Case Studies

INDIVIDUAL AGENCY CASE STUDIES

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Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning

This was a 2 Day Intensive Strategic Planning Meeting with the Executive Director and 25 Senior Staff

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) is the official regional planning organization for the Chicago metropolitan area including the northeastern Illinois counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will. CMAP developed and leads the implementation of GO TO 2040, metropolitan Chicago’s comprehensive regional plan. To address anticipated population growth of more than 2 million new residents in the Chicago metro area, GO TO 2040 establishes coordinated strategies that help the region’s 284 communities address transportation, housing, economic development, open space, the environment, and other quality-of-life issues. In light of this, CMAP sought a consultant to facilitate a strategic planning process that was to be consistent with the agency’s mission.

This strategic plan would also involve identifying best practices for how CMAP could better involve other regional stakeholders in regional planning activities. This focus on the need to involve more stakeholders was requested by elected and non-elected government officials, partner organizations, and other stakeholder groups of CMAP who wanted to see a change in the nature of planning in northeastern Illinois. The development of a new strategic plan was also important as the CMAP Board had recently hired a new Executive Director and there had also been changes in the management team. With the new leader and management team in place they were situated to undertake strategic planning. Hollingsworth worked with the Executive Director, Chief of Staff and Director of Planning to create an agenda and collaborative planning process for the two-day comprehensive strategic planning session:

For this project Hollingsworth drafted an agenda for a two-day intensive strategic planning session and outlined an interactive participatory approach that would address all the issues. She then facilitated and documented the sessions with the Executive Director and 25 senior managers which led to the following results:

Reviewed CMAP’s Vision of desired results from the perspective of Benefits to the Region
Reviewed CMAP’s Mission statement from the perspective of key stakeholder groups and what each of those stakeholder groups expect from CMAP
Conducted a SWOT’s Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) of CMAP in the context of CMAP’s desired vision and stated mission
Operationalized CMAP’s 3 Core Values by outlining specific behaviors that leadership and staff can do to “practice what we preach”
Identified Strategic Goals that moved CMAP closer to its vision while taking into account its current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Developed Performance and Outcome Measures for each of the strategic goals
Created a Strategy Chart for each strategic goal outlining what it would take to achieve the target outcome (Tasks, Activities, Accountabilities, Milestones and Resource Implications)
Prepared summary document of CMAP’s strategic plan which was used by CMAP to share with their government and foundation funders to successfully make the case for funding of CMAP initiatives outlined in the plan.

Royal Oak First United Methodist Church (ROFUM)

This was a strategic planning process for one church, ROFUM, over the course of 6 month, including remote sessions during the pandemic, that involved pastors, 8 senior staff, and the “Compass Team” (the Board). This plan led to the creation of an overall strategic plan for the church’s initiative “Connect, Grow and Serve”. This plan was created in the context of the national protests on police brutality and systemic racism and so additional work was needed to articulate strategic goals and a set of strategies to address those concerns.

Royal Oak First United Methodist Church is one of the fastest growing churches in Southeast Michigan for many reasons including: its welcoming atmosphere, wide-range offerings of activities and educational opportunities, socially progressive stance, and active partnerships with community groups.

Hollingsworth worked with pastors to create a planning process for the “Connect, Grow, Serve” strategic planning meetings. For this project Hollingsworth drafted an agenda for the initial planning session and outlined an interactive participatory approach with the 8 senior staff people. She then facilitated and documented that session. 4 months later, in response to the nationwide protests on police brutality and systemic racism, Hollingsworth worked – remotely due to the Pandemic – with the diversity and inclusion team at ROFUM in drafting a racial justice statement and an additional strategic goal and strategies the church would employ to address systemic racism moving forward.

This entire strategic planning process, including remote sessions we needed to conduct due to the pandemic, led to the following results:

Created a clear vision articulating specifically what ROFUM means by its motto “Connect, Grow, Serve”
Developed a set of strategic goals for “Connect, Grow, Serve” that are responsive to the needs of the church and the role the church plays in the larger community
Drafted specific strategies, objectives and measurable outcomes for each of the strategic goals (including adding a goal to address systemic racism into the churches “Connect Grow Serve” plan)
Documented the process in a written strategic plan and action plans with clear tasks, accountabilities and timelines.
Submitted the strategic plan to the church staff and board “Compass Team” for its review, discussion and approval
Received approval for the strategic plan and began implementation.

Arab American Family Services (AAFS)

This was a comprehensive strategic planning process for one agency, AAFS, over the course of a year with board and staff totaling 30 people. it included extensive stakeholder input at the beginning of the effort, action planning teams to implement the plan and regular executive coaching throughout the year.

