Purpose & Strategic Importance
Training and support for individuals and branches in the technical aspects of planning contribute directly to building confidence, strengthening planning culture, and improving the quality of plans, budgets, implementation, and monitoring.
Principles
- Over time, these efforts create a growing culture of strategic thinking, where planning becomes part of everyday practice rather than a one-off exercise. It:
- Strengthens confidence among staff and volunteers in engaging with planning processes.
- Improves the quality of plans, budgets, and monitoring systems.
- Embeds a culture of strategic thinking and planning at multiple levels of the National Society.
- Helps ensure that plans are aligned across branches, departments, and HQ.
Examples & Learning
Salvadoran Red Cross
“While working on our strategic plan, we began setting up a planning system across three levels: strategic, operational coordination, and departmental. A key challenge was the lack of planning habits and capacity. We created a planning unit, supported teams in setting clear objectives, allocated resources, and built planning skills. With the new strategy in place, we introduced new ways of working to align everyone with the plan. Today, we have a much stronger planning culture and we’re now moving forward by developing a quality management system.” — Head of Planning and Institutional Development
By building planning skills locally, National Societies can make sure that strategy is not only owned at headquarters but is lived out through branches and teams — where much of the humanitarian work actually takes place.
The rotation of volunteers at the branch level during the timeframe of a strategic plan challenges our ability to support and monitor the implementation of the plan. Building their planning capacities and increasing their knowledge on the strategic objectives have been our priorities since our first strategic plan. It is an important factor for success.