Strategic planning is generally accepted as a useful management (and governance) tool to guide organisations in a desired direction, and resolve what they need to do and not do.

As the saying goes, 'if you don't know where you want to go then any road will lead you there.'

This applies to community radio equally with other organisations.

Benefits of strategic planning, copied from Birgitte Jallov's book Empowerment Radio (page 153) for reference:
- only with clear analysis and strategy is it possible to effectively move towards the set goals, and avoid wasting time and resources on the way;
- with a strategic plan in the hand, a case for support and partnership is much more compelling; and
- a good strategic plan also facilitates the assessment of impact and change.

Fair to say it should be a priority task for community radio. Despite this we suspect few community radios have one.

However one commuity radio in Kenya decided, after 10 years, to produce, and armed with a facilitator and subsidised by a world body undertook a week long session to do the job.

The outcomes of the workshop, as reflected in plan, were as follows:

Defined and agreed on Vision and Mission
Deliberated and developed Radio FM’s Values
Deliberated and developed Radio FM’s programming charter
Resolved to revive the Advisory Board and proposed names for the board
Mapped out the stakeholders and potential sponsors
Agreed on resource mobilization strategies
Undertook a political, economic, social, technological and environmental (PESTE) analysis
Undertook a strength, weakness, opportunities, threats (SWOT)
Came up with a road map to achieve what could not be realized at the workshop due to time constraint

OK, sounds good. Plan ready to go, also included an action schedule and some kind of M&E.

Upon my review of the plan, and why such a review is so important, a few things came to light (this is just a snapshot):

- Impact and effect of the radio was not described.

- Target audiences not defined, maybe everyone?

- Stakeholders were not fully listed nor were relationships mapped out.

- Who are the listeners and primary beneficiaries?

- No community mapping or analysis done.

- Programme strategy not described or analysed. Yet this is critical to community radio.

- Most of the PESTE work was wrong or unclear.

- Much of the SWOT work was inadequate, some plainly wrong. Some seemed just guesswork. Ways to address weaknesses were sketchy at best.

- No media landscape analysis done, even about radios serving same community.

- Financial analysis, income v expenses?

- No analysis of SWOT by impact or timeliness done. Didn't matter as strategies, or what they were, did not relate to much of this anyway.

- Very little audience data, comments from staff and a few invited audience members sufficed.

It then described its vision, mission etc.

This was very generalised (could be any radio, anywhere) and included not-so-measurable objectives like this:

"To promote gender equity in its programs and activities and in any other societal processes" Don't ask me how you assess this.

A sustainability plan would have been good. Not included. Just a few ideas about "resource mobilization" kind of like shopping at a supermarket, or maybe running a lemonade stall.

Let's move to programming charter. Amongst those guidelines were:

"Radio FM shall be a model of programming, filling needs that other media do not, providing programming to unserved or underserved groups. The radio shall provide access and training to those communities."

No evidence presented before or after this statement in any way explains it. And

"Radio FM will challenge the cultural and intellectual assumptions and biases of its listeners through unique and diversified programming"

These may be known in minds of people, just not documented.

Skipping to M&E, monitoring and evaluation, it is a table stating which team will be responsible for a task and reporting schedule An activity summary. Monitoring method for "resource mobilization strategies" is "Revenue generation plans". So one plan reviewing another one?

No targets or performance indicators.

But we proceed anyway. After all, for Radio FM, any road will take them there. Unlike the Kenyan animal in the photo, that is resolving its next best move.

Where is Radio FM actually going - your guess is as good as mine.

But unlike Radio FM of Kenya, you can do it much better, below is a starter framework:

1. Where have we come from?
2. Where are we now?
3. Where do we want to be?
4. How can we get there? How must we change?
5. How will we know if we're getting there?

If you are interested in strategic planning for your community radio, media or NGO, just drop us a line, we'll provide helpful resources and references to get you underway.

Thanks for reading.