Facilitating a Planning Workshop

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What is covered in this guide

1. What do you use planning workshops for
2. Important things to know about facilitating planning
3. How to facilitate a planning process

• Meeting to prepare to plan
• Planning workshop

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This guide provides suggestions and advice on how to facilitate a planning process. It is based on the introductory guide to Planning that outlines a systematic approach to planning and eight basic planning steps.

This section is part of the planning guide which is broken into four sections. Section 1 is an introduction to planning. The approach used in these guidelines is based on the Logical Framework Approach explained in Planning Section 2. Section 3 provides more detailed guidelines on how to use each of the planning steps.

1. What do you use planning workshops for

Planning workshops are a very important tool to use to make sure that your organisation is clear about what you should be doing to achieve your objectives. It helps to get all your members and other stakeholders on board and to develop concrete plans for your work. A good planning process will help you to clarify the following:

• Your goal – the long term change you want to see [sometimes called vision]
• Your purpose – the contribution your organisation commits itself to make to achieving that change [sometimes called mission]
• Your specific objectives – the things you have to achieve [results] to make sure you reach your purpose [these objectives can be long-term and short-term]
• Strategies to achieve your objectives – choosing the best approach to reach each objective
• Implementation plans – the actual tasks [activities] you will have to do to make sure each objective is achieved, who will do them, by when and what resources will be needed.
• Evaluation mechanisms – the ways you will measure what you have achieved or failed to achieve, and what the reasons are.

2. Important things to know about facilitating planning

Make sure you are clear about the approach you will use and the steps you will follow

It is important for the person or group who will facilitate a planning process to agree on a common approach and the basic steps you will follow. The guide to Planning outlines a specific approach, the Logical Framework Approach. It also outlines eight basic planning steps. This approach can be used for any planning process – whether it is your overall organisational plan or just a plan for a specific event or campaign.

If what you are planning is fairly complex and will involve fairly large amounts of resources (particularly people, time and finances), your planning process will need to take longer and each step will need to be covered in more detail. If you are planning something more simple and clear, your planning process can be more limited in terms of the amount of time you allocate and the level of detail in which you cover each of the steps.

The basic planning steps suggested in the guide on Planning are:

Step 1:	Prepare to plan
Step 2:	Analyse the situation and needs
Step 3:	Prioritise and select goal and purpose
Step 4:	Develop clear, specific objectives
Step 5:	Identify alternative strategies and select the most effective
Step 6:	Plan implementation
Step 7:	Plan for evaluation
Step 8:	Draw up a summary and circulate it.

The guide on Planning provides advice on a useful approach to planning systematically and guidelines on how to complete each of these steps. These steps can be adapted to use for specific planning purposes.

Break the process into phases

It is useful to break the process into phases. You would need to break longer, more complex planning processes into more phases than shorter and more straightforward ones. There needs to be at least two phases to any planning process.

In Phase 1 you would need to prepare the planning process, this is Step 1 of our suggested basic planning steps. Preparation should always be done in advance to ensure that the planning runs smoothly, people have been empowered to participate effectively and have set aside the time that will be required.

Phase 2 would cover all the remaining planning steps in the most simple and straightforward planning processes. This could take between one to three days. If you are planning something more complex that will involve the use of a lot of resources, you may need to give more time to the process and cover each of the steps in more detail. In this case, you might need to break the process into more phases, depending on what you decide at the meeting to prepare for the planning process. For example:

• If you do not have the information you need for the situation and needs analysis, you may need to have a phase in which you collect this information.
• If you will need a lot of time to work through complex issues in the situation and needs analysis, choice of goal and purpose and the development of clear objectives, you may want to take a break at this point in the process before going on to Step 5. This will give people a chance to think through the issues before going on to decide strategies for achieving the objectives.
• If you do not need everyone to be involved in planning implementation, you may want to give this task to specific people who can then report on their the activity plans they have drafted at a later stage.

3. How to facilitate a basic planning process

This section provides brief guidelines on the two basic phases of a planning process. You can adapt it if you need to break the process into more phases:

Phase 1 : Preparing to plan
Phase 2 : Planning

First phase: Step 1 of the planning process - Preparing to plan

Organise a meeting to plan the workshop. Include key people who should be part of the decision about how and when to conduct the planning. It should also include people who need to do practical tasks to make the planning work smoothly. This should include administrators who must send out notices of the planning, contact people and take notes. The following are some issues this meeting could cover:

1. Purpose: What do we need to plan? In this discussion you need to make sure everyone is clear what your plan is for – whether it is a campaign, a public meeting, a training programme or a development strategy for the community.

