Coaching and Nonprofit Strategic Planning: Why the ED Is the Plan
Coaching and Nonprofit Strategic Planning: Why the ED Is the Plan
Nonprofit organizations do strategic planning. Many do it on a predictable cycle, with board retreats, external facilitators, and documents that arrive on desks in early spring. Most of those plans are not executed the way they were written. The common explanations are that priorities shifted, funding changed, the board lost interest. The less common explanation, and the more accurate one, is that the leader who was responsible for executing the plan was not yet prepared to lead it. Executive coaching for nonprofit leaders addresses that preparation directly, before the planning cycle starts and during it.
Key Takeaways
- Nonprofit strategic plans most often fail at the ED level, not the process level. The plan that emerges reflects the leader who ran the conversation.
- Four ED patterns derail strategic planning: indispensability, reactivity, conflict avoidance, and visionary thinking without execution discipline.
- Coaching prepares the ED to facilitate the board’s thinking rather than control it. The resulting strategy has stronger board ownership and more realistic execution.
- Coaching is most powerful when it starts 2–3 months before the formal planning cycle, but parallel engagement works when timing is tight.
- A 6-session engagement through CNPC costs $300 to $600 depending on organization size. Sessions are by video or phone, scheduled around the ED’s availability.
Why Strategic Planning Exposes ED Gaps
Strategic planning forces clarity that daily operations suppress. An ED can firefight for years without facing the question of what the organization should stop doing. A planning process, done honestly, makes that question unavoidable. The structural pressures nonprofit EDs face include a particular isolation: no one inside the organization can tell the ED their own patterns are limiting the strategy. The board sees the plan. They do not see what shaped the conversation that produced it.
The gaps surface in recognizable moments. The retreat where the ED does all the talking and the board nods along, producing a strategy that feels like the ED’s vision with board-shaped approval. The planning session where a board member proposes a program that does not fit the strategy and the ED says yes because saying no to a board member is too uncomfortable. The follow-up meeting where the implementation steps are vague because the ED is privately unsure what to prioritize, and certainty would require saying no to something else.
Most strategic planning fails before the first session starts, when the ED arrives at the table without having done their own work: what does this organization need to become, and what does that require of me as a leader?
These patterns are not character flaws. They are habits formed under conditions of isolation, resource scarcity, and constant pressure. A plan built around those habits produces a strategy the organization cannot execute. Coaching is what examines the habits before they limit the next planning cycle.
The ED Patterns That Derail Planning
Four patterns appear most consistently in coaching conversations that begin during or just before a strategic planning cycle. They are not mutually exclusive; most EDs carry more than one. Each has a specific effect on the strategy that emerges and the ability to execute it. ED burnout and leadership depletion often compound these patterns by reducing the capacity for strategic thinking at exactly the moment it is most needed.
The Indispensable ED holds most of the organizational knowledge and leads by being the one who has the answers. In a planning context, this ED often pre-designs the strategy and presents it to the board for validation. The board adopts the strategy because the ED is persuasive and no one wants to undermine the person who runs the organization. The result is a plan owned by one person. When that person is stretched thin, nothing moves.
The Reactive ED is too deep in operations to think strategically. Every new grant opportunity, partnership offer, and program expansion is evaluated in isolation. This ED arrives at planning unable to say which programs should be deprioritized because every program has a story attached to it. The board asks for consolidation. The ED hears abandonment. The plan that emerges lacks the hard choices that would actually change the organization’s trajectory.
The Conflict-Avoidant ED cannot say no to board members with influence. A board member champions a program idea. The ED knows it does not fit the strategy but avoids the confrontation. The idea gets added to the plan. The planning process produces a wish list rather than a prioritized strategy. Implementation stalls immediately because there is no real priority order.
The Visionary ED Without Execution Discipline has energy and ideas but weak implementation habits. The planning process generates excitement. The implementation tracking falls apart within six months. Staff receives mixed signals about what the strategy actually means for their work. The plan is beautiful. Nothing in the organization changes.
What Coaching Changes in the ED
Coaching works on the leader’s internal patterns, not the planning process itself. The planning process can be standard. What changes when the ED has done coaching work is the clarity, the boundaries, and the facilitation mode the ED brings to the conversation. The documented benefits of executive coaching include clearer decision-making and stronger prioritization under pressure, both of which are directly applicable to strategic planning. Nonprofit leadership development frameworks consistently point to strategic clarity as a developmental outcome, not a natural trait.
Three specific changes appear most often in EDs who have worked through coaching before or during a planning cycle:
Facilitation replaces control. A coached ED learns to ask questions that surface the board’s thinking rather than present conclusions for validation. The board feels heard. The strategy that emerges is genuinely co-created. The ED is the implementer of a strategy the board believes they helped build, not a document the ED authored and the board rubber-stamped.
Saying no becomes a skill. Most EDs have never practiced declining a board member’s suggestion in a way that strengthens the relationship rather than straining it. Coaching builds specific language for this. The ED learns to redirect program ideas toward the strategic framework rather than simply absorbing them. The plan stays focused. The board member feels respected, not dismissed.
Operational reactivity gives way to strategic clarity. Coaching creates a structured container for thinking ahead. An ED in weekly or biweekly sessions with a coach is regularly thinking at the strategic level, not just the operational one. By the time the planning cycle begins, the ED already has views about what the organization should prioritize and can articulate why, with more confidence and less defensiveness than firefighting mode produces.
