Engaging Stakeholders in Extension Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is the deliberative, disciplined effort to produce decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why. [State] Cooperative Extension invested considerable time and effort in conducting a statewide process to engage internal and external stakeholders and nonusers. The strategic planning steering committee balanced negotiations in defining the process, determining who should be involved, and how to develop goals. The semi-structured interviews with the steering committee members, generated three themes: effectiveness of the team enhanced results; context and process can inhibit stakeholder participation, the steering committee needs a commitment to diverse voices.