Alameda County Strategic Plan

The Salvation Army

This Strategic Plan is the first half of a combined Strategic and Action Plan for the Salvation Army of Alameda County. The intent of the Strategic Plan is to evaluate at a high level the environment in which the Salvation Army operates in Alameda County, as well as the Army's strengths and areas for improvement. From this assessment are developed a Strategy for Alameda County and Action Plan to move forward.

It is our intent once having developed the Strategic Plan to backstop this work effort with a detailed Action Plan. In short, the Action Plan will address the Who, What, and Whens of what must be done to fulfill the objectives of the Strategic Plan. The Action Plan will identify what are the specific work efforts that need to be accomplished, who will be responsible for these, and what are the goals, metrics, and milestones associated with each. The purpose of these plans is to ensure that the Advisory Board, Officers, and employees of the Alameda County Salvation Army make maximum use of the resources provided by donors and fulfill their responsibility of “Doing the most good.”

The Action Plan is to be distinguished from operational plans developed at the corps level. The Action Plan addresses what needs to be done at the Alameda County level to implement the Strategic Plan. In contrast the operational plans at the corps level delineate what each of the corps need to do to accomplish their objectives.

Mission

So as to ensure complete consistency between the work of the Alameda County Salvation Army and the U.S. National and International Salvation Army it is essential that the Mission Statements be the same. Consequently, the Alameda County Mission is as follows:

The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of

the universal Christian Church.

Its message is based in the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of

God. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human

needs in His name without discrimination.

This mission is implemented by helping and serving others, particularly those with the greatest needs. It is based on the premise that the best way to demonstrate one's faith is to serve one another with the spirit of love. The Salvation Army is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church. Consequently, it offers spiritual aid and teaching to those in need. However, the Army does not require they take advantage of these services. Nevertheless, the Army has found that it can often provide the most assistance to individuals by addressing both their spiritual and material needs.

The Army fulfills its mission by providing the following services:

Crisis Support
Emergency shelters
Canteens
Clothing
Early Childhood Education
Tuition support
After school programs
Foundational Support
Leadership development
Summer camps
Computer labs
Care for Seniors
Senior lunches
Computer literacy
English language
Outreach programs to senior homes

It provides these services without discrimination.

Opportunities

The opportunities for the Salvation Army in Alameda County are substantial and growing. The overall economic environment since 2008 has been one of dramatic downturn and at best slow growth. Further, the division between the haves and have-nots has grown very substantially over the last several decades. A unique and very rich opportunity for the Army arises from its fundamental belief that it should not focus on handouts but rather hand-ups. While organized religion across the United States has been on a decline, there are good opportunities for the Army in Alameda to network with youth groups, churches, budding social networks like Christian Mingle, and high schools and colleges which encourage/require community involvement by their students.

Additionally, with an aging population, more seniors are available for volunteer work. Opportunities also exist to network with other charitable organizations which have a more limited scope of services which they provide. The Alameda County Salvation Army can augment the services these organizations provide. Historically, the Army has been reticent about marketing what it does, given its emphasis upon humility. Opportunities now arise given organizational changes to take advantage of more modern forms of communication to extend on past marketing and communication strategies. This is possible while still retaining the important and longstanding value of humility. Opportunities exist for importing leading edge practices from business with respect to planning, benchmarking, and best practices to substantially ramp up the Army's impact within the County.

The breakdown in the values of our political, corporate, and military leaders creates an opportunity for the Army to fulfill a clear and present need with its programs focused on leadership, church building, and imbuing life skills.

Threats

Since the end of World War II the Salvation Army has seen a relative decline in its importance as the premiere charitable organization in the United States. An effective strategic planning process must adequately identify and counter threats in the Army's business environment.* These include:

A transition in America to a more secular society.
A more diverse and rapidly changing environment.
More government funding of both Public and Private alternatives to the Salvation Army.
Volatility in government funding as well as more conditional and restrictive funding.
Public perceptions regarding the Army as being conservative, Christian, homophobic, anachronistic, and just not "cool".
The end of affiliation with the United Way.
The growth of food banks and other nongovernment alternative competing organizations.
Lack of a cohesive Alameda County identity/community.
An aging donor base that dates back to the WWII "donut girls."
Other organizations that attempt to grab the spotlight.

Strengths

A good strategic assessment requires not only an evaluation of the business environment in which one operates (an external assessment), but also an assessment of an organization's strengths and areas requiring improvement. This is known as an internal assessment. Provided immediately below is a discussion of the Salvation Army's strengths.