Coaching Before Planning Starts
The most powerful placement for a coaching engagement is 2–3 months before the formal planning process begins. Early sessions surface assumptions the ED has been carrying without examining: why the organization exists in its current form, what programs are producing real results versus sentimental value, what the ED personally needs the organization to become. Nonprofit leadership pathways research shows that development outcomes improve significantly when leaders have space to examine assumptions rather than just consume frameworks.
What the pre-planning coaching conversation surfaces: the ED’s actual theory of change (often different from what the organization’s documents say), the programs the ED cannot evaluate objectively because of the relationships attached to them, the board members whose opinions shape the ED’s behavior more than they should, and the strategic questions the ED has been avoiding because answering them would require a hard conversation. A board that understands how coaching improves the ED’s planning contribution can be found in boards that understand ED coaching.
By the time the planning session arrives, the ED who has done this pre-work brings two things the planning process cannot otherwise produce: a clear view of what the organization should stop doing, and the capacity to say it out loud in a board meeting.
Coaching During the Planning Process
Parallel coaching and strategic planning is the second-best option and often the realistic one, given that planning timelines are rarely predictable. An ED who begins coaching while a planning cycle is already in motion can still surface and examine patterns in real time. Sessions between planning meetings give the ED space to process what happened in the last meeting, identify what they avoided saying, and prepare for the next conversation with more clarity and less reactivity.
The post-planning problem coaching also addresses: the gap between a plan that exists on paper and implementation that actually happens. Many nonprofit organizations produce excellent strategic plans that do not change organizational behavior because the ED never fully owns the strategy. A coached ED is more likely to use the plan as a real decision-making tool: saying no to opportunities that do not fit it, revising program structures to align with it, holding staff accountable to the priorities it establishes. For guidance on choosing a nonprofit executive coach who can support a planning process specifically, the criteria are the same as for any coaching engagement: ICF credential plus nonprofit sector experience.
The timeline most organizations find workable: three to four pre-planning sessions focused on assumptions and patterns, two sessions during the planning cycle itself, and one session after the plan is adopted to work through implementation accountability. That is six sessions, which maps directly to what CNPC provides.
How to Apply Through CNPC
CNPC matches nonprofit leaders with ICF-credentialed volunteer coaches by video or phone. Sessions are scheduled around the ED’s availability and the planning cycle, not around a fixed calendar. The application asks for organizational context, operating budget, and coaching goals. If strategic planning support is a goal, stating that in the application helps CNPC make a more targeted match.
Cost is based on annual operating budget: $300 for organizations under $250K, $400 for those under $500K, and $600 for those above $500K. Those numbers are possible because CNPC coaches donate their time. For a complete picture of what coaching costs across providers and what drives the range, the nonprofit coaching cost guide covers the options. For organizations considering coaching in advance of their next planning cycle, starting the application now gives enough lead time to complete the first three sessions before planning begins.
CNPC serves 501(c)(3) nonprofits and comparable organizations. Government agencies and analogous non-U.S. entities are eligible. For-profit organizations are not. The application for coaching through CNPC takes about ten minutes. After matching, the ED and coach confirm a schedule and begin the first session with goals, structure, and what the leader needs the engagement to produce. For an organization on a planning timeline, that first session can happen within two to three weeks of submitting the application.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions below address the most common points of hesitation from nonprofit leaders and board members who are considering coaching in the context of a strategic planning process: whether coaching and planning should happen sequentially or simultaneously, how coaching differs from a planning facilitator, and how to recognize when coaching would change the next planning cycle.
Isn’t strategic planning about the organization, not the ED?
Yes, and the ED shapes more of the organization than any other role. The ED’s unexamined patterns become the organization’s unexamined patterns. An ED who cannot say no produces an organization that cannot prioritize. An ED who avoids conflict produces a culture that avoids hard conversations. Coaching works on the ED’s patterns, which directly changes what kind of strategy the organization produces and whether it executes it.
Can coaching and strategic planning happen at the same time?
Yes. Pre-planning coaching is ideal, but parallel engagement works well when timing does not allow for sequencing. An ED in coaching during a planning cycle processes each planning session in between coaching sessions, surfaces assumptions, and prepares for the next board conversation with more clarity. Six sessions maps to the typical planning cycle: three before formal planning, two during, one after adoption to support implementation.
How is coaching different from hiring a planning facilitator?
A planning facilitator designs and runs the planning process. A coach works with the ED individually to examine assumptions, build decision-making clarity, and develop the capacity to lead the planning conversation well. A facilitator says “here is how to run this process.” A coach asks “what are you assuming that may be limiting the strategy?” Both have value. An ED who arrives at facilitated planning with coaching preparation produces better outcomes from the same facilitation process.
How do I know if coaching would change my next planning cycle?
Warning signs that coaching would help: the ED comes home exhausted after board meetings, the organization’s actual work looks different from last year’s strategy, the ED makes unilateral decisions the board later questions, the ED cannot identify two programs that should be stopped, the ED avoids direct conversations with specific board members. Any of these signal that the next planning cycle will produce the same results as the last one unless the ED’s own patterns are addressed first.
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