Aligning your strategy and your finances will streamline your ability to plan and finance your activities, which will ultimately see your association grow. You need to make sure you align your finances to your strategic plan. To make sure you can allocate the right resources, finance your goals, and any funding gap. Your vision, mission, or purpose statements and your values form the basis of your strategic plan. Your strategic plan will have clear statements about your future direction and we’ll include the goals, targets, and objectives you can use to track performance. 

From your strategic plan, either your board or key management staff will develop operational and financial plans. The financial plan should include some detail about how you’ll generate income and how you’ll fund any gaps. The operational and financial plans are detailed and include the actions that will help you achieve those plans. You also need to understand how you’ll measure those goals. All of these areas we’ve just discussed have financial implications. For example, if your association states in its strategic plan that it will increase its participation rate by 15% in the upcoming year. It should also state the actions required to achieve this goal. These might be things like expanding promotion to new markets, employing additional development officers and supporting a new club initiative. 

All of these things will require additional human, financial and physical resources which cost money and your financial plan should include these costs. You should also have an idea of the timing of these activities. All of this will be really helpful when developing your 12 month budget. In this video, we’ve outlined why it’s important to align your strategy and finances and how your financial plan fits into the bigger picture of your associat ion.