Part 1: Getting Started
Creating Your Plan
A Strategic Public Awareness Plan will result in awareness-raising
activities by your organization that put your resources to their
best use. To benefit from
using a strategic approach, it is not necessary to thoroughly complete
every
potential analysis or process detailed in this guide, but the more
thorough
your plan, the better. Unfortunately, the world will not stand still
to give you time to complete your plan, so you will likely have to
compile what
you can while also executing this year’s initiatives. The important
thing is to start the process. Once started, subsequent plans build on
the work already done. Thus, a strategic plan becomes a
living
document that evolves over time and becomes invaluable in
conducting
well-targeted efficient public awareness-raising activities.
A. Strategic Overview
The Strategic Overview portion of your plan links the philosophy of
your organization with
its actions. Chances are, much of the input for this section already
exists in things such as Mission and Vision Statements, and more
general Strategic
Operating Plans.
B. Situational Analysis
The Situational Analysis section is where you note any information that
affects how you will go about raising public awareness of literacy. The
net result of your
Situational Analysis will be a list of Key Issues, which will become
the sole focus of your awareness-raising activities.
C. Objectives
Objectives are precise measurable goals that define what you will
accomplish against each Key Issue over the course of the current plan.
They
allow you to define intermediate success when dealing with Key Issues
that may
take many years of persistent effort to master completely. Objectives
are clearly and simply stated so as to be unambiguous. At the
conclusion of a planning cycle, there should be no
debate whether or not an objective was achieved.
Examples Template
D. Tactics
Tactics are the actual initiatives you conduct to raise public
awareness of literacy. They are selected based on their ability
to achieve your Objectives which, in turn, target each Key Issue. Thus,
your actions are aligned with what you earlier identified as being most
critical to your efforts to raise public awareness of literacy. To
ensure
your
organization’s actions are aligned with its principles, Tactics are
executed
according to the philosophy and values expressed in the Strategic
Overview.
Examples Template
E. Assessment
To improve in the future, it is critical to understand what worked,
what didn't, and why. The reason for assessing results is to capture
new learning, not to be defensive or to rationalize why something did
not go well. The information gained from assessing your results is fed
into the
Situational
Analysis of future plans so that not just you, but your entire
organization, learns from the experience.
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