1. Time needed and steps you will follow: In this discussion you need to decide how much time you will need, whether and how you will break the process into different phases and what issues you will need to address in each step and in how much detail. It is important to agree on the approach to planning you will use and the steps you will follow in the process (the guide on Planning can help you think about this). Again, if what you must plan is simple and already fairly clear, you do not need to give too much time to the planning and may be able to cover some of the steps fairly quickly with a brief input and a short discussion. For example, if you are planning an event, like a public meeting, you may be able to move quickly through steps 1 to 5 above and spend the majority of the time on the implementation plan where you decide on your activity plans. But, if you are planning something complex that will need lots of resources, you need to give the process more time. The more systematically you plan, the more you reduce your chances of wasting resources. We sometimes think that the real work only starts when planning is finished. Planning IS work and it is important that leadership give it the time it requires if we are to succeed in our efforts. Some questions you could discuss are:

• What kind of planning do we need to do?
• What steps need to be covered in detail and what will we need to cover in each step?
• How much time should we give to each step?
• Should we break the planning process up into more phases?
• How much time and other resources will we need for the whole planning process?

2. Information: This discussion is to help you work out what information you will need before the planning process starts. The following questions can help you lead this discussion:

• What information about the situation and needs of our target community will we need in order to plan effectively?
• How important is it that we have accurate information on the situation and needs?
• What of this information do we already have and what will we still need to get?

3. Participants: This discussion is about who needs to be included in the planning. It is important to include all those who need to understand the plan and who must be committed to carrying it out effectively. The following questions can help you decide:

• Who will be affected by our plan or who can affect whether it is successful or not? Who are our key stakeholders (don’t forget the staff of your own organisation)?
• Who needs to understand the plan and who do we need to implement it effectively?
• Who would make a useful input to the planning?
• How important and/or influential is each main stakeholder group? Whose needs, interests and concerns should be prioritised in the planning process?
• How useful or essential would their involvement be at each step in the planning process?
• What kind of involvement will be adequate for each key stakeholder in each step of the process?

4. Practical tasks to prepare for the planning process: In this discussion, you will decide what needs to be done, by whom and how in order to prepare for a smooth and effective planning process. The following issues are likely to need discussion:

• Do we need a planning committee to coordinate the planning and deal with any problems? Who should be on it? What will their tasks be?
• Who will get the information we still need before the planning process? From where, how and from whom can we get it? By when must we get the information we need?
• What is our target date for completing the plan so that we can begin to implement it? Work backwards from this deadline for when you must have completed the plan to work out when all the other steps must be completed. You may need to revise the deadline for completing the plan if you realise that it is not realistic.
• Who will facilitate each session?
• Do we need people to prepare inputs to help ensure useful discussion? What inputs do we need? Who must do them and by when should they be prepared?
• Who will be the scribe to keep and circulate a record of our discussions? How soon must the record be circulated? (Make sure this is someone reliable, otherwise you may lose a lot of the valuable discussion and decisions – the scribe is a key person.)
• What must we do to get the commitment to the planning process we need from each key stakeholder? Who will do it?
• How should each stakeholder be prepared, so that they can participate effectively? What information will they need beforehand? Who will circulate this information and all the information about the time, date, venue and programme of the planning sessions?
• What other tasks need to be done, by whom and by when (organising venues, food, transport etc)?
• What other resources will we need (flip charts, overhead projectors, kokis, pens and paper, presstick, admin support for contacting people and circulating records of discussions etc)?

5. Now you are ready to draw up a plan for the planning process. This should indicate what must be done, by whom and by when. One person should have the responsibility for convening the planning committee and checking on progress.

Second phase: Planning - using steps 2 to 8 of the planning process

This section provides ideas on dealing with each of the basic planning steps from Step 2 to Step 8. It also provides an agenda (items a to g) and questions you can use to lead the discussions in each step. These basic planning steps are useful in any kind of planning, but you will need to deal with each step in more or less detail depending on what you are planning and how complex it is. The following workshop outline can be broken into further phases if you think that is necessary. The agenda outline is based on the basic planning steps and guidelines on using them in the guide on Planning.

