Your Hintonburg Community Association (HCA) is updating its strategic plan to guide our next 5 years. The neighbourhood has changed considerably in the 10 years since the last plan was developed. We now need to re-think what we do and how we do it.
The HCA engaged Synapcity’s Laine Johnson as a facilitator to support our Board of Directors.
Project Summary
Synapcity delivered a guided session using the principles of Emergent Learning. We directed our energy and focus of the working session using the framing question:
- How might we best use our money, volunteer time, and networking/ connections so that Hintonburg’s people and businesses live, work and play with a high quality of life?
We clustered our responses around three major themes:
- HCA priorities
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Knowledge Transfer
HCA Priorities
Over the next year we will be working on the following recommended objectives:
- Mission/ Vision exercise
- with a community needs assessment through stakeholder interviews;
- Alignment of current activities to mission and vision;
- Create indicators for those activities to measure progress; and
- Create a feedback schedule to look at indicators.
Stakeholder Engagement
We hope to:
- create a stake holder map of the neighbourhood to identify groups that may currently be missing from HCA’s engagement strategy;
- collect data on current needs and gaps experienced in the community to update the volunteer opportunities available (this information can inform the HCA priorities efforts described above);
- Redefine volunteer roles and responsibilities for volunteers, including levels of participation, that will allow for a variety of commitments with clear results; and
- Create an engagement committee that is focused on this priority so that it doesn’t compete with other activities or committee work.
Knowledge Transfer
And we will do the following to ensure common knowledge across the association:
- Create a comprehensive HCA archives/ committee ‘bible’ that can be accessed by all board members;
- Develop a formal rotation of committee chairs to ensure that people can step in and out of the role and share the experience;
- Create a mentorship period to ease transitions;
- Resume meet and greets for new board members and additional social opportunities for informal learning and knowledge transfer among board members; and
- Use our website as a stronger resource for board member profiles and meeting minutes.
In conclusion
We are every much looking forward to the exciting work that we committed to at our strategic planning retreat. You will be hearing from us.
Larry Hudon
President, Hintonburg Community Association
