CLIENT CASE STUDY
Urban Green Lab
Project: Strategic Planning
Sector: Nonprofit
Focus: Sustainable practices
Project Length: 8 months
Reaching Shared Clarity for the Year 2030
Urban Green Lab (UGL) has grown and evolved alongside Nashville, and has now undertaken an intentional process to reflect on their work, what opportunities and challenges for sustainable practices look like today, and what the organization’s direction and focus should be for the next five years. UGL is partnering with Elevate to craft a strategic framework to set the direction for programming, partnerships, and UGL’s role in the community at large.
Services
Landscape Scanning
Strategic Planning
Our approach
The process began with a landscape scan of the sustainability ecosystem within Nashville. Elevate and UGL staff conducted interviews with key stakeholders as well as a survey for past participants in UGL programming. Next, the full board and leadership staff participated in a retreat, facilitated by Elevate, to discuss and make meaning out of the data from the landscape scan, setting a vision and goals, and exploring how UGL’s current work can be shifted to clarify and maximize impact. The engagement from board and staff members demonstrated that UGL operates as a learning organization, with open and deep conversations about the nature of the mission, the work, and what impact looks like. From there, the Strategic Plan Task Force, composed of staff and board members, are working to craft the strategic framework, including indicators for tracking progress and managing success. The full UGL staff will map out how the new framework will be operationalized during an upcoming staff session. After all these feedback loops and iterations are completed, the organization will have strong shared clarity about what they are doing, how, why, and what success looks like.
“Elevate is making strategic planning easy. That’s important because Urban Green Lab wants to make living sustainably easy too. We’re grateful for their guiding hand and excited for this next chapter of helping Nashvillians live healthier, more resilient lives. ”
Project Team
Jessica Gibbons, M. Ed.
Chief Practice Officer, Project Lead
David Moore, M.P.P, Ed. D.
Strategic Partner, Project Support
Morgan Service, M.A., M.P.H.
Associate Consultant, Project Support
“I am genuinely impressed with how UGL’s staff and leadership are walking the walk on learning, really taking the time to listen and adapt to what the community needs now, and being thoughtful about how shifts in one part of the organization will impact the rest.”
Let’s work together.
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