Field notes
Governance, fundraising, leadership and the quiet costs of waiting. Written for the executive director, not the sector.
Strategic Planning
The last plan was from 2013. The new one has a page of things WTEF will not do, a steering committee that sent the first draft back, and a CEO who finished the writing herself. I asked Candace Smith to walk me through it.
Andy Rathmann-Noonan · October 30, 2026 · 7 min
Forty staff, a retreat, three walls of sticky notes, and a plan that was already drafted. The research on voice is fifty years old and it is clear about when asking helps and when it hurts. The fix is cheaper than the retreat.
October 21, 2026 · 9 min
Strategic Planning
The email arrives with a grant application attached and one line near the bottom: please include your current strategic plan. What you do in the next three weeks decides more than the grant.
Andy Rathmann-Noonan · October 12, 2026 · 9 min
Strategic Planning
Your plan can pass every process test from Post 1 and still fail because the strategy underneath it was never chosen. Whoever writes the checks assigns them.
Andy Rathmann-Noonan · October 5, 2026 · 9 min
Strategic Planning
The largest study of this question found that strategic planning does improve organizational performance. So why is there a binder on your shelf that nobody has opened in two years? Four questions decide which kind of plan you end up with.
Andy Rathmann-Noonan · September 22, 2026 · 22 min
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