Second Harvest Column: Strategic Planning

By Lois Rockhill

I am looking out over the Rocky Mountains. There is a dusting of snow on the slopes. First light of morning shows dark clouds over the town of Vail. Driving in we were dazzled by the streaks and pockets of gold aspens woven into the evergreens running up toward these high peaks.

Not a bad place to tackle strategic planning. Oops. Did I lose you? Hang on. Those consultants yesterday managed to put a spin on the process that would have had you begging to participate. I’m serious. They were good.

Our work here in Vail is focused on food banks. We are looking at the strategic plan from the national level and are being challenged to bring it alive in each of the regions of the United States each food bank serves. That is East Central Indiana in our case.

The national vision is a hunger-free America. Our vision is a hunger-free East Central Indiana. The national mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight against hunger. Our mission is to provide a coordinated approach to alleviating hunger in East Central Indiana.

There is much more pertaining to food banks and the urgency of our mission. Other information is more generic and can be used by any board of directors to enrich your experience with the organization you govern.

In order to govern well, to set the structure for strategic planning, board members must have the opportunity to tackle tough subjects and I don’t mean financial statements. The consultants encouraged board members to structure their meetings so they can spend most of their time talking about what is important to the mission, vision and ends of their organization.

This may be old hat to some but new to others. A good tool to start with is the consent agenda. This is an item on your agenda that contains things that need no discussion but simply need approval. For some boards this would include the minutes, the chair’s report, the CEO’s report, committee reports, correspondence, operational updates.

For others it might have in it items that outside entities require board approval on but that the board has given over to the CEO.

Once all of these items are put in one place and acted on with one motion, the board is done with the perfunctory exercises that usually take so much time. They get detail on each item through the board packet that is mailed or e-mailed a week or two before the board meeting so they stay informed but don’t need to use valuable time to discuss things they have already received. If there is something that needs more attention it can be moved from the consent agenda and added elsewhere.

With that out of the way, the board can take on the big, important discussions. In our case, last board meeting, members tussled with what service they believed our organization’s ownership thought we should be providing, to which people and at what cost. That involved discussion emphasizing a focus on ending child hunger, and measuring our cost of hunger relief against like sized food banks in our network.

An interesting suggestion made by the consultants was to conduct board meetings with no paper. Board members receive everything via e-mail or listserv so that they are fully informed. The lack of paper on the table provides the setting for discussion and exchange of ideas. You might find yourself sharing what each of you has done in the past few months as a board member, or look at your articles of incorporation in light of the direction the organization is now headed. You could get a hold of your core values, talk about the organization’s visionary future or come up with one or two really big stretch goals.

The point is to get those brains working. If you aren’t overwhelmed with a busy-work agenda, you will have time to focus on your own burning platform that could very well transform your organization.

Lois Rockhill is executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana. She can be reached at

lrockhill@curehunger.org.