1. Introduction and outline of the programme

In this session you should make sure everyone introduces himself or herself if there are people who do not already know one another. Outline the programme. Tell participants what the purpose of the planning process is as agreed at the preparation meeting. Explain the programme based on the different planning steps you will follow as agreed at the planning meeting. Give people an outline of the timing you will need to stick to if you are going to be able to complete the process. Respond to any questions or suggestions. Finally get agreement from everyone on how you will work together to achieve the purpose within the timeframe.

2. The situation and needs (Planning Step 2)

In this step, you need to help the participants to analyse the information that has been collected or developed on the basis of experience. The purpose is to develop a common and detailed understanding of the situation so that you can plan the most effective intervention to change it. This will ensure that what you do and how you do it will the most strategic approach to achieving your goals. The key role of the facilitator here is to push participants to:

• Identify their individual assumptions about the situation you wish to change but also about the internal situation and capacity of your organisation;
• Analyse the information you have for how reliable it is and what it tells you about the most effective action that should be taken;
• Challenge and examine assumptions and develop a common agreement on what the issues are and how they should affect what you do and how you do it; and
• Reach agreements that will lay a solid basis for the rest of your planning.

For example, if you are going to run a campaign, you need to understand the situation or problem you want to change and how it affects your target group so that you can target your campaign in the right way. You need to analyse how your target groups sees and understands the issues so that you can make sure your message and the way you run your campaign is relevant and appropriate to your target group. See the guide on Running a Campaign for ideas on how to analyse the situation and needs before planning a campaign.

You can use the following questions, or questions like them, to facilitate the analysis:

• What are the major problems faced by our target community?
• Which of these is the key or central problem or issue?
• What are the causes and effects of this problem?
• Can we realistically hope to make a significant contribution to addressing this problem?
• How does this problem or issue affect our primary stakeholders? How do they see it? What are their concerns and interests in relation to the problem or issue?
• What key stakeholders stand to gain or lose from our taking up this problem or issue? How can we increase our allies and decrease the impact of potential opponents?
• What experience have we had so far that is relevant to this problem or issue and what can we learn from it?
• What can our organisation realistically expect to achieve? What resources and capacity are available to us inside and outside our organisation? What does this mean for our planning?

This is often a rather messy discussion to facilitate. The following is a suggested approach:

1. Someone presents information that has been collected (preferably with the target community) as planned in the preparation meeting about the situation.
2. Give each person two or three small pieces of paper and ask them to write IN LARGE LETTERS what the problems or issues are. Ask people to write only key words. Also ask them not to state the problem as the absence of a solution (there is no crèche) but to describe the problem as it affects the target group (children of working parents are left with grandparents or neighbours).
3. Stick all the papers up on the wall so that everyone can read them. If you have too many, and they are too detailed, group ones that are similar and agree on a general name for this group.
4. Ask the participants to look at them and decide what the key issue or problem that you need to change is.
5. When the key problem or issue you need to address is agreed, put it in a space in the middle.
6. Ask everyone to look at the remaining problems and issues and decide which are causes of the key issue or problem you have identified and which are effects of it. This discussion allows you to help participants work out how the issues are linked. It also helps you start to see how you can target causes so that you can change the effects they have on your target community.
7. Place all those problems that are identified as causes of the key problem or issue above it. Put them in order, in terms of what causes what. Place all those problems that are identified as effects below the problem. Put them in order in terms of what effect leads to what other effect. The following is an example of how the issues could be grouped on the wall:

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8. Ask participants to check the analysis in pairs or threes. Here people should look at whether they think the causes are adequate and accurate and whether the effects are adequate and accurate. Ask for proposals on any additions or changes and make the changes that are agreed. When you have agreed on the things that cause the key issue or problem and the effects this has and put them all in order, you have analysed the problem. The example above shows how you might analyse the problem of pensioners not getting their pension payments. It shows you what the causes of the problem are believed to be and what effects the problems has. This prepares you to work out what intervention will be the most effective. It also helps you work out what you can realistically hope to change and what you cannot. You will use this analysis to decide on your purpose and goal, your objectives and strategies for achieving them.
9. Use the other questions above to look at your problem analysis and decide what this means for what you do and how you do it. Don’t forget to analyse and discuss what your organisation and its allies or partners are realistically capable of achieving.

b. Purpose and goal

You now need to help the group use the analysis to decide on a goal and purpose that are:

• Relevant to the key problem or issue you have identified and its causes;
• Realistic in terms of what you are capable of doing; and
• Appropriate in terms of the needs you have analysed.

