UnMode strategic planning took place in June in Batumi, Georgia. The developed strategic plan will allow the network in 2021-2024 to focus its energies on development, sustainability and achieving its main goals, and will give network members an understanding of strategic goals and where they are going with UnMode and what results they want to achieve.
The Sustainable Development Goals
UnMode, like the rest of the world, is now working in the spirit of the 2030 Agenda and in accordance with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Governments, and ultimately humanity as a whole, are responsible for making such ambitious goals a reality. But without many small contributions from civil society organizations and even individuals, the 2030 Agenda and the 17 SDGs will remain a beautiful theory.
Focusing the future of the organization on the SDGs provides opportunities to describe effective stakeholder engagement, the ability to demonstrate the value of one’s activities and competent stewardship of resources, and a commitment to shared global values.
What are the SDGs:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 interrelated goals developed in 2015 by the UN General Assembly as a «blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all». The final document of the General Assembly, «Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development», contains 17 global goals and 169 related targets.
During the strategic planning session, UnMode was able to align the network’s goal and objectives with the Global SDGs:
- SDG 3. «Ensure healthy lifestyles and promote well-being for all at all ages».
- SDG 5. «Ensure gender equality and empower all women and girls – eliminate all forms of violence and exploitation against women and girls».
- SDG 16. «Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and participatory institutions at all levels».
All of the above Sustainable Development Goals are reflected in RuNPUD’s 2021-2024 Strategic Plan.
Strategic planning is…
Strategic planning is the process of choosing the organization’s goals and ways to achieve them. Despite the universal understanding of the importance and necessity of strategic planning, the number of organizations that actually have and implement a strategic plan is limited to a very narrow circle. There are many reasons for this contradiction, and one of them seems to be the poor understanding of how to organize an effective strategic planning process.
Strategic planning, however, is not complicated; rather, it is a deliberate process that helps to clarify what the organization wants to achieve and how it plans to achieve it. The essence of strategic planning is not to develop plans of action for several years ahead, because in such a changing environment, as is the case for nongovernmental nonprofit organizations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, strategic planning would lose its practical meaning.
Strategy is the combination of the organization’s resources and skills, on the one hand, and the opportunities and risks from the environment, on the other hand, operating in the present and future, in which the organization hopes to achieve its main goal. During the strategic planning process, the organization analyzes the external and internal operating environment and looks for the most appropriate goals, strategies and system of actions to achieve them.
Planning and preparation
UnMode put strategic planning into its activity plan right after its registration. For the new network, it was immediately obvious that the strategic plan should define the main directions of activity and become the point from which further work vectors would be drawn, such as communication strategy, financial plan, fundraising strategy, advocacy strategy, etc. All these interrelated processes are tied to strategic planning and cannot exist without it, as they perform auxiliary work to achieve the main goal of the organization.
In fact, the work of preparing to conduct UnMode strategic planning began as soon as the registration documents were received. First of all, the participants in the planning process were identified – all those who are interested in the implementation of the network’s mission and those who can make constructive suggestions: members of the Board, network members, outside experts, etc.
The history and traditions of the organization form an important part of the foundation on which UnMode’s strategic plan is built. How was the organization created? What experiences have been accumulated over time? The network’s history is a description of the events and activities of its members that have influenced the organization, which should be fundamental to UnMode’s activities. To date, this has been a human rights component and advocacy for the rights of people who use drugs/prisoners/ex-prisoners.
To make the UnMode strategic planning effort more effective, information was gathered in advance from participants in the process that would be needed to answer key questions and create a strategic plan. The list of questions for all participants prior to the work included the following: briefly describe the mission (philosophy, long-term vision, core values, and beliefs) of your organization; why your organization exists; what societal problem it is trying to solve; what solution to that problem you propose; what is unique about your organization, etc.
Implementation process
Strategic planning involved network members from several countries in the region that are part of UnMode’s scope of activities. The planning process, as it was decided at the preparatory stage, involved the UnMode Board members, network members, experts, as well as candidates for network membership who are now actively participating in its activities. The strategic planning process was led by Damir Musin, a specialist and experienced expert.
The first block, which was worked through jointly, “UnMode’s Values, Mission, Vision, and Scope of Activity. The content of the block included a description of values, a formulation of the organization’s mission (for whom the organization works, what problems it solves, how and why exactly) and a more detailed description of the main areas of activity. As well as a vision, i.e. a vision of what the organization should become in the future: from the inside and from the outside. The elaboration of this block made it possible to outline the framework and scope of UnMode’s activities.
UnMode’s mission: To protect and enforce the rights of people who use drugs, including those who are incarcerated or released from incarceration.
The next stage of the work was an analysis of several significant areas of activity. External environment analysis – micro level. The analysis of the external environment included two components: a micro-level analysis (analysis of the relevant environment) and a macro-level analysis (analysis of opportunities and obstacles).
he analysis of the meaningful environment involves two basic steps. First, a list was created of all possible groups that RuNPUD works with, including clients/beneficiaries, donors/supporters, partners, competitors, and “adversaries. Second, a more detailed analysis of these groups was conducted. For each of the groups identified, their interests/motivations, UnMode’s goals for those groups, and the offers UnMode makes to them were spelled out.
Analysis of the external environment at the macro level is an analysis of opportunities and obstacles/threats in the external environment. As part of this stage, characteristics in the political, economic, social, technological situation in the region that can have a significant impact and must be taken into account when developing a strategic plan were prescribed.
An analysis of the internal environment is an allocation of the organization’s strengths and weaknesses. It is principally important that the highlighted strengths and weaknesses were directly connected either with internal opportunities/obstacles of the organization on realization of the mission (main directions of activity) and with internal opportunities/obstacles on work with the significant environment (attraction of resources, interaction with partners, etc.). Thus, this analysis identified internal opportunities and constraints associated with the implementation of the main directions of activity, defined in the analysis of the mission and building effective interaction with the key groups, highlighted in the analysis of the external environment.
The identification of development priorities was a summation of the previous work on strategic planning. Development priorities were defined as external (related to network activities, establishing interaction with external target groups, etc.) and internal (related to the organization’s internal activities and capabilities). These are the issues that UnMode needs to work on fundamentally in the long run and cannot be left unaddressed.
Next, the strategic planning participants considered the basic part of the plan: strategic goals and objectives. These goals were set on the basis of the highlighted development priorities.
Goals and objectives identified by participants at the meeting in Batumi:
Objective: To provide access to free exercise of rights and freedoms, access to a fair trial for people who use drugs, prisoners/ex-prisoners.
Task 1: Informing, increasing legal literacy among people who use drugs, prisoners/ex-prisoners and their close environment.
ask 2: Stimulation (impact/influence) of state bodies and state institutions to liberalize drug policy.
Task 3: Implementation of human rights at the international level.
In the final part of the UnMode meeting, participants discussed the organization’s capacity development plan/organizational development plan for fundraising (list of organizations and project topics), network membership issues, etc.
Thus, as of today, UnMode has a clearly articulated and viable strategic plan for four years – 2021-2024. Strategic planning alone does not guarantee success, and an organization can fail due to errors in planning, organization, motivation, and control. Nevertheless, planning can create a number of significant enabling factors for an organization. Knowing what UnMode wants to accomplish today provides an opportunity to clarify the most appropriate courses of action and move in the right direction.