Jenny Bergman
Senior Consultant
There’s a well-known clip of a man dancing alone on a hill at a music festival. Watch the full talk here, and you’ll notice the real hero isn’t him—it’s the first person who gets up and dances beside him. That first follower turns a lone nut into a movement; everyone who joins after is following the follower, not the original leaders.
Nonprofit strategic planning has the same dynamic. A board and executive director can adopt a plan in a single meeting. But it only becomes real when program staff, case managers, volunteers, and donors start explaining it in their own words. That’s the work of building ambassadors—a leadership discipline every nonprofit needs, not a communications task to check off after the retreat.
What Is Ambassador Inclusion in Nonprofit Strategic Planning?
Adopting ambassadors means treating strategic planning as an exercise in building believers throughout the organization, not just producing a document for the board to approve. It’s the deliberate work of identifying and equipping the people at every level—program staff, volunteer coordinators, direct-service teams, board members—who will carry the plan forward long after the retreat ends.
This differs from a typical rollout, which pushes information down from leadership. Ambassadorship pulls people in during the process itself, so the plan already belongs to them by the time it’s finalized.
Our LCDC Framework is a useful lens because it was built specifically for nonprofits, unlike frameworks such as SWOT or PESTEL. LCDC organizes an organization into Core (vision, mission, values), Delivery (program effectiveness and alignment), Capacity (finances, systems, people, communication), and Leadership (landscape, culture, governance)—a reminder that ambassadors don’t only sit in the executive director’s office. A well-regarded program manager can be a powerful delivery ambassador as a board chair is a leadership ambassador.
How Strategic Plans Benefit from Ambassador Buy-in
We’ve spent years working with nonprofits on strategic planning, and we keep seeing the same two patterns get in the way of a plan reaching its full potential. Either the plan is a beautiful dream for the future with no clarity on measurement, action, or accountability, or it’s technically sound but sits on a shelf, untouched, until it’s time to write the next one. Both problems come back to the same root cause —a plan that lives in a document instead of in people.
Organizations are fundamentally human. They’re groups of people who come together for a common purpose, which means they inherit the habits and culture of their formal and informal leaders—and culture eats strategy for breakfast every time. You can build the most rigorous, data-informed plan in the world, but implementation still succeeds or fails based on whether people actually do the work. That requires a culture of accountability and follow-through, and building that culture is a people problem before it’s a planning problem.
It also matters because perception drives behavior, even when perception doesn’t fully reflect reality. Whether staff and volunteers believe the plan is real, and believe leadership is serious about it, shapes whether they act on it. Ambassadors are how that belief spreads. They’re proof, walking around the organization, that the plan isn’t just words in a binder—and their example gives everyone else permission to invest in it too.
How to Include Ambassadors in Your Strategic Planning Process: 5 Steps
1. Start before the plan is drafted.
People commit to what they help discover. Involve future ambassadors—program staff, longtime volunteers, board members—in surfacing the organization’s strengths and best moments early in the process, rather than only reviewing a finished draft.
2. Look for your first follower.
Once your board names a direction, watch for who acts on it first, visibly—a program director reorganizing a team meeting around the new priorities, a volunteer describing the mission differently to donors. Name that person, thank them publicly, and treat them as a peer leader. Their buy-in gives everyone else permission to join, exactly as the second dancer does.
3. Use the LCDC Framework to find ambassadors at every layer.
Map your organization against Core, Delivery, Capacity, and Leadership, and look for a natural champion in each. This surfaces ambassadors in places leadership doesn’t always look first—finance, volunteer management, frontline service delivery—not just the executive suite.
4. Build feedback loops.
Thoughtful change management means real channels for staff and volunteers to ask questions and shape execution, not just receive the plan secondhand. This matters even more in nonprofits, where staff carry both a job and a personal commitment to the mission—a mismatch between plan and lived reality can cost you good people.
5. Make it visible and repeatable.
Celebrate ambassadors publicly, in board meetings and staff meetings. Build their language into how your organization describes itself to funders. A plan that lives in people’s mouths, not just your annual report, is one that survives budget season and staff turnover.
Bringing It Back to the Dance Floor: Turning a Strategic Plan Into a Shared Movement
Go back to that hill for a second. The lone dancer only becomes a movement because someone else decided to look a little ridiculous alongside him—and because he welcomed that person as an equal instead of treating them like a follower to manage. Everyone who joined after that wasn’t responding to the original leader anymore. They were responding to each other.
That’s the real work of strategic planning. Your board and executive team can name the direction, but they can’t dance alone forever and call it a movement. The plan becomes real the moment someone else gets up—and it becomes durable the moment your organization notices, celebrates it, and makes room for the next person to join in. Adopting ambassadors isn’t a step after the plan is finished. It’s the moment the plan actually starts.
Let’s chat about creating ambassadors for your strategic plan.