As a facilitator, you need to show people why it is useful to set a goal and a purpose and what the difference is between them. Use the following to explain these terms:

• A goal is the long-term situation you believe should be achieved in the lives of your target group. Usually this is not something your organisation and actions alone can bring about, but it needs to be something you can make a significant contribution to achieving through your efforts. This goal should be worded to describe the situation you would like to see, not the actions you will take to achieve it. This helps everyone to see what long-term impact you hope to be part of bringing about to improve the lives of your target group.
• The purpose describes the situation that you intend to bring about from your activities. It is a positive situation you are committing yourselves to brining about through your efforts. The goal helps you ensure that the purpose is relevant to the large long-term change that is needed. The purpose helps you later work out what action will be required to achieve it. It helps you test your thinking by asking whether, if you do everything you plan, it will be enough to achieve the purpose. Again, you should not describe the action you will take but the change you intend to produce in the lives of your target group.

You can use the situation and needs analysis to choose the goal and purpose:

Ask participants to look at the problem analysis and change the wording of the key problem or issue from negative to positive. Instead of expressing the key problem or issue, it should now express the positive situation you wish to see exist (for example, from "Pensioners can’t access pensions" to "All legitimate pensioners access their pensions without major waiting periods within 10km of their homes"). This should begin to show you what your goal or purpose could be.

Do the same for the causes. Once this is complete, you should be able to see what needs to be achieved in order to change the negative situation (the problem or issue) into the positive situation you aim to bring about (purpose) or the situation you aim to contribute to bringing about (goal).

If the positive situation you have described by rewording the key problem or issue is something you believe you can realistically achieve and also believe is important and relevant to the lives of your target group, this could be used as your purpose. If it is too unrealistic for you to achieve alone, this could be used as your goal. A good test is to look at whether you can realistically achieve what will be required to reverse all the major causes of the problem. If you can only address some of them, it is unrealistic to commit yourselves to the purpose of reversing the key problem or issue. This may have to become your goal. Your purpose would then be to achieve one or more of the positive situations that are the reverse of the key causes of that key problem or issue. Questions that could help you lead this discussion are the following:

• Goal: What is the future situation we will contribute to bringing about? What is the most relevant goal? What is the most clear and concrete way of stating this goal?
• Purpose: What can we commit ourselves to achieving that will make the most significant and useful contribution to achieving the goal we have agreed on? What can we realistically achieve with our resources and capacity? What is the most relevant but also most realistic purpose?
• What else, that is outside our control, will need to happen for us to achieve our goal and purpose? How important are these things to our success. Can we influence them, and if so how (you will need to include this in your later planning)? If we can’t influence them, does this mean our goal and purpose are unrealistic?

3. Clear Objectives

The facilitator of this session must help the participants decide on objectives for achieving the purpose. Objectives are the key results you must achieve to achieve your purpose. Objectives need to be worded to describe the results you need to achieve in order to achieve your purpose. They should not describe your actions or activities. The facilitator must ensure that the objectives are:

• Clear – so that anyone would understand them in the same way;
• Specific – about who should benefit and how;
• Measurable – as far as possible telling us how many or how much will be achieved;
• Achievable – by you within the time available;
• Realistic - in terms of your resources and capacities; and
• Time bound – indicating by when you will achieve them.

In this discussion you will use your needs analysis and your agreed goal and purpose to help the participants to decide on objectives:

1. Write up the agreed goal and purpose clearly in large letters. Give a brief input on what effective objectives are.
2. Use the problem and needs analysis to help the group work through the following questions:

• What specific results are needed to achieve our purpose? The needs analysis included an analysis of the causes and effects of the problem – do the causes we identified give us an idea of what must results we must achieve in order to achieve our purpose? What objectives will we have to achieve to achieve the purpose?
• How can we make each objectives more specific by stating by when they should be achieved, who should benefit, how many or much must be achieved and how well?
• Can we realistically achieve these results? If not, can we improve our capacity to achieve them by, for example, building alliances and improving our organisational capacity? Do we need to set objectives to take account of these things? (If you can’t improve your capacity to achieve the results that are necessary to achieve the purpose, you will need to go back and make the purpose more realistic.)
• What else, that is outside of our control, will need to exist for us to achieve our objectives effectively? How likely are they to happen? Can we do anything to influence the situation so that these conditions exist? (You will need to include these things as either objectives or as part of your plans for implementing your strategy.) If they are important and unlikely to exist, but we can’t influence them, are our objectives realistic?

3. Write up each agreed objective clearly on a separate sheet of flip chart paper and stick them below the goal and purpose. You should ideally not have more than 5 objectives.

4. Strategies for achieving the objectives

In this session, the facilitator needs to help participants to identify all the possible ways you can achieve each objective and choose the most effective. It is often useful to ask people to think of as many different and creative ways as possible before making a decision. This means you do not just do things the way you always do, but give yourselves the chance to find better ways of doing them. You will not need to do this if it is absolutely clear that you already know the best way of achieving one or all of your objectives. This process takes time, but it can be very valuable and help you improve what you achieve.

1. Lead a discussion to agree criteria for choosing the most effective strategy. For example, you could use the following:

• Is it relevant to the objective and our purpose?
• Is it realistic in terms of our capacity and resources?
• Will it make the most effective use of our resources and capacity?
• Could it be done in a simpler way?
• Would it get the support we need from potential allies and partners?

2. Ask people to work in pairs or threes to think up different and creative ways of achieving the first objective.
3. Ask each group of two or three to choose a maximum of two of the best options they have come up with.
4. Go round the room taking one option from each group and writing it up on flip chart paper. Do not let anyone comment at this point. Go round again and take one more suggestion from any group that wants to add one. Allow questions for clarity only at this point. Don’t let people begin to evaluate the options yet.
5. Eliminate duplication by grouping options that are essentially the same by finding wording that those who made the suggestions agree to.
6. Make a grid with a short version of each option written down the left hand side. Write the criteria along the top:

Option 1	Relevance	Realistic	Resources	Simple	Support
Option 2	3	1
Option 3

7. Lead a discussion in which each option is evaluated using the criteria. You could use a scale of 1 to 3 where 1 indicates "low", 2 indicates "average" and 3 indicates "high". So, if you evaluate your first option as being highly relevant to the situation, you would put a 3 in that column. You might also evaluate it as not being realistic at all. You would then give it a 1 in that column, as in the example above, and so on. If the group is small, you could do this in one big group. But, if the group is large, you might ask people to do it in small groups. You will then need to ask each group to give and motivate their scores and lead a discussion until you reach agreement.
8. Look at the scores and make final decisions on the best strategy option.
9. Repeat this process for each objective where the strategy for achieving it is not already clear and agreed by the group.
10. Write up the agreed strategy on the flip chart paper under the objective it is designed to achieve.

5. Implementation plans

In this session, the facilitator needs to help participants make decisions on what activities will be needed to achieve each objective using the strategy agreed. Implementation plans or activity plans, as they are often called, need to be specific about:

• What must be done
• Who must do it
• How it will be done
• By when it must be done.

It is often useful to identify someone or a group that will take responsibility for each objective. This group can then be asked to draft an activity plan for achieving that objective. The following is based on this approach.

1. Give each group the sheet of flip chart paper with the objective they are responsible for and the agreed strategy written on it. Give each group at least four additional pages of flip chart paper.
2. Ask each group to write the heading "Activities" on one sheet of blank flip chart paper. The other sheets should be headed "Responsibility", "Deadline" and "Resources Needed".
3. Tell the groups what areas of the room or venue have been allocated to their group to work in.
4. Tell the groups that, when they reach the area allocated to them, they should stick up the objective and strategy they will be working on. Next to it they should stick the sheets marked "Activities", "Responsibility", "Deadline" and "Resources Needed", in that order. They should use the sheet of paper headed "Activities" to list all the activities required to achieve the objective using the agreed strategy. Each one should be numbered. Next they should agree who will be responsible for each numbered activity and list this (with the number of the activity) on the sheet marked "Responsibility". The same should then be done for agreements about deadlines for each activity and for the resources needed for each activity. Finally tell groups how much time they will have for this discussion.
5. When the time is up, ask each group to present their thinking to the other groups. Allow questions for clarity first and then comments and suggestions. Record all final agreements on the activity plan for each objective.
6. Remember to look at the resources and work out whether they are realistic or not. You may also need to go back and change objectives or strategies it the resources required are more than you have or can realistically get.

6. Evaluation

In this session, you need to facilitate agreement on what indicators you will use to evaluate whether you have effectively achieved the purpose, objectives and activities. The indicators for the goal will help you assess how much progress has been made towards achieving it through your efforts.

1. Explain why it is important to agree in advance what you will use to evaluate what has been achieved. Explain that targets and indicators are useful to help clarify now what we can realistically hope to achieve and by when. Targets are agreements about "how many", "how much" and "how well" we intend to achieve. You can use the information you gathered for the situation and needs analysis to set targets. For example, "Waiting time at pension pay points is reduced to a maximum of two hours within five months" is a target. Indicators tell us what criteria we will use to evaluate whether we have successfully achieved what we intended. Like objectives, they should be:

• Clear – so that anyone would understand them in the same way;
• Specific – about who should benefit and how;
• Measurable – as far as possible telling us how many or how much will be achieved;
• Achievable – by you within the time available;
• Realistic - in terms of your resources and capacities; and
• Time bound – indicating by when you will achieve them.

2. Lead a discussion in which participants agree targets and indicators for the goal, purpose, objectives and activities.
3. When you have completed the process, ask everyone to check whether the decisions made are realistic. Make amendments and get a final commitment from everyone. Remember, it is important for everyone who will have to achieve a target or indicator to agree that it is appropriate and realistic.

7. Summary

Make sure it is clear who is responsible for writing up a summary of all your planning decisions and circulating it to everyone present. Agree who will coordinate implementation and monitor progress. Finally, you should agree dates on which you will assess progress and review the plan on the basis of experience. Finally, end the meeting with a celebration of the completion of an effective plan and the beginning of its implementation

How to Plan - Eight Planning Steps

What is in this guide

Step 1: How to prepare to plan - analyse stakeholder involvement
Step 2: How to analyse situations and needs
Step 3: How to prioritise and select a goal and purpose
Step 4: How to develop clear objectives
Step 5: How to identify alternative strategies and select the most effective strategy
Step 6: How to plan implementation
Step 7: How to plan for evaluation
Step 8: How to summarise your plan

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This section is part of the planning guide which is broken into four sections. Section 1 is an introduction to planning. This section provides more detailed guidelines on how to use each of the planning steps. The approach used in these guidelines is based on the Logical Framework Approach explained in Planning Section 2. Key terms and words are explained in that section and a guide to facilitators of planning workshops is provided in Section 4.

Step 1: How to prepare to plan - analyse stakeholder involvement

1. Involving stakeholders

(This section draws on material from the Centre for Rural Development, University of Wolverhampton)

We know that participation is important for planning to be effective (see Section 2, Part 1). You need to plan how to get this participation. This means you need to do more than just decide who will participate, you need to plan how you will enable them to participate effectively and how you will get their commitment to participate effectively.

Commitment to the planning process is key to effective participation and effective planning. This means it is important to involve people in the organisation in preparing for the planning. Everyone needs to understand why a planning process is needed; what process will be used; how long it will take; what contribution will be expected from them and what amount of time each should set aside. It is often useful in larger organisations to set up a planning committee to plan, facilitate and record the planning – giving as many people a role in the process as you can.

At this stage it is also important to begin to identify all your other stakeholders outside your organisation and analyse which ones it would be important to include in the process of planning, and how they should be included. In Section 2, Part 1, we explained how participation in the planning process by staff or other key stakeholders allows you to draw on the experience, knowledge and skills of people and to deepen understanding and build commitment to the decisions. There are often stakeholders whose views can make a key contribution and whose commitment to the decisions will be important. Inclusion promotes transparency and accountability. Planning to enable participation should also improve equity if the needs, interests and abilities of the different stakeholders are taken into account. (See Section 2, Part 1, "How to ensure the right amount of involvement in the planning process", for more information on the benefits and potential disadvantages of participation and on different kinds of participation.)

In preparing to plan, you need to look at all your stakeholders and analyse what stake each has in the decisions you will make during the planning. You will find this analysis useful at each step in the planning process. In the next step, on how to analyse the situation and needs, we provide guidelines on ensuring that the needs, interests and concerns of your main target group are prioritised. In this step, you should lay the basis for the situation and needs analysis by identifying and analysing all your stakeholders. Your stakeholder analysis at the preparation stage involves working out who your stakeholders are, what their stake in your decisions is, who should be involved in the planning, and whose views, interests and concerns you will prioritise in the decision-making. Your stakeholder analysis at this step should lay the basis for ensuring that all your further planning decisions take your stakeholders into account.

In the next points, we provide a general discussion of the benefits of doing a stakeholder analysis, what to avoid and some guidelines on doing a stakeholder analysis in preparation for your planning process.