Arab American Family Services (AAFS) is a nonprofit social service agency founded in 2001 by 2 dynamic Arab American women. AAFS provides service to over 30 communities in the South Suburban Chicagoland area. Its programs focus on the areas of safety net case management as well as domestic violence prevention and intervention, elderly and disability assistance, cultural diversity training, mental health assistance, immigration services, community health and education programs and youth programs.

AAFS is a non-political, non-religious organization that focuses on building respect and understanding between Arab-Americans and the mainstream-American culture. AAFS serves as a catalyst for social change by actively seeking to confront the myths and taboos that have kept some Arab Americans from obtaining the assistance they need. By helping local neighbors overcome personal crisis, strengthen their families, and live healthier, more successful lives, AAFS is making a profound and positive impact in the community.

The two founders of AAFS approached Hollingsworth Consulting to do Comprehensive Strategic Planning with AAFS over the course of a year. The strategic planning would involve the board of directors, Co-founders, all staff and key stakeholder input in the form of interviews, focus groups and surveys.

For this project, Hollingsworth listened closely to the needs and outcomes the leaders wanted in a strategic planning process and then proposed a phased workplan that was reviewed, approved and then implemented. This led to the following set of deliverables and results over the course of the phases:

Designed and Facilitated Stakeholder Input in the form of focus groups and surveys from 7 different stakeholder Groups

Individual Donors
Community Leaders
Community Organizations and Partner Organizations
Funders and grant makers from private foundations and government agencies
Elected Officials
Clients of AAFS
Staff of AAFS

Drafted Report of all Stakeholder Input and presented it to the Board and Senior Staff who then discussed the implications for the upcoming full-day Strategic Planning session
Facilitated a full-day of Strategic Planning with the Board and Staff of 25 which:

Outlined key implications from stakeholder input
Developed a long term vision of desired results that reflected key concerns & priorities of stakeholders
Conducted a gap analysis of the agency’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats relative to the elements in the long term vision
Drafted strategic goals that begin to move the agency toward its long-term vision while taking into account its capacities and opportunities and threats
Identified outcome measures for each of the strategic goals in order to create a target and track progress

Drafted summary report of the Strategic Planning session
Facilitated a session with the Board and Senior Staff to discuss the implications of the Strategic Plan priorities for each of the 10 different programs and services of AAFS.
Worked with Senior Staff to identify staff teams – one team for each strategic goal
Facilitated a half-day Action Planning session with All 25 Staff and some Board members in which we:

Reviewed all the goals of the strategic plan so all staff could see the big picture.
Developed Action Plans to Implement the Strategic Plan. This involved dividing staff into work groups of the Goal Teams that were previously identified. One Team for Each Goal. Each Goal Team then developed a one year action plan with quarterly milestones for their outcome measure, tasks to achieve each of those quarterly milestones and then assigned staff for each task.
Each goal team reported out its One Year Action Plan for review and input from all staff
Debriefed to highlight budget, coordination and structural implications for the goal teams to be successful

Conducted a follow-up half- day Check-In session with all 8 Goal Teams 6 months later so they could report the progress made and challenges experienced implementing their action plans. We celebrated accomplishments and each Goal Team fine-tuned its plan moving forward.

Holy Family Ministries

This was a comprehensive strategic planning process for an individual agency and a series of annual board development retreats to review the past year’s accomplishments of the plan. All these activities involved 26 Board Members and 4 Senior Staff.

Holy Family Ministries School is a beacon of hope, through excellence in education, in one of the most depressed areas of the City of Chicago, North Lawndale. For 35 years, Holy Family has nourished the mind, body and spirit of community children. Holy Family Ministries’ mission is to provide opportunities for children and adults from Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods to excel academically, grow spiritually, expand life experiences and become effective leaders.

Hollingsworth was asked by HFM leadership to design and facilitate a strategic planning process. This process included both the Board of Directors and Senior Staff of Holy Family Ministries. After discussion with the agency leadership about what they wanted to accomplish Hollingsworth proposed a set of activities, meetings and timeline for each which was approved.

For Strategic Planning Hollingsworth facilitated 4 different planning sessions as a part of regularly scheduled evening HFM board meetings. Together, these 4 sessions over 8 months accomplished the following:

Identified key stakeholder groups and their expectations of HFM
Reviewed and discussed the HFM Mission Statement in the context of stakeholder expectations
Identified trends that directly and indirectly impact the future of Holy Family Ministries and determine the implications for how we set direction for the future. We discussed funding and giving trends, political and legislative trends, educational trends, social trends, generational trends, and religious trends.
Created a long term vision of results that HFM wanted to achieve 5 years from now
Assessed HFM’s current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats relative to the elements in the 5 year vision
Developed strategic goals that would move HFM toward its vision in a series of phases
Identified outcome measures for each of the strategic goals to create targets & track progress
Developed one year action plans for each strategic goal that included quarterly milestones, tasks, activities and clear accountabilities.

The Following year and subsequent years the HFM board asked Hollingsworth to facilitate their annual board retreat which reviewed strategic plan accomplishments from the previous year, made adjustments and updates to the 5 year strategic plan based on new realities and did board training.

For the Half Day Board Development Retreats Hollingsworth facilitated the following activities:

Reviewed the Functions and Responsibilities of the Board of Directors
Conducted a Board Self-Assessment and discussed Board overall strengths and gaps of needed skills that the board was missing and needed to fill
Based on the findings of the Board Self-Assessment the Board determined priorities for HFM Board development, training, and recruitment of new members moving forward
Discussed agency accomplishments-To-Date from the HFM Strategic Plan (Hollingsworth had facilitated the Strategic Planning Process for Holy Family Ministries)
Created operational work plans for the next year of the strategic plan

MULTIPLE AGENCY COLLABORATION CASE STUDIES

Regional Homeownership Preservation Initiative

This was a multi-agency collaboration in two phases: 1. strategic planning with 12 lead agencies and 2. a follow-up one-day forum to get input and feedback from 100 stakeholder groups

RHOPI – Regional Homeowners Preservation Initiative is a collaboration of 100+ agencies in the Metropolitan Chicago Region from different sectors (Housing, Banking, Federal Reserve Bank, Financial Literacy, Foundations, Community Groups, City, County, State and Federal Government) – all focused on dealing with the fallout of the 2008 economic downturn and resulting mortgage and housing foreclosure crisis. The Woodstock Institute is the lead agency of RHOPI. The Chicago Community Trust Funds the Collaboration administration of the RHOPI initiative. Hollingsworth was first asked to lead the strategic planning of the 12 executive directors of the agencies representing the RHOPI initiative and then the follow-up Forum of 100+ region-wide stakeholder groups. See descriptions of both initiatives below.

Phase 1:

RHOPI Strategic Planning Session with leadership team of 12 people from the lead organizations.

The results and outcomes of the strategic planning session for the RHOPI leadership team were:

Answered 4 strategic questions facing the RHOPI collaboration initiative:

What should be our collaborative structure moving forward?
Should our collaboration actively engage the city of Chicago as a key stakeholder?
Does our RHOPI collaborative effort need a new brand or identity moving forward?
Should our collaboration engage more actively in advocacy?

These 4 questions inspired Hollingsworth’s design of the planning session. Each were addressed – in focused sessions throughout the day resulting in concrete and measurable action plans for moving forward.

Brainstormed and prioritized value-added activities that RHOPI collaborative could provide that would create more substantive focus for its efforts as the mortgage crisis continues to evolve.
For each of the priority activities the following results were achieved:

Assessed RHOPI’s current capacities relative to each new value-added Activity
Developed outcome measures for each value added activity for each of the next 3 years
Created action plans to achieve the outcome measure(s) for just the first year
Developed quarterly milestones, specific tasks and accountabilities for each of those quarterly milestones – for just the first year

During the final debrief at the end of the session

Identified specific overall benefits to achieving the 2 New Value Added Activities
Outlined structural implications for how RHOPI should best organize itself given the new focus.

Prepared summary document of collaborative multi-agency plan which was used by the RHOPI and participating agencies to share with their funders to successfully make the case for funding of programs to help those affected my mortgage crisis initiatives.

Phase 2:

A One-Day Forum of 100+ Region-Wide Stakeholders to Address Strategic Issues in Home Ownership

Hollingsworth Consulting was asked to work with the RHOPI leadership team to design a one-day forum of 100+ regional stakeholders, train facilitators for the forum, and troubleshoot, coach and advise facilitators (RHOPI leadership team) as needed during the forum, and, finally, to document the proceedings.

Results of the Design Phase prior to the Full Day Forum included:

Drafted full-day agenda of the forum – including participatory break-out groups to engage participants
Fine-tuned the 3 strategic issues and the questions to be asked of 3 different issue groups
Wrote a detailed facilitation guide and trained 6 RHOPI leaders to be facilitators of break-out sessions
Designed and printed custom poster size worksheets for RHOPI facilitators to use in their break-out sessions that would insure the 3 strategic issue area discussion groups had focused outcomes.

