Strategic Planning

AIDS United’s mission is to end the HIV epidemic in the United States.

Service Type: Strategic Planning
Client Type: 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization
Issue Area(s): Health Equity

AIDS United envisions a time when all people, governments, and organizations commit to ending the HIV epidemic and strengthening the health, well-being, and human rights of everyone impacted by HIV. AIDS United works to ensure broad and equitable access to effective HIV care and treatment, prevent new HIV transmissions, address social and structural barriers to effective HIV prevention and care, maintain U.S. leadership in lifesaving research, and support the meaningful involvement of people living with and vulnerable to HIV.

Penchina Partners worked in partnership with AIDS United’s senior leadership team to craft a three-year strategic plan. Engaging key internal stakeholders – including staff, board, and a large cross-section of members of the movement to end HIV – to firmly grasp the challenges and opportunities of this moment for the national HIV sector, AIDS United focused on five strategic priorities designed to strengthen the organization, to propel the organization and the HIV sector toward 2030 and ending the HIV epidemic in the United States. Penchina Partners then worked with senior leadership at AIDS United to implement a clear, actionable, organization and movement-informed plan.

Their three-year strategic plan lays the groundwork for AIDS United to build new strategic business model approaches, better refine and harmonize the core pillars of its programmatic work, aggressively seek and secure new and stable funding for AID United’s programs, and remain competitive as an intermediary funder in a competitive field well into its future.

Empowering LGBTQ+ youth to define their own journey.

Service Type: Strategic Planning
Client Type: 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization
Issue Area(s): LGBTQ+; Youth

It Gets Better is a nonprofit organization with a mission to uplift, empower, and connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth around the globe. It Gets Better envisions a world where all LGBTQ+ youth are free to live equally, connect to their communities, and know their power as individuals. It Gets Better aims to connect with LGBTQ+ youth before they experience crisis, connecting them to community and equipping them with the language, tools and resources they need to better navigate adolescence and their unique sexual orientation and/or gender identity journey. It Gets Better’s preventative efforts to support LGBTQ+ youth have a direct impact on their mental health, academic performance and overall well being, through storytelling, education, and building global community.

Penchina Partners worked with It Gets Better’s Executive Director on comprehensive strategic planning, beginning with an analysis of It Gets Better’s existing operations and plans. Through interviews with key internal and external stakeholders, Penchina Partners was able to gain insights into the perceptions of It Gets Better’s strengths and weaknesses and identify consistent impressions of the organization’s programs and operations. Addressing the challenges that were identified – some simple, some more complex and existential – charted strategies and tactics for It Gets Better’s continued growth and success.

With direct knowledge of the challenges faced by EDs and CEOs, Penchina Partners also provided one-on-one coaching with It Gets Better’s Executive Director, working together in partnership to develop model governance policies and internal lines of reporting, as well as developing tools and systems for tracking and measuring success at the organization.

ORAM protects and empowers LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees globally, creating sustainable and systemic change.

Service Type: Strategic Planning
Client Type: 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization
Issue Area: LGBTQ+; Refugees & Migration

In many countries around the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer individuals face severe discrimination and violence due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. ORAM assists LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees on every step of their journey, working along displacement routes and in transit countries. ORAM connects individuals with the resources and opportunities they need to build safe, stable, and empowered lives. ORAM provides legal assistance, advances economic inclusion through livelihood programs, champions the rights of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees on the global stage and provides critical emergency response to the communities we serve.

Penchina Partners worked with ORAM’s Executive Director and a strategic planning task force to design a three-year plan that would serve ORAM in the near term, and guide ORAM to its next stage of growth as an organization. The plan was developed by conducting a series of detailed internal and external stakeholder interviews and a landscape analysis of funders and peer organizations in the field. The data from those interviews and analysis culminated in a two-day strategic planning retreat, where members of ORAM’s staff and board focused on formulating strategies and tactics to address key organizational questions and challenges. The strategic plan lays a solid foundation for ORAM to chart future growth, identify resource needs, continue to grow its capacity, remain dynamic, reflective of the people ORAM serves, and capable of responding to the growing needs and challenges of LGBTQ+ refugees and displaced persons now and well into the future.

The three-year strategic plan is a robust roadmap to guide the organization toward a strong and sustainable future that enables ORAM to support and empower more LGBTQ+ refugees globally. The plan identified four strategic priorities, including structuring ORAM’s work into three programmatic areas; building critical internal organizational infrastructure in development, communications, and operations; pursuing advocacy to complement ORAM’s programmatic work; and serving as a hub to better connect LGBTQ+ refugees with collaborators in the space.

The Sentencing Project advocates for effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice.

Service Type: Strategic Planning
Client Type: 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization
Issue Area: Criminal Justice Reform

The Sentencing Project envisions the full inclusion of people with criminal records in society and an end to extreme punishments. The Sentencing Project’s aim is to center the leadership, voices, vision, and experiences of those directly affected by mass incarceration and to make the rationale for systemic change vivid, credible, and compelling. These priorities are central to the Sentencing Project’s underlying goal of promoting racial justice by focusing on the cornerstones of the criminal legal system that act to undermine the power of the Black community and ensure that Black community members are drawn into the criminal legal system and incapacitated for years, decades, and often life.

Penchina Partners worked in partnership with The Sentencing Project’s Executive Director and senior team to develop a three-year strategic and tactical plan. Historically the Sentencing Project produced an abundance of consistent and high-quality content with relatively modest resources and a small staff. In 2020, the critical and long-overdue national reckoning with racial justice revealed an appetite at the organization to conduct a top-to-bottom evaluation of The Sentencing Project’s work and strategy, refine its plans to meet the moment and make investments toward that plan’s implementation. Empowered by the board and informed by the staff, a robust evaluation of its development work was followed by a series of conversations about values, mission, growth, governance, operations, and programmatic design across the organization.

In order to maximize its impact, The Sentencing Project refined its mission and adopted new core approaches to its work. It adopted a fundamental programmatic shift from a research-centered model to a research-informed, advocacy campaign-centered model. While research remains a central and powerful tool that The Sentencing Project brings to the criminal justice reform landscape, the research is now specifically directed to function in service of The Sentencing Project’s advocacy goals and campaigns. The Sentencing Project also refined its policy priorities to focus on three core policy areas on which to conduct advocacy – expanding voting rights, promoting youth justice, and ending extreme sentences.