Brand: The Army has a strong brand which was first shaped and then very well developed under William Booth in the 1800's. This brand was exported internationally and took deep root in the United States, particularly in the first half of the 20th century. The brand has been known for integrity, faith, energy, and very importantly, for the extraordinary job the organization does in serving the underprivileged. In the second half of the 20th century, the brand has faded for a variety of reasons, which will be discussed later in this document.

Faith-based: The Salvation Army is faith-based in that it serves the whole person. This characteristic has many positive attributes. The Christian spirit and values provide great focus and alignment for the Boards, Officers, and employees of the organization. Additionally, experience has demonstrated that consistency of both spiritual and material aid has been far better at rehabilitating individuals than just the provision of material assistance. Fundamental to the faith-based approach has been the philosophy of a hand up, not just a hand-out.

International scope and scale: The Salvation Army is an international organization with very substantial financial and human resources as well as established operating procedures. This continuity of services, depth of resources, and experience base gives the organization the resiliency to survive and surmount many downturns and challenges. It also enables the Army to provide the full array of services enumerated earlier.

Decentralized Structure: The Army operates under a unique structure of distributed authorities. While it has many of the benefits of a large multinational organization, it also is highly flexible operationally at the local level and can tailor its strategies to local markets.

Dedicated Individuals: Given its faith-based orientation as well as long standing history, the Army has legions of highly dedicated and skilled individuals supporting its activities at the Advisory Board, Officer, and employee levels.

Areas for Improvement

As part of the Strategic Planning effort, the Advisory Board undertook an assessment of areas where the Alameda County Salvation Army could improve its performance. The principal areas which could be further improved were the following:

Creating and communicating the Salvation Army story.
Utilizing the most up-to-date media channels.
Being bolder in setting and pursuing goals.
Collaborating more fully with both for-profit and not-for-profit institutions in and out of our service territory.
Tightening board and management focus and alignment.
Fostering better change management whereby the Army adapts to a changing environment more rapidly, while not forsaking its fundamental principles or losing its focus.
More internal and external performance benchmarking and adoption of best practices.
Adopting management best practices on job descriptions, performance evaluation, and officer hand-offs.

Salvation Army

Alameda County Vision

Our vision is to maximize our potential to serve our community. We will do this by constantly asking ourselves how we can serve those in need better and by:

Showing our love of humankind in all we do.
Telling our story extraordinarily well.
Maximizing the amount of funds we raise while still holding true to our ideals and strategy.
Managing our operations, human resources, and facilities with excellence.
Being a great partner with others.
Living our winning behaviors.

Winning Behaviors

In order to maximize our effectiveness as an organization, we believe it is necessary to demonstrate the following "winning behaviors" in all we do:

Trust each other.
Communicate fully and respectfully our views. Listen deeply to others with grace.

Come to closure on a path forward and commit individually and collectively to pursue that path.
Hold ourselves and others accountable to realize outstanding results.
Be bold, innovative, and creative, but at the same time humble.

Elements of Strategy

In order to realize our vision and to do the most good, we have determined that the critical things we must do are the following:

(1) Tell our story well: There are two key components to this element. First we need to do an extraordinary job recreating and crafting a compelling story attuned to our various audiences, and secondly we need to exploit all available and effective channels to get this message out.

(2) Ramp up Fundraising Substantially: Using the story developed above, we need to dramatically enhance the effectiveness of our fundraising.

(3) Revolutionize our Recruiting Efforts: To accomplish great things we need great people, and lots of them. This will require an outstanding recruiting program.

(4) Manage our Operations Well: We need to ensure we are doing the following as we conduct our business:

Job descriptions, regular evaluations, and feedback.
Metrics and milestones.
Benchmarking and adoption of Best Practices
Consistent facilities management.
Smooth Officer transitions.

(5) Establish Outstanding Community Partnerships

Identify key potential partners.
Effectuate outreach.
Assign relationship managers.

Assuming we accomplish the above with excellence, we create the opportunity to provide more people with more assistance and with a wider array of services. Additionally we will do so while making the most efficient and effective use of the resources available to us, and thus accomplish our vision of doing the most good.

Summary and Conclusion

The Strategic Planning Effort described above considered the overall Salvation Army mission, the Alameda County Salvation Army's opportunities and threats, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. From this the 25 or more Advisory Board, Committee members, Officers, and employees defined as a group a vision as well as behaviors required to obtain that vision. After considering all of this, the group identified the Top five major Elements of Strategy that would be necessary to vault the performance of the Army upward in Alameda County. In doing so, the group completed the strategic planning work that was initially envisioned.

Path Forward

A great strategy is nothing without exceptional implementation. Accordingly, Part II of our planning effort will be to create a detailed Action Plan to implement the key Elements of Strategy identified above.

