A small charity can plan its strategy without paying anyone. The real cost is board time, and the planning works when that time is organised: one person prepares the evidence, one person runs the discussion, and the board meets a few times with a clear job for each meeting. Free planning has a limit, and the board reaches it when it cannot agree.
Planning is worth the time at any size. NCVO’s guidance on strategic planning makes the point that even the trustees of the smallest groups benefit from standing back to question what their charity does, and that the smallest charities may have the most to gain.
On a tight budget? Our strategy service is set up so a committed board can do much of the work itself, and it shows where outside support makes the difference. See how we work on charity strategy.
What a board can do without paying anyone
The decisions that make a strategy useful are ones only the board can take. Under the Charity Governance Code, the board is expected to set the charity’s long-term vision with its stakeholders, and to agree a strategy with clear aims over a specific timeframe. Outside help can bring structure and an independent view. The choices themselves belong to the trustees, so a board with no budget still holds the part that matters.
Time, candour and a willingness to choose are what it costs. A first strategy’s contents are set out in what a small charity strategy should contain, and for an existing strategy the starting point is deciding between a refresh and a reset. Neither covers how a board with no budget organises itself to do the work.
Who does what when nobody is paid to run it
Someone has to prepare the evidence. The chief executive, or a trustee with the time, pulls together an honest account of where the charity is: income and where it is fragile, what the team can carry, demand, and what is about to change. Almost all of it comes from records the charity already has, such as the accounts, this year’s budget and the board minutes. A short paper circulated before the first meeting saves that meeting from spending its first hour establishing the facts.
A different person should run the discussion. That person keeps the meeting to its purpose, makes sure quieter trustees are heard, and checks that each decision is clear before the meeting moves on. It does not have to be the chair. If the chair or the founder has a firm view on the charity’s direction, asking another trustee to run the sessions lets them argue their case without also controlling the room.
Between meetings, a small working group can turn what the board agreed into wording for the next meeting to approve. Drafting can be handed to a group. The decisions cannot, and what the board delegates and what it keeps is worth settling before the work starts so nobody mistakes a draft for an agreed position.
How the meetings should be set up
A sequence of three meetings, each with one job, gives a small board enough structure to reach a strategy. The first agrees where the charity is now, working from the prepared paper. Disagreements about the facts get settled here, before anyone argues about the future, and the meeting ends with an account of the charity’s position that every trustee accepts.
The second chooses the priorities and the boundaries: the two to four changes the charity will pursue, and what it will stop doing to make room for them. This is the meeting where the hard trade-offs happen, and deciding what your charity will stop doing covers that decision in detail. What comes out of this meeting is a short list of agreed choices, which the working group turns into draft wording.
At the third meeting, the board agrees how the charity will know the strategy is working, reviews the working group’s draft, and signs it off. Leave enough time between meetings for the draft to be written and read.
If a funder or a registration application needs the longer strategic plan as well, write the one-page strategy first. The plan then becomes a drafting job for the working group, expanding each agreed choice with the evidence, programme detail and finances behind it. Trustees review and approve the plan, and their time goes on the decisions, with the writing left to the group.
Book all three dates at the start, so the process cannot drift into next year. Agree before the first meeting that anything left unresolved goes to the working group with a date to come back. And send a short note of each meeting to any trustee who missed it, so nobody arrives at the next one reopening what was settled.
Discussion can happen anywhere, including an informal away day. Adopting the strategy is a board decision, so it needs to happen at a properly run meeting: a meeting held the wrong way can produce decisions that are not valid. Record the reasons with the decision, and how trustees make decisions that hold up covers what the board needs to be able to show.
Signing off is the start of the work. Put the strategy on every board agenda, test significant decisions against it, and agree now when the board will next look at it as a whole. When that time comes, a refresh or a reset can be run by the same people in the same way.
Running the sessions yourselves? The Charity Strategy Toolkit includes a facilitation guide for running a strategy session with your board and an assessment tool for an existing strategy, alongside step-by-step frameworks for the one-page strategy and the full strategic plan.
Hearing from the people you serve without a budget
The Governance Code expects boards to consider the views of service users and other key stakeholders, and to involve stakeholders in setting the charity’s long-term vision. For a small charity, the practical route is the contact it already has.
Ask people at the sessions and services the charity already runs. Read the feedback already collected. Talk to staff and volunteers who see the work every week, and to the organisations that refer people to you. Bring what you heard to the first meeting, so the account of where the charity stands includes the view from the people it serves. Their answers also test the reasoning behind the work, which is what a theory of change sets out.
Keep the asks proportionate. A few questions at the end of a session the person was attending anyway respects their time more than a long survey. Afterwards, tell the people who took part what the charity decided and how their views shaped it, which gives them a reason to answer next time.
Finding skills you are not paying for
Look at the board first. Trustees may bring planning, facilitation or project experience from their working lives, and a trustee who has run strategy sessions elsewhere can run them here. Volunteers may have the same skills. Asking costs nothing, and it puts experience to use that the charity already has.
A trustee or chief executive from a similar charity can also help as a critical friend for a single session. Someone who knows the sector but has no stake in your decisions can ask the questions the board has stopped asking itself. An exchange of this kind can be returned, with your trustees doing the same for them.
If nobody has those skills, the lasting answer is to recruit them. A board effectiveness review asks if the board has the skills the charity needs now, and a gap it finds becomes a recruitment question with a clear purpose. Recruiting trustees when nobody applies covers how to fill it.
A new charity is in a different position, because its first strategy and plan sit alongside setting up and registering. That work is part of our Charity Setup support.
When free help stops being enough
The Governance Code expects trustees to recognise the limits of their knowledge and experience and to take appropriate advice, without giving up responsibility for the decision. For strategy, the limit shows in a few recognisable ways.
One sign is a board that cannot agree on direction, so the second meeting ends where it began. Another is a founder or chair too close to the decisions for anyone inside to run the discussion fairly. Sometimes the strategy drifts because of problems in governance or income that the board has not yet faced. And a funder or registration deadline can leave no time to work through it at board pace.
Pushing on regardless carries its own cost. A strategy agreed by a narrow majority, or written by whoever had the most stamina, is one the rest of the board is unlikely to hold itself to, and the drift it was meant to fix can start again.
Outside help does not have to mean a long project. Our strategy service includes a single focused session on the decision or problem in front of the board, which can be enough to get a stalled board moving again. And if the board cannot tell if strategy is the problem at all, the Charity Growth Diagnostic looks at strategy alongside governance, systems and income.
When your board cannot settle it alone, a conversation with someone outside the room can show what kind of help would move it on, and if you need any at all. Book a free 30-minute call.
