Setting or resetting your strategy
Charity Strategy & Planning Support for Small UK Charities
Set your priorities, decide what to leave, and turn them into a plan your team uses to make decisions
A strategy earns its place when it helps you choose what to take on, what to leave, and where the charity puts its energy this year. We help small UK charities make those choices and turn them into a plan people pick up and use, from writing a first strategy to resetting one that stopped fitting where the charity is now.
Signs Your Charity Needs a Clearer Strategy
Any of these sound familiar?
- New charity, no strategy yet. You’re setting up or newly registered, and a funder has asked for your strategic plan – or you can feel you need the strategy behind it before you go further.
- A strategy exists, and no one uses it. There’s a plan, but nobody refers to it. Priorities shift with who’s in the room or whatever feels most urgent that week.
- The strategy fits a charity you no longer are. It made sense when it was written, but the funding, the team, or the people you serve have changed, and the strategy hasn’t kept up.
- You can’t say no to anything. Everything feels like a priority, so nothing gets the focus it needs, and you’re busier than ever without moving forward.
- Direction is contested. The board and the executive team don’t quite agree on where the charity is heading, and it’s showing in the decisions.
Recognise your charity in one or two of these? That’s what we help with. Not sure what’s wrong? The free call will help you place it.
How We Build a Charity Strategy You'll Use
Get the thinking straight first, then build the plan around it – with your board, so they own what comes out
A strategy handed to a charity doesn’t stick. Strategy worked through with its leaders does. So this is a guided process: we bring the structure and the questions, you and your board bring the knowledge of your charity, and you own what comes out of it.
STEP 1
Understand where you really are
An honest read of your current position: income and where it’s fragile, capacity, demand, and the pressures or changes bearing down on you. Most strategy work goes wrong right here, by starting from where a charity wishes it was instead of where it is.
STEP 2
Get clear on what matters most
We help you and your board decide the two to four things that matter for the next few years, as concrete shifts you can measure, and, just as much, what you’ll stop doing. This is where the hard trade-offs get made, with someone outside the room to hold the conversation steady.
What You Get
A Charity Strategy Your Board Will Use
A plan you can act on, agreed by the people who have to deliver it
- A clear starting position – an honest read of where your charity actually is now.
- Priorities – two to four real choices about what to focus on, written as shifts you can measure.
- Boundaries – a named list of what your charity will stop doing, which is what keeps the strategy from drifting again.
- Success measures – how you’ll know the strategy is working, in outcomes you can point to.
- Board alignment – a strategy your board owns, because they helped develop it and signed up to it.
- A usable document – a single page that guides decisions, plus the longer plan if a funder needs it.
Set Your Charity's Strategy Yourself, Or with Us
Some charities don’t need us for this
Strategy is one of the few things a committed board can do well on its own, with the right structure. So we’ve put our method into tools you can use without us, and we’d rather point you to them than sell you support you don’t need.
Run it yourselves
The Charity Strategy Toolkit is the same method we use: a one-page strategy and the full strategic plan underneath it, with step-by-step guidance and a worked example for each. If you have the board time and the appetite, this is all some charities need.
Diagnosing first?
If you can feel something’s off but can’t name it, start with the Charity Growth Diagnostic. It looks at strategy alongside the other foundations – governance, systems and income – so you find out whether strategy is the real issue before you spend on it.
Want it done with you?
Come to us when the board can’t find the time, when the trade-offs are too contested to settle from the inside, or when the drift is tangled up with governance, income or leadership, and a strategy document alone won’t fix it. That’s the work we’re built for.
Ways To Work with Us on Your Charity Strategy
Once you know you want help, here’s how to get it – three ways in, depending on how much you need
- Charity Strategy Consultation – a single focused session on the decision or problem in front of you. You leave with clear recommendations and next steps. Good when you want an experienced view without a longer arrangement.
- One-off Strategy Project – the full strategy work as a defined piece: scoped, delivered to a timeline, and yours to keep. Good when you know strategy is the job and want it done properly, once.
- Ongoing Support Plan – strategy as part of month-to-month support, for when keeping the strategy alive and used matters as much as setting it. Plans start from three months.
Not sure which fits? That’s what the free call is for.
Strategy Works Best When the Foundations Work Together
Strategy rarely drifts on its own
A strategy that stopped guiding decisions often traces back to something underneath it. Governance that doesn’t hold means no one owns where the charity is going. Income resting on a single funder forces reactive choices that pull the charity off course. Systems that get in the way keep everyone in crisis mode, with no room to think ahead. We work on the foundation that’s actually causing the drift, rather than the strategy document alone, which is why the first conversation matters more than the service you pick.
- Charity Governance Support – if the direction keeps changing because no one owns it.
- Charity Marketing & Fundraising Strategy – if reactive funding decisions are what pull you off course.
- Charity Digital & Tech – if you’re too buried in day-to-day problems to think ahead.
Common Questions About Charity Strategy Support
FAQs
We already have a strategy; it just isn't used. Do we start again?
Usually not. Most of the time, what you’re aiming at is broadly right, and the problem is that it drifted or was never specific enough to guide decisions. We help you work out what’s still worth keeping and what to let go, rather than tearing it up and starting over.
Do you write the strategy, or do we?
We do it with you. We bring the structure, the questions and an outside view; you and your board bring the knowledge of your charity and make the actual choices. A strategy your board didn’t help develop is one it won’t use, so the process matters as much as the document.
Our board doesn't agree on direction. Can you help with that?
Yes – that’s often the real work. Part of what an outside facilitator does is hold a difficult conversation steady, so the disagreement gets resolved in the room rather than carried on afterwards. Board alignment is frequently what a charity needs more than the document itself.
How long does the strategy work take?
Usually, a small number of focused sessions rather than a six-month process. Setting direction doesn’t need to be long – it needs the right people, good information, and someone to keep the conversation on track. We’ll give you a realistic sense of it on the call.
Not Sure If Charity Strategy Is What You Need? Start With a Free Call
A free call is the best place to start
Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll work out where your charity is, whether strategy is really what’s holding you back, and what would help most. If a different route makes more sense for you – a different service, one of the tools, or nothing at all right now – we’ll say so. No pitch, no obligation.