Strategic Planning and Equity in Everything

This week’s focus on strategic planning helped me think more clearly about the role of structure in my SweetGrass leadership project. My project is centered on strengthening the SweetGrass Wellness Collective through organizational structure, including the membership process, advisory council, shared agreements, Community Birth Fund, feedback systems, Casebook implementation, and accountability processes. I see strategic planning as the bridge between vision and sustainability.

SweetGrass has a strong mission, but mission alone is not enough. Without a plan, community care can become scattered, overwhelming, or dependent on one person holding too much. Strategic planning helps clarify what we are doing, why we are doing it, who is responsible, who is impacted, and how we will know whether the work is aligned with our values. In the SweetGrass business plan, the organization is described as a community-rooted perinatal wellness organization working to expand culturally grounded, trauma-informed care for Black, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and historically underserved families in Hawaiʻi. A central part of that expansion is the Community Birth Fund, which is designed to reduce financial barriers to midwifery care, doula care, lactation support, childbirth education, and culturally rooted postpartum services.

A major learning moment for me this quarter was entering the Chaminade/Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership Program and American Savings Bank Nonprofit Business Plan Competition. SweetGrass was selected as a finalist out of 50 nonprofits across the state, which felt affirming because it showed that the work is strong, needed, and understandable beyond our immediate community. Ultimately, we did not place in the top 3; the competition funds went to a resort-backed kayaking concept for bullied youth in Waikiki and a dog walking service for kapuna to attend appointments. That loss was disappointing, but it also clarified something important for me as a leader: SweetGrass cannot rely on a single competition, a single funder, or a single moment of external validation to survive.

That experience pushed me to think more seriously about sustainability and succession planning. If SweetGrass is going to become a long-term community resource, it cannot depend only on my vision, energy, labor, or ability to win funding. It needs systems that can outlive urgency. It needs shared leadership, clear roles, documentation, diversified funding, and a pathway for others to step into responsibility. Losing the competition helped me see that sustainability is not just about money. It is about whether the organization has the structure, culture, and leadership capacity to continue even when one funding opportunity does not come through.

This week’s strategic planning tool, whether MACAT or a similar planning framework, is useful because it moves a project from broad vision into clearer goals, resources, strategies, partners, timelines, and measures of progress. For SweetGrass, this means asking practical questions: What does the Community Birth Fund need in order to be transparent and sustainable? What do members need in order to participate meaningfully? What role should the Advisory Council play? How will we track services, referrals, and outcomes? How do we collect feedback without becoming extractive? How do we make sure our structure supports care instead of creating unnecessary hierarchy?

The collaborative leadership competency, “Equity in Everything,” feels especially relevant to this work. Leadership Learning Community (2015) emphasizes that equity must be present in the purpose, process, and structures of collaborative work. This means equity cannot only appear in the mission statement. It has to shape how decisions are made, who is invited to participate, whose voices carry weight, how resources are distributed, and how power differences are addressed.

For SweetGrass, “Equity in Everything” means our structures have to reflect our values. If we say we center Black, Indigenous, LGBTQIA2+, Pacific Islander, and marginalized families, then our membership process, advisory council, birth fund, feedback systems, and program evaluation need to actually support that. The Community Birth Fund should not only provide financial assistance; it should reduce shame, increase choice, and make community-based care more possible for families who are often priced out of midwifery, doula, lactation, childbirth education, and postpartum support.

The business plan process helped me organize SweetGrass’s work into a phased strategic plan. Phase 1 is foundation and structure. This phase focuses on formalizing the organization’s core infrastructure: advisory council agreements, membership applications, the membership handbook, shared agreements, grievance processes, Casebook implementation, documentation systems, privacy protocols, and basic program tracking. This phase is about building the container so the work can be held responsibly.

Phase 2 is membership and culture. Once the foundation is clearer, the next phase is growing the Collective in a way that protects the culture of the organization. This includes onboarding aligned members, clarifying roles, supporting committees, creating feedback loops, building shared leadership, and making sure members understand the mission, values, and expectations. This phase matters because growth without culture can create confusion, conflict, and mission drift. SweetGrass does not only need more people; it needs the right structure for people to participate with care, accountability, and shared purpose.

Phase 3 is funding and sustainability. This phase focuses on long-term viability through diversified revenue, grant funding, Community Birth Fund sponsorships, institutional partnerships, earned revenue, and eventually compensated leadership roles. It also includes succession planning, because sustainability cannot mean one person carrying the organization indefinitely. SweetGrass needs a funding model and leadership structure that can support families, compensate community care workers, prevent burnout, and continue beyond the founder.

I asked the founding members familiar with SweetGrass to review my ideas, and their feedback helped me see that the project needs to stay simple and realistic. They affirmed the importance of building structure, but also reminded me that the structure should not become so heavy that it overwhelms the people doing the work. That feedback helped me think about starting with a few clear priorities: finalize the membership process, clarify the Advisory Council role, outline the Community Birth Fund process, and create simple feedback loops.

This feedback also helped me connect strategic planning to equity. A plan is only useful if it helps people participate. If the process is too complicated, inaccessible, or centered only on people with the most time, money, credentials, or institutional comfort, then it can reproduce inequity. A more equitable planning process should make room for different capacities, lived experiences, and ways of contributing.

This week’s learning helped me understand that strategic planning does not have to be rigid or corporate. It can be a container for community care. When done well, planning can reduce confusion, distribute responsibility, make decision-making more transparent, and protect the mission from drifting away from the community. For SweetGrass, strategic planning is not about controlling the work. It is about creating enough structure for the work to be shared, sustained, and accountable.

References

Leadership Learning Community. (2015, June). Leadership & large-scale change: How to accelerate learning and deepen impact. https://leadershiplearning.org/publications/leadership-large-scale-change/

MCH Evidence Center. (n.d.). Strategy planning tool. https://www.mchevidence.org/tools/strategy-planning-tool.php