This Action Plan will identify at minimum:

The Five Key planning efforts.
The charters for each.
A team leader.
Team members.
The major components of each element of strategy.
The principal goals, measures, milestones of each strategic component and related accountabilities.

After presenting the operational plan to the Alameda Advisory Board for input and approval, each team will be charged with its implementation and will report their progress on a periodic basis.

Part II

The Salvation Army

Alameda County Strategic Plan

As part of our planning process the Alameda County Salvation Army Advisory Board has divided its work efforts into the following committees with the charters indicated.

Executive Committee

Charter:

Keep the Alameda County Advisory Board on task

Assure compliance with the by-laws
Promote a maximum level of engagement of Board Members and Volunteers
Assist in the development of the Strategic and Operational Plans and assess actual performance relative to these plans on a periodic basis.
Ensure the different committees of the Advisory Board are on track with their objectives
Set the agendas for Advisory Board Meetings
Deal with problems or issues of a strategic nature relating to the Army's activities within the county.

Membership:

Mary Theroux, Chair

Peter Darbee

Kenneth G. Hecht

Mark Lindquist

Paul Scharbo

Robert Spears

David Warren

Dan Williams, Ex Officio

Advisory Board Development Committee
Charter:

The purpose of this committee is to recruit and interview potential board members to serve on the Advisory Board as well the various Councils that report to the Advisory Committee.

Board Development is a key component to having a successful board as well a successful local Salvation Army presence in the local community.
The Committee shall have the following responsibilities:
1. Develop guidelines for pre-selection of potential qualified board member candidates
2. Determine if the candidate meets or has the qualities to be recommended to the full Advisory Board. If not determine @ the committee level why not.
3. Review and from time to time assure the Board that we are in compliance with Salvation Army Guidelines and procedures
4. Determine if the potential candidate should be recommended to a Council seat rather than the full Advisory Board based upon prior experience
5. Work to maintain retention within the Board by annually speaking with each board member regarding their continued ability to serve and availability to chair a committee or serve as an officer.
6. Develop a list of individuals that are willing to serve as officers or chair committees.
7. Determine within the board where we are lacking members in key business/professional capacities and attempt to recruit individuals from those industries/professions.
8. Board Development Committee shall meet as required by the Committee Chair or the request of the Advisory Board Chairman.

Membership:

Mark Lindquist, Chair

Marshall Mitzman

Dan Williams, Ex Officio

Mary Theroux, Ex Officio

Community Relations & Development Committee

Charter:

To work and collaborate with the Advisory Board and the Officers and professional staff of The Salvation Army of Alameda County to:

Analyze and evaluate past and current development programs.
Develop a comprehensive development program segmented by giving opportunity, i.e., annual, planned and capital, that addresses the financial needs of the Army.
Optimize the allocation of and giving potential of the Army’s established direct mail campaigns.
Tactically, plan and expand the number of annual, high visibility fund raising events.
Raise the profile of The SA throughout Alameda County and the entire East Bay through community engagement.
Identify key community organizations, churches and political bodies and develop outreach programs tailored to each broad segment.
Engage and encourage the community to become SA volunteers.

Membership:

Robert Spears, Chair

Kenneth Hecht, Jr. (Tom)

Mark Lindquist

Robert Mallon

Marshall Mitzman

Anthony Toribio

Patrick Zika

Carla Zuber

Dan Williams, Ex Officio

Mary Theroux, Ex Officio

Finance Committee

Charter:

To work with the senior county officer in an advisory and not a fiduciary capacity to:

Assist in the preparation and review of the capital and operating budgets for Alameda County prior to their submittal to DHQ for final approval.

Review on a monthly basis all financial statements and capital project activities comparing results relative to budgets and prior year results.

Assist the senior county officer in ensuring that the finances of the County are managed in prudent and sustainable manner.

On a monthly basis prepare accurate financial reports on the County’s for presentation to the Advisory Board and other significant constituencies.

Membership:

Kenneth Hecht, Jr. (Tom), Chair

Mark Crutcher

Dan Williams, Ex Officio

Mary Theroux, Ex Officio

Marketing, Messaging & Public Relations Committee

Charter:

To work with the Advisory Board, Army Officers, employees and particularly the Community Relations and Development Committee to do the following:

Segment and Prioritize the different communities to the SA
Identify the particular concerns and interests of each segment
Craft the SA story which optimizes our appeal to each targeted segment
Trial and refine the messages
Identify which channels are most effective for each segment
Devise and execute a public relations strategy which communicates our messages
Deliver these messages through the appropriate channels
Measure the effectiveness of the delivered message and refine as appropriate
Repeat the process continually.

Membership: