Mike’s Monday Message Takeover: Building Our Future: AFP’s Strategic Plan for 2025 and Beyond

In July 2022, AFP Global, in collaboration with McKinley Advisors, began the process of developing a new strategic plan and updated AFP governance structure to meet the changing needs of the fundraising profession. With the global board’s guidance, two groups were created, the AFP Strategic Planning Committee, which would draft a strategic plan for 2025 and beyond, and the AFP Governance Ecosystem Task Force, which was charged with reviewing the AFP board and committee structures, appointment processes, chapter relations, and management of volunteer opportunities.

In addition to these volunteer groups, we wanted to make sure that we engaged the broader fundraising community, so that our plans moving forward reflected the diverse needs and experiences of all of our members and stakeholders. Over the last year, we conducted interviews with 20 individuals, facilitated four focus groups — including a specialized session focusing on IDEA — and launched comprehensive surveys in three languages.

Thank you to everyone who provided insightful feedback throughout that process. Your input was critical to helping us understand what our community needs from AFP and the priorities that we should be focusing on moving forward.

The strategic planning committee took what we learned from you and developed a plan that we believe will allow us to build on the progress we have made, while tackling new challenges and charting a path for future growth.

The new strategic plan, which was approved unanimously by the AFP Global Board at the July board meeting, is focused on three primary pillars: elevate member experience, revolutionize education and professional development, and enhance global reach and impact. Each pillar then contains several objectives which will help guide the direction of this work. These objectives are intended to position fundraising professionals for success and raise the visibility of our profession.

 

An important similarity between the previous plan and this one is our continued commitment to professional development. We chose the term “revolutionize” because we felt that it conveyed the dynamic nature of continuing education in our profession. Our membership has diverse professional needs, and it is AFP’s goal to meet our members where they are, providing core fundraising training, as well as leadership development, and cutting-edge courses focused on innovations such as artificial intelligence and donor-advised funds.

One difference that you will notice between the previous strategic plan and this one, is that promoting inclusion, diversity, equity, and access is no longer a separate pillar, but is woven as an objective throughout the other three pillars. We felt that this change better encapsulated AFP’s view of IDEA — that it should be integrated into everything we do. Our commitment to IDEA remains strong, and by creating an IDEA objective within each pillar, we are holding our entire organization and our profession accountable for IDEA progress and ensuring that it remains top of mind throughout all of our efforts.

Another update for this new plan is that we are broadening our efforts to champion ethical fundraising. This new pillar, to enhance global reach and impact reflects how all of the work that was done around ethics in our last strategic plan has set our organization up for future progress. We are now in a position where we can advocate on behalf of our profession and build partnerships that will help us drive meaningful change on a global scale.

Finally, as a result of the feedback from our member outreach, we felt that including a pillar focused on elevating the member experience was essential. Our focus while delivering on this goal will be consistency and connection. We want to serve as a resource for our chapters, so they have the tools they need to build community and drive impact at the local level. We also want to facilitate connection between chapters, because it will take collaboration to achieve broader success.

With that in mind, we will be spending the next few months, before this plan goes into effect in January, providing members and chapter leaders with the information they will need to help us implement this plan. Because we can’t do it without you! Your participation is just as important moving forward as it has been throughout this entire process. So, be on the lookout for more information in your chapter and member newsletters, on social media, and on the AFP website. If you have any questions, please reach out to afpstratplan@afpglobal.org. 

We look forward to working together on these goals, to drive impact on behalf of our organization, our profession, and the world.