Bob Harris and Matt Harrington

Bob Harris, CAE, provides free governance tools and templates at The NonProfit Center. He is on the faculty for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and has worked in Amman, Jordan, Tokyo, Japan, Kiev, Ukraine and Minsk, Belarus to help organizations. Bob received “Association Partner of the Year” award from Association Trends Magazine in 2012, and he has authored books on association management. To improve management he created the Association Self-Auditing Process, used by more than 20,000 organizations. He believes that nonprofit organizations should be as efficient as any commercial business.

Matt Harrington is an author, executive director of a chamber of commerce, and founder of an organization that focuses on culture, leadership and people www.HarringtonBrands.com.

Articles by Bob Harris and Matt Harrington

• Who needs a strategic plan?

  Monday, January 13, 2020

  In a meeting with a dozen executive directors, a colleague said, "Who needs a strategic plan anymore? That stuff doesn’t work." From the nods and statements of other executives, the rest of the room seemed to concur. It was incomprehensible. I thought, "No strategic plan?" My heart sank. How can we expect volunteer leaders to advance a mission and priorities if there is no roadmap? Do they adjust their priorities at each meeting? React to a crisis of the month, or wait for the current chair to identify his or her legacy projects?