course projects

UNIT VI COURSE PROJECT-STRATEGIC PLAN 1

Course Project- Strategic Plan

Bryan Reitsma

Columbia Southern University

UNIT VI COURSE PROJECT-STRATEGIC PLAN 2

DuPage Foundation is a small not-for-profit organization located in DuPage County in

Chicago, Illinois. The foundation was established with intentions of making DuPage County better

through empowering locals and making sure that development projects are established and

supported till their successful completion. For this strategic plan, it shall be applied within the

DuPage area where the foundation has been targeting since its establishment. This is because in

DuPage County, there are emerging needs that falls under charity and societal needs that ought to

be taken care of. However, DuPage Foundation has a specific way of disbursing the finances

received from donors either in the individual, foundation, or corporations’ categories and for a

while, the process has remained stringent such that the process do not easily embrace emergency

cases that might be in need of help. For instance, instances where a community school supported

by the foundation got an infrastructure challenge that posed health and physical risks to the student.

The strict means of allocating finances hindered the foundation to take a fast action and ended up

taking more than three months.

This specific area requires strategic plan attention because the needs of the region are

increasing diversing. As the world and United States is growing, so do DuPage County especially

as the needs of the families are changing given new life challenges like those brought about by

COVID-19 are still emerging. It is evident that more than ever before, the needs in the society are

increasing and the new strategic plan would come as a great aid to the foundation to handle

possible community-related needs in the most amicable way possible granting priorities a chance.

The new strategic plan would also help the foundation to reach out to a higher number of donors

through whom the foundation can have ample finances to handle situations as they arise to the

satisfaction of the donors and project sponsors.

UNIT VI COURSE PROJECT-STRATEGIC PLAN 3

Strategic planning process is one that is faced with a series of challenges and these same

challenges are likely to get experienced in this case. Even though change is beckoning at DuPage

Foundation, massive caution is necessary to make sure that the strategic planning process gets to

attain the desired goals and objectives. Some of the possible challenges include; lack of alignment

between the past and current practices leading to confusion. Second major challenge is lack of

proper track progress on the new strategic plan and this can easily make the entire plan to fail. the

more reason is that each action set to be done in the process has an impact and failing to keep track

of the progress can allow the foundation to head towards the wrong direction without the

knowledge of the management team.

There is a possibility that some shareholders might be comfortable with the current

strategic plan and fail to support the new strategic plan. Lack of quality support can be disastrous

since for a strategic plan to work effectively, it requires the support of all shareholders as this helps

in reducing negative influence. There is also the possibility that some employees might not connect

with the new strategic plan calling for more investment in training and development. lastly, there

have been many instances where a new strategic plan is implemented and goals measurement fails

to take place to determine whether the company is headed towards the right direction of not.

Sluggishness is measuring the outcome of the strategic plan can affect the growth of the company.

UNIT VI COURSE PROJECT-STRATEGIC PLAN 4

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