries while at the same time evolving how it delivers on its mission in proxy of funders, donors, and its board. Strategic plans can be powerful accountability mechanisms for systems change when linked together as a collective governance structure in a community-driven innovation ecosystem. Through this perspective, strategic plans, in their perpetuity, hold a vital leverage point catalyzing social change.
Based upon insights gathered from our participatory workshops regarding Ecosystem Actors and Uncommon Innovation Clusters, we were curious to understand better the landscape of our community and social organizations working to deliver community well-being and safety. We wanted to explore if there could be enough alignment and diverse approaches to hypothetically create the uncommon collaborations conceptualized by the workshop participants.
What We Analyzed
A total of 22 strategic plans from organizations dedicated to community health, well-being, and safety across Simcoe and Muskoka were initially analyzed. The organizations were initially selected based on their system level, work sector, and potential to act as community intermediaries. Intermediary organizations play essential roles in mediating and organizing conditions to bring together diverse groups of people, catalyzing collective sensemaking and initiating collaborative action; increasing the flow of capitals across ecosystems; and/or generating learning, knowledge, and other forms of resourcing across an ecosystem to support transformative change. An intermediary organization could include entities like the YMCA, United Way, or the Simcoe County District Health Unit, among others.
This analysis was then expanded to 35 as workshop participants identified additional ecosystem actors. Each plan was reviewed and analyzed based on the following:
• Individual strategic commitments or pillars outlined in the plan and their alignment to the Community Capitals Framework
• The timeline scoped for each strategic plan
• The alignment of each strategic plan in addressing specific 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Identification of 12 key themes found across the strategic plan landscape
• Alignment of how individual organizations’ strategic plans aligned under the 12 key themes.
What We Learned
The analysis identified that most strategic plans will expire in the next 2-3 years. While this indicates that current plans focus on short to medium-term horizons, this is a serendipitous opportunity to develop new tools and approaches to strategic planning across the region. Collectively, the plans contributed to 12 overarching themes that form the strategic direction of the community and social services landscape. Based upon the frequency of contribution by the individual organizations’ plans analyzed, the themes are ranked as ‘community priorities’ as follows:
- Community Engagement and Partnerships
- Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
- Leadership and Governance
- Health and Wellbeing
- Economic Development and Entrepreneurship
- Innovation
- Housing
- Data & Technology
- Education & Learning
- Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability
- Community Safety
- Food Security
What We Learned
The analysis identified that most strategic plans will expire in the next 2-3 years. While this indicates that current plans focus on short to medium-term horizons, this is a serendipitous opportunity to develop new tools and approaches to strategic planning across the region. Collectively, the plans contributed to 12 overarching themes that form the strategic direction of the community and social services landscape. Based upon the frequency of contribution by the individual organizations’ plans analyzed, the themes are ranked as ‘community priorities’ as follows:
- Community Engagement and Partnerships
- Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
- Leadership and Governance
- Health and Wellbeing
- Economic Development and Entrepreneurship
- Innovation
- Housing
- Data & Technology
- Education & Learning
- Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability
- Community Safety
- Food Security
Examples of How Themes Are Addressed in Individual Plans
Community Engagement and Partnership:
Community engagement and social inclusion are key components in the strategies of most organizations. For instance, the YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka’s Strategic Plan highlights the importance of creating inclusive environments and involving community members in decision-making processes, aligning with community needs and aspirations.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI):
Equity, diversity, and inclusion are central themes in the strategic plans of several organizations. For example, Georgian College and the Simcoe Muskoka District School Board have embedded EDI as core priorities, ensuring that their policies and practices are inclusive and reflective of their communities. Keeping that in mind, not many organizations highlight community safety as part of their plan except the City of Barrie and the Simcoe County Community Well-being Plan, and neither includes food security – a basic need that disproportionately affects members of equity-deserving groups.
Economic Development and Financial Sustainability:
Several organizations’ plans emphasize economic development and financial sustainability, particularly at the municipal and regional levels. The District of Muskoka’s Strategic Plan and the City of Barrie’s Strategic Plan focus on stimulating economic growth and ensuring financial health.
Health and Well-being:
Health and well-being, especially mental health, are prominently featured in the strategic plans of healthcare providers and nonprofit organizations. Example, the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) emphasizes patient-centered care and promoting wellness.
Environmental Sustainability and Climate Action:
Environmental sustainability and climate action are included in strategic plans of organizations such as the City of Barrie and the District of Muskoka. However, climate change is not as prominently featured across many plans, indicating a potential area for growth in environmental planning.
