Does your strategic plan utilise Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
KPIs are an important and useful planning tool that can be used in a strategic plan to provide a greater sense of purpose and to demonstrate tangible results. A successful strategic plan will include several KPIs to manage and track progress and success.
When creating your Association’s strategic plan, it can be helpful to begin with the goals you want to achieve and considering them in terms
of outcomes with quantifiable results.
KPIs are quantifiable measures of performance for a specific objective. They are used by organisations and companies around the world to provide targets to work towards and to track progress towards organisational and individual goals.
KPIs provide tangible outcomes so that an Association can see how they are performing against their stated objectives and make changes as needed to ensure they can reach their goals.
When creating your KPIs, it can be helpful to structure them as follows:
The setting of Key Performance Indicators is an important aspect of the strategic planning process and plays a major role in the measuring of progress for the Association.
In the strategic planning process, KPIs can be assigned to different objectives to make these goals measurable and add specific timeframes.
For example, if one of the deliverables in your Association strategic plan for the next financial year is to increase the quality of the programs you offer to your membership base, some of the KPIs associated with this goal may be:
It is equally important that the results against these KPIs are recorded and reported on. Considering the success of initiatives is a key part of an Association’s strategic planning.
The Board needs to be prepared with comprehensive data that shows what has been successful and what hasn’t worked and requires further improvements. This will allow you to make informed decisions about the next iteration of your strategic plan.
If your Association is ready to begin including KPIs in your strategic planning, you want to identify some key areas that are ideal for monitoring. Ideally, each key strategic area of your plan should each be assigned at least one KPI.
The ten areas of best practice for Associations are:
Not all of these areas will be suited to KPIs. Others may have KPIs that are not relevant to your strategic planning; many organisations will have KPIs associated with the performance of individuals, and you may want to consider this for your leadership team and other people in the Association.
Some examples of how KPIs could be used for these key areas include:
With over 30 years of management expertise, Executive Director and Founder of AES, Nick Koerbin is one of the most experienced NFP leaders
in Australia. He has held positions as the CEO of Materials Australia, the National Parts Code, as well as senior positions in the
Institute of Insurance, Australian Quality Council, the Financial Planning Association, the Australian Human Resources Institute, and the
Furniture Industry Association of Australia. Nick created AES with a vision of creating a set of management practices that could be
consistently followed to ensure success. Over his 30 years in the industry, he noticed that inconsistent management practices often impeded
delivery of services to members, which in turn created issues with membership renewal. By establishing AES and creating the NFP Association
Best Practice Self-Assessment, Nick has been able to assist leaders in becoming more confident and informed decision makers so that they
can create more effective strategies and implementation plans.
Disclaimer: The articles on our website are intended to stimulate interest in the subject matters. All comments and articles are for information purposes only. Professional advice should be sought on specific matters, and with lawyers under Costs Agreement and to which Legal Professional Privilege (LPP) applies.
For over seven years during the 1990s, I was involved with the Total Quality Management Institute, formed by leaders of some of Australia's major corporations.
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