Community Science Institute (CSI) is excited to announce the completion of our organization’s first strategic plan. This comprehensive roadmap outlines our vision for the future and identifies key strategies to make CSI’s operations more sustainable while deepening our impact on our community and our shared water resources.
CSI’s strategic planning process was guided by local consultants Heidi Holtz of Stillwork Coaching and Consulting and Patty Weisse of Patty Weisse Consulting. In September 2023, CSI board members and staff began the strategic planning process by completing a Nonprofit Lifecycles Capacity Assessment, an organizational development instrument that measures an organization’s capacity to sustain and grow programs, governance, management, financial health, and administrative systems to fulfill its mission. A leadership team consisting of board members and senior staff then met regularly to review the results of the assessment and discuss strategies to move CSI forward. As part of this process, the leadership team also completed a program mapping exercise, which allowed us to understand the strengths and areas of improvement for each of CSI’s programs. In addition to regular meetings of the CSI leadership team, Holtz and Weisse conducted confidential interviews with stakeholders selected by the leadership team to get honest feedback about CSI and our impact on the community. These perspectives, coupled with the assessment results and leadership team discussions helped formulate three “Strategic Pathways” and their corresponding objectives and action items.
In April 2024, the consultants and leadership team planned and implemented a four-hour board retreat at the Sheldrake Point Winery (big thanks to Chuck Tauck and the whole team at Sheldrake Point Winery for hosting us!). The goals were to explore the CSI mission, spend some time ideating about CSI’s future without barriers and then provide feedback on the three Strategic Pathways. The retreat was followed by the CSI staff digging deeper into the Pathways document to provide feedback, especially on priorities.
Overall, our final strategic plan is the culmination of all the information garnered through our capacity assessment, leadership team meetings, program mapping, stakeholder interviews, and board retreat. This strategic plan was made possible by the diligent work by CSI staff and board members and the leadership of our talented consultants. We are grateful for their dedication to this process!
The three Strategic Pathways in our plan positions CSI for sustained growth and success so that we may better serve our community through volunteer water quality monitoring, fee-for-service water testing, and outreach and education about water science. The plan builds upon CSI’s strong foundation built over the last two decades while addressing the evolving needs of the community.
CSI invites the community to learn more about our strategic plan by reviewing the summary document accompanying this article. Want to go even deeper into our strategic plan? Email us at info@communityscience.org to request a meeting with a representative from our strategic plan leadership team.
CSI’s strategic plan was made possible thanks to a generous gift from the estate of Tapan Mitra and a grant from the Emerson Foundation. Thank you for making this crucial capacity building work possible!
