Designing Strategy

Get clear on your impact goals and make organizational decisions with confidence

Grounded in Bridgespan’s experience working with hundreds of nonprofits across the globe, the Designing Strategy module is intended to help nonprofit and social enterprise leadership teams discover what they do best, which communities to prioritise, and what activities will lead to the greatest impact.

Through the course of the program, Bridgespan will support participant teams as they frame their intended impact and theory of change through coaching, toolkits, case examples, and more.

This program is for organisations located in Africa. If you are based in India, South Asia, or South-East Asia, please see our BNDP Asia program. If you are in any other geography, please explore our Leadership Accelerator program.

Program Benefits for Nonprofits and Social Enterprises

Through the program, your organisation can become more effective, efficient, and deliver additional impact, aided by:

  • Clarity on organisation strengths and capabilities
  • Alignment within the leadership team on strategic direction
  • Cross-sector peer learning

At the end of the three-month period, leadership teams are expected to develop:

  • A working document clarifying which communities you aim to work with and the impact you wish to have
  • A living document that specifies how your organisation will achieve its impact
  • A set of critical questions and next steps to further refine your drafts and use them for future decision-making

Who Should Participate?

The Designing Strategy program is meant for leadership teams of nonprofits and social enterprises. This program may be right for your organisation if you:

  • Would like to achieve more impact through a clearly thought-out strategy
  • Need to communicate your work more clearly to external stakeholders
  • Feel your current strategy needs to be updated to better reflect future ambitions
  • Have had significant leadership changes recently and aim to create a shared team vision

Please refer to the Designing Strategy curriculum for further details on the module.

Clients with Whom We Have Worked

BNDP Achieving Strategic Charity Client Logos

What Our Alumni Have to Say About the Designing Strategy Module [Previously called Achieving Strategic Clarity]

“It was indeed a great experience to attend Achieving Strategic Clarity through an extremely structured BNDP approach. This process has helped us to build a very coherent and focused team, aligned to a common purpose with well-defined three to five years targets. ASC structured concepts and case studies gave us opportunity to build some compelling value propositions in our field to create large scale impact”
–Amit Gupta, Founder, Grey Sim Learning Foundation 
 
“Achieving Strategic Clarity, as the name suggests, truly helped our organisation to relook at our strategic priorities and go to the basics of the why, the what and the how of our work. The pointers, questions, guidance, and resources provided in this programme enabled rich conversations among the leadership team members at Atma and helped us think through many simple yet complex aspects of work viz what we do versus what we do not do and why. We strongly feel that this is a journey that every organisation should go through and keep performing this exercise throughout the lifetime of the organisation. ”
–Abhijat Bedekar, Chief Programme Officer, Atma 
 
“The program allowed the team to think beyond their current functional roles and align together from an organisational lens to redefine the [intended impact and theory of change]. The framework of the program supported in building the pathway and simplified a mammoth task into actionable insights. ”
–Rahul Vincent, Senior Manager Projects, and Ami Patel, Director Business Development and Collaborations, Industree Crafts Foundation 

What Else You Should Know

  • Our next Designing Strategy cohort will start in December 2024
  • Applications for all cohorts are open on a rolling basis. Cohorts are typically finalized three weeks prior to the program start date.
  • Contact us at [email protected] to learn more. 
  • Program fee: If you would like to discuss the program fee, please fill the form below and we will reach out to you.

How to Apply

To ensure the program is right for you, fill out this form to set up a 30-minute consultation with us. During the consultation, we’ll learn more about your organisation and leadership team, and we’ll share more about the program. If we jointly determine that the program is a good fit, we’ll share details for how to officially enroll. We look forward to meeting you!

Still have questions? Read our list of Frequently Asked Questions.