Strategic planning survey and scoring sheet

The spreadsheet behind Strategic planning survey questions for board, staff, and funders. Twenty five questions on one scale, a grid to paste responses into, and formulas that show where the board, staff, and funders disagree, sorted so the largest gap sits at the top.

What is in it

Tab one is Questions. Twenty five rows, each with a number, the exact wording to use, the audience it goes to (Board, Staff, or All), and the reason it is asked. Three questions are tagged All and go to the board, staff, and funders in identical wording. Eleven are tagged Board and eleven are tagged Staff, each written in the frame that audience will recognize. Every header cell carries a comment explaining the column. Keep the wording as written so every respondent is answering the same question.

Tab two is Responses. One row per person who answered, with a Respondent column for a name or initials and an Audience column where you type Board, Staff, or Funder exactly. One column follows for each of the twenty five questions, headed by its number, with the question text in a comment on the header so you do not have to keep tab one open while entering scores. Every answer is a number from 1 to 5. Leave a cell blank if that respondent was not asked that question or did not answer it. The sheet ships with thirty blank rows, enough for most boards plus staff plus three funders with room to spare.

Tab three is Gaps. One row per question, with the average score among Board respondents, the average among Staff respondents, and the average among Funder respondents, each computed automatically from whatever you pasted into Responses. A fourth column computes the spread, the difference between the highest and lowest of those three averages, or notes when only one audience answered that question so there is nothing to compare. Nothing here needs to be typed. Once responses are in, sort the sheet by the spread column, largest to smallest, and the top rows are your finding.

How to use it

1. Read the twenty five questions on the Questions tab and adjust wording only where your organization uses different terms for a program or a role. Do not add new questions to test tactics. If a question does not trace to who you serve, which programs grow or close, revenue lines, capacity, or what you stop, it does not belong here.
2. Load the survey into whatever form tool you already use, or send it as a document, keeping the audience-specific sets separate: the board gets its fourteen questions (three shared plus eleven of its own), staff get their fourteen (the same three shared plus eleven of their own), and funders get only the three shared questions.
3. Set a one-week deadline. Send the funder version yourself, as the board chair, from your own email, not through a form’s automated invitation.
4. As responses arrive, paste them into the Responses tab, one row per respondent, with the Audience column spelled exactly as Board, Staff, or Funder.
5. Once at least half the board and half of staff have answered, open the Gaps tab and sort by the spread column, largest first.
6. Take every question with a spread above 1.0 to the retreat as a single agenda item: the question, the three averages, and one open question for the room to resolve.
7. Keep the completed Responses tab with the board chair or facilitator only. The summary that goes to the wider group is the Gaps tab, not the raw rows.

When not to use it

Do not use it if no strategic planning process is scheduled yet. A survey with no destination collects opinions nobody will act on, and answers will not mean the same thing once the process is actually running.

Do not send the funder rows to a program officer who has never spoken with your board chair directly. The response will not be honest enough to build a finding on, and a cold ask reads as outreach rather than research.

Do not use it if your leadership team is small enough that the executive director already knows every board and staff member’s honest view from ordinary conversation. Run the planning process directly and spend the time this would take on the evidence pack instead.

If the board is already in a merger, wind-down, or acute cash crisis, skip this tool. Those conversations force their own answers to the five planning decisions, and a perception survey run alongside them measures anxiety about the crisis rather than disagreement about strategy.