Innovation and Technology:
Adopting innovative, data-driven approaches and digital technologies is essential for advancing organizational goals. Georgian College’s emphasis on digital innovation and Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care’s focus on data-driven approaches exemplify this trend.
Housing and Social Services:
Housing and social services are significant focus areas, particularly for municipal organizations and social service providers. The County of Simcoe’s 10-Year Affordable Housing and Homelessness Prevention Strategy addresses homelessness and housing affordability.
Food Security:
Food security is not a focus for most organizations. The Simcoe County Food Council is one of the only organizations highlighting food security as their priority. There is a clear ecosystem gap here, and there is potential for organizations to investigate it if they want to meet other priorities highlighted in their plans.
Implications in Supporting a Future of Belonging: The top-ranked theme, Community Engagement and Partnerships, reflects regionally the identification and importance of collaboration and relationship-building in driving community impact. Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), the second-ranked theme, indicates the growing emphasis on addressing systemic inequalities through strategic commitments and missions across our community landscape. Leadership and Governance, Health and Well-being, and Economic Development and Entrepreneurship themes point to the critical role of organizational leadership in fostering innovation and sustainability across the region. The themes of Data & Technology, Education & Learning, Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability, Community Safety, and Food Security reflect a broader range of emerging and outlier factors that contribute to community resilience.
However, when these themes are examined through a trauma-informed perspective and in the context of the future of belonging, there could be several unintended implications with the rankings, indicating a misalignment with the needs of equity-deserving groups, which often require more direct and intentional focus on safety, inclusion, and systemic change. While the themes of community engagement, EDI, and partnerships are present, their practical implementation must prioritize and center marginalized groups to address their specific barriers. With issues most relevant to marginalized communities—such as housing, safety, and food security—remaining lower on the priority list, long-term impacts on their sense of belonging, health, and well-being may be limited both in the organizations and the community at large.
An inclusion-focused lens to create a truly inclusive, equitable, and safe community for all would re-prioritize the themes and shift focus on the strategic planning level to consider organizations aligning to the following themes:
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1. Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at the Core: Institutions place EDI as a central pillar in their strategic planning, ensuring all policies, programs, and services are co-designed with the needs of equity-deserving groups in mind.
2. Prioritize Community Safety: Strategic plans explicitly address the safety concerns of marginalized groups, recognizing that safety encompasses physical protection as well as emotional, psychological, and cultural security.
3. Meet Basic Needs First: Housing, Health, and Food Security: Institutions reprioritize their missions to address fundamental needs like housing, health, and food security, especially for equity-deserving groups, through an intersectional lens (see Figure 2.3 Wheel of Power/Privilege).
4. Shift Community Engagement and Partnerships Toward Co-Creation: Strategic plans reframe community engagement as a co-creation process with equity-deserving groups, empowering these communities to shape the services and solutions that affect their wellness and prosperity.
5. Align Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability with Equity: Reframing climate action as social justice and equity ensures vulnerable populations are protected from environmental risks and those with land stewardship knowledge lead this conversation.
6. Inclusive Leadership and Governance
Organizations prioritize new leadership models, including diverse ways of knowing and doing, and advocate for lived-experience representation in board roles and governance structures, ensuring equitable representation in decision-making circles.
7. Economic Development and Entrepreneurship – Institutions focus on co-designing with equity-deserving groups to develop or address the systemic barriers faced by equity-deserving groups in traditional entrepreneurship frameworks.
8. Promote Innovation through Inclusivity – Strategic plans frame innovation as a tool for inclusion and social justice, focusing on participatory innovation methods that benefit all community members with future-fit change.
9. Use Data & Technology to Drive Equity – Institutions establish digital innovation policies and approaches that harness the power of different types of data to capture lived experience, establish transparency, protect privacy, and address the climate impacts of technology solutions and services.
10. Place-Based Measures of Value and Impact – Strategic plans or theories of change use new types of place-based value creation measures such as intersectional metrics, quality of belonging, and regionally benchmarked social determinants of health frameworks. Impact measures could include. A contribution to the regeneration of Community Capitals
What Happens Now?
With over 50 Uncommon Innovation Clusters, the Future of Belonging has begun to develop a catalogue of collaboration scenarios leveraging and contributing to regional community capitals (see Appendix C). As The Future of Belonging continues to host additional workshops, we will expand this catalogue and develop a repository of tools and resources available through Community Impact Labs to support the co-design of uncommon collaborations for community, belonging, safety, and well-being.