Strategy + Action: Keeping Coalitions Moving Forward

What Carpools and Coalitions Have in Common

Coalitions start from a simple idea: complex problems can be solved if organizations and people work together. It’s the equivalent of a well-managed carpool—a collection of talents and resources heading to the same destination. Pooling a combination of prevention professionals and cross-sector allies that share a passion and purpose, provides a vehicle that can have an exponential impact that no single partner can manage alone.

Moreover, the challenges facing many communities—substance use, youth mental health, food and housing instability, to name a few—are shaped by numerous interlocking systems, not just individual journeys. Coalition work can help align and navigate those systems. By sharing the ride, coalition partners have a greater capacity to raise awareness, change and shape policies, shift community norms, and target resources where they are needed most. They combine data, lived experience, and cross‑sector expertise to transport communities from short‑term fixes to long‑term improvements in health, safety, and wellbeing.

Organizing that shared work can get complicated, but by bringing different perspectives, expertise, and resources into the same lane, agreeing on a common destination, and coordinating ways to get there over time, the impact can be profound.

Success, however, depends on effective planning. Whether a coalition is just learning the basics on how to get started or renewing decades-long commitment, coalitions can get lost without a reliable roadmap and members who show up to share the ride.

Strategic Plan or Action Plan? What’s the Difference?

A coalition’s strategic plan aligns partners on why you are taking this journey and the shared destination. The action plan is a detailed road map of exactly how your coalition will get there: who does what, by when, and what resources will be used to fuel progress.

Many coalitions in Ohio and across the nation are just getting started. Others have been around for a while and have inherited plans that live in a binder, on a shared drive, or in someone’s head. Over time, aging ideas or vague responsibilities result in scattered agendas, overworked members, obstacles to measuring progress, and difficulty in telling persuasive stories to stakeholders, elected officials, and funders.

Having both a strategic plan and action plan—up-to-date and accessible—provides clarity, creates efficiencies, helps define roles and resources, as well as identifies ways to measure impact.

Whether you’re starting with one plan, both, or neither, it’s never too late to create, revisit, and align strategic and action plans. Here’s how.

Start With a Framework, Not a Blank Page.

Coalitions do not have to invent planning from scratch. The Ohio Coalition Institute has resources for coalitions at any stage of their journey, simple tools that provide the structure needed to develop that first real plan or enhance an existing one. For advanced coalitions, these tools are a way to check alignment, sharpen focus, and integrate new data.

The Community Tool Box VMOSA (Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Action Plans) step-by-step guide is one resource that can help coalitions develop or evaluate their overall strategy and inform success.

The Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF, sometimes referred to as “spiff”), is another tool that has helped guide strategic planning across Ohio for more than 20 years and offers a five‑step approach to defining a coalition’s purpose, priorities, and sensitivities:

1. Assessment: Describe the problem your community is facing.
2. Capacity: Identify your staffing, skills, and resources.
3. Planning: Prioritize tangible goals your coalition is working to achieve.
4. Implementation: Outline how and when your initiatives will be applied.
5. Evaluation: Determine how you will know you are succeeding.

No matter what tools and tips a coalition uses to define the journey, a strategic plan is a great resource for keeping partners, members, and volunteers aligned on shared goals and objectives and should be revisited periodically.

Convert Strategy Into Action

With a strategic plan in place, it’s time to figure out who’s driving, who’s picking up the coffee and donuts, who’s pumping the gas, and who’s paying for it. Action planning is creating and implementing the “to-do list.” It requires that the strategy be translated into concrete steps, identifying responsible parties, timelines, and measures, and aligning tasks with member capacity (especially important when members are volunteers).

Logic models can be a good first step. It’s a check of the weather before you get in the car helping to assess how your coalition’s efforts are influenced by local conditions, risk factors, and attitudes. Understanding those conditions will reveal the tangible activities that fit those conditions and advance the coalition toward specific goals.  

• Emerging coalitions: Use a logic model to agree on the problem and the specific local conditions you will focus on first, instead of trying to tackle every issue at once.
• Established coalitions: Revisit your logic model periodically to test whether your activities still match your priority conditions and to identify gaps or activities that don’t clearly link to outcomes.
• Advanced coalitions: Layer in more complex drivers of community issues such as housing, transportation, or economic stability, to determine actions that will affect the outcomes you are trying to change.

When revisited, logic models can help ideate necessary adjustments, guide meeting agendas, workgroup charters, and communication with partners and policymakers.

Using impact data is another way to informaction plans. By reviewing activities and assessing what is working and what’s not, coalitions can revise their efforts. The Action to Impact: A Coalition-Building Roadmap is one example of a tool that can help keep action plans aligned with strategic plans, as well as answer useful questions such as:

• Do we have at least one specific actionable step for each priority in the strategic plan?
• Are assigned roles matched with realistic time and authority?
• Can we identify at least one measure of progress for each action?

Resources such as the strategic plan map template or the logic chain quick guide can be used as the bridge betweenhigh‑level strategy and day‑to‑day activities.

Keep Asking the Question: “How can we measure progress?”

Progress isn’t hard to imagine. In fact, both plans are designed to link strategy or actions to outcomes and to define the wins we want to see in our communities along the way. Concrete signs that this “carpool” is getting us somewhere might include changes in community conditions (parents willing to talk to their children about vaping), capacity (number of partners trained in suicide prevention), or implementation (percentage of schools using an evidence‑based curriculum).  

Taking the time to define the milestones and tangible signs of success helps a team turn a hopeful plan into a measurable one.

Put It All Together

Yes, carpools and coalitions have a lot in common and have meaningful impact as long as passengers keep communication open, and everyone shows up ready to go. Planning and revisiting plans regularly are critical for both. There are, however, some common missteps to avoid.

• Don’t skip the assessment: Skipping readiness assessments and environmental scans can lead to plans that don’t fit community conditions or coalition capacity and leave your partners overwhelmed. Capacity should always be a factor in planning.
• Remember that activity lists are not strategy: A long list of events is not a strategic plan; activities should trace back to root causes and local conditions discovered in assessment and tie directly to roles and responsibilities in your strategic plan.
• Plans are for coalition members, not for funders: If members cannot see their role and the needs of their community in the plan, engagement and accountability suffer. Funding is important, but when you are true to your purpose as a coalition, funders will align with your plans.
• Make sure plans are flexible, not fixed: Coalitions that never revisit or adapt their plans struggle to respond to emerging issues or opportunities and may find engagement suffers.

By grounding the work in clearly articulated plans and converting overarching strategy into realistic actions, coalitions can share the journey, better manage resources, and reach their destination, sharing some donuts and coffee along the way.