Results of the One-Day RHOPI Forum – From Each of the 3 Different Issue Groups

Created a list of successful strategies to address issue
Identified patterns of emerging needs across region
Named systemic challenges and obstacles to address
Surfaced examples of local models that could be replicated
Recommended extension of specific geographical boundaries for some of the successful programs and initiatives
Identified legislative, regulatory and advocacy strategies
Recommended specific data collection that would allow RHOPI to more effectively “make the case” to funders & stakeholders for further support of the initiative
Surfaced possible new resources to explore to fund recommended initiatives
Suggested structural improvements and new organizational partnerships to strengthen the collaboration
Prepared summary document of collaborative multi-agency forum which was used by the RHOPI lead and participating agencies to share with their funders to successfully make the case for funding of programs and initiatives outlined at the forum affecting those affected by the mortgage crisis.

Chicago Forum on Housing Solutions

This was a multi-agency collaborative forum one-day event of 150 agencies, initiated and convened by the Chicago Department of Housing, and a set of year-long follow-up activities with all the stakeholders from 150 agencies.

This multiple stakeholder project represented a major initiative launched by the City of Chicago Department of Housing to stimulate solutions to major housing needs and challenges facing the city and the region. This effort was responsible for new levels of collaboration among 150 different stakeholders including city officials, suburban government elected officials, lenders, developers, community organizations, foundations, and universities from across the region – all coming together to develop new housing solutions.

Hollingsworth served as lead facilitator for this complex collaborative and achieved the following results:

Designed an overall structure, process and methods to gain meaningful feedback, ownership and buy-in from 150 forum participants.
Helped the Housing Department leadership team design a full day forum that brought together the 150 stakeholders to outline the purpose of the collaborative planning effort to address affordable housing. Participants then were divided into six sub-committees in various areas tied into the department’s five-year plan.
Designed a basic template of planning meetings that each sub-committee would follow which allowed each sub-committee to discuss current problems and trends relative to its specific focus, brainstorm ideas and determine workable solutions to be implemented, and to engage in “best practice” research.
Facilitated the monthly steering group meetings of co-chairs of the sub-committee in which they reported the progress and challenges of their sub-committee’s work as well as provided opportunity for the coordination of work between the sub-committees.
Coached the group of co-chairs on the agenda for their upcoming sub-committee meeting, basic meeting group dynamics, and neutral facilitation techniques to ensure maximum participation.
Supervised the work of two other professional facilitators who assisted, as necessary, with the sub-committees.
Prepared summary document of strategic plan which was used by the Chicago Department of House to share with the Chicago Mayors Office to successfully make the case for continued funding of housing program priorities outlined in the plan.

This multiple stakeholder planning effort served as a model for other similar forums and helped the Department of Housing draft a comprehensive plan on affordable Housing which took into account the needs and contributions of multiple stakeholder groups throughout the city. Hollingsworth facilitated two half-day follow-up sessions where sub-committees reported their progress and achievements.

Agency Merger Led by Regional Planning Board

This was a high level planning process where a regional planning board was appointed by the Illinois legislature to oversee the merger of 2 existing planning agencies that dealt with land use and transportation into one new organization – the Chicago Metropolitan Agency on Planning – CMAP

The Regional Planning Board in Chicago was temporarily established by the Illinois State Legislature. 20 state, regional and city elected officials and regional planning experts were appointed to the Regional Planning Board and charged with developing a strategic plan to explore the merger of two existing agencies – The Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission and the Chicago Area Transportation Authority. Towards that end, the Regional Planning Board hired Hollingsworth Consulting to facilitate a strategic planning process with the board members to develop a strategic plan for the merger. Hollingsworth proposed a set of activities and deliverables which was approved.

Hollingsworth designed and facilitated two-half day sessions with the 20 members of the Regional Planning Board. The following results and deliverables were achieved:

1^st Half Day Session Results:

Created a Vision of All the Things an Integrated Regional Planning Agency Could Achieve
Assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the existing two agencies relative to that vision of integration
Identified opportunities to seize and possible threats to guard against when considering the merger of the two agencies
Identified a set of 9 strategic goals that addressed the specific opportunities and threats and a set of activities to pursue so a full exploration could take place over the months ahead.

2^nd Half Day Session Results:

Reviewed summary of the first half day session
Broke the 20 member Regional Planning Board into smaller groups to develop a strategy chart for each of the 9 goals that had been established in the first session.
Created a clear workplan with tasks, timeline and accountabilities to achieve each of the 9 goals.

The overall result of this planning process was the establishment of the new regional planning agency – Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) by the Illinois Legislature which has as its mission to do integrated and comprehensive land use and transportation planning for the entire region.