2. Benefits of doing a stakeholder analysis

An analysis of stakeholders should be done at each step in the planning process. It can take up time but is usually worth it. Doing a stakeholder analysis can help you to:

• Identify who you believe should be encouraged and helped to participate;
• Identify who could gain, who could lose and who could contribute: those with rights, interests, resources, skills and the ability to take part in or influence what you achieve;
• Ensure your planning is sensitive to the views of those affected about what their needs are;
• Reduce or hopefully remove negative impacts on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups;
• Identify useful alliances which can be built upon;
• Identify and reduce risks; for example, identifying areas of possible conflict of interest and expectation between stakeholders so that real conflict is avoided before it happens; or, for example, identifying stakeholders without whose co-operation or contribution your project cannot succeed so that you can plan to reduce the risks involved;
• Recognise the roles of women as well as men and avoid stereotyping them; and
• Encourage participation in the community development process.

3. What to avoid in doing a stakeholder analysis

• Don’t get intimidated by the jargon. You are often already doing stakeholder analysis, whether you call it that or not. What is suggested is just a systematic approach to analysing the issues arising from relationships with other individuals, groups, organisations or institutions.
• Avoid quick and easy assumptions; examine your current thinking and assumptions. The information you get from analysing stakeholders is only as good as the thinking that goes into it.
• Avoid oversimplifying complex relationships in your analysis.
• Avoid drawing on too limited a number of opinions; your judgements will often be subjective and it is useful to check them with others.
• Avoid overemphasising differences rather than common ground as this can negatively affect co-operation. This does not mean you should not acknowledge differences, only that you also recognise the common ground, as this is the basis of any potential future co-operation.
• Avoid alienating people; be sensitive to how uncomfortable some of the analysis could make individuals or groups.

4. How to do a stakeholder analysis

In order to work out who your key stakeholders are and how you should involve each one, you need to work out which have the greatest importance for your work and which have the greatest influence over what you will achieve.

1. Work out who your primary and secondary stakeholders are. The primary stakeholders are those that you want to directly benefit. Secondary stakeholders are those have an interest in or influence over what you achieve.
2. Draw up a table and list all your stakeholders. Put in a column labelled "importance", one labelled "influence" and one labelled "involvement":

Stakeholder	Importance	Influence	Involvement
(List all stakeholders here)

3. Work out what level of importance or influence each stakeholder has for your organisation, programme or project through discussion. Importance is about how much priority you give the needs, concerns and interests of each stakeholder. Influence is the power each stakeholder has currently over what happens. You can do this by giving each stakeholder a number from 1 to 5 where 1 equals high and 5 equals low.

In the example below, the fieldworkers of Molayezo, an NGO that assists communities to set up advice offices, is preparing to plan a project in the village of Mqanduli (you can access the background to this example at the end of Section 2). Molayezo has analysed the importance and influence of adult women, youth, adult men, the local councillor, another NGO providing legal advice and their donor:

Stakeholder	Importance	Influence	Involvement
Adult women (primary stake)	1	5
Adult men (primary stake)	2	3
Youth (primary stake)	2	4
Local Councillor	4	2
Legal Advice Centre	2	2
Donor	3	3

In this example, Molayezo believes that, although the primary stakeholders are of key importance, they have little influence. This means that they should deliberately try to increase the influence of these stakeholders through involvement in the process of deciding on the kinds of services and action the advice office should focus on. This is particularly important for adult women in the community who, they believe, should be their main priority (they gave this group a "1" for Importance) but who they believe have, at present, little or no influence (they gave a "5" for Influence). They believe the Councillor has a lot of influence but less importance and, therefore, see the need to maintain his support and consult him, but not prioritise his needs and interests as a Councillor.

4. Decide what kind of stakeholder involvement: Participation means different things to different people. Analysing how stakeholders should be involved is about working out what level of involvement and influence different stakeholders should have over the decision-making:

Consumption	The service provider makes the decisions. Action on.
Compliance	The service provider informs and directs the process and expects compliance. Action for.
Consultation	The service provider does the analysis and then consults after most of the thinking and deciding is done. Action for/with.
Co-operation	The service provider involves others in analysis, prioritising and deciding on action to take. Action with
Partnership	Control over decision making and learning is fully shared. Action by

You will usually need to increase the level of participation according to how important the stakeholder’s ongoing commitment, participation and support is to the success of the plan. Molayezo decided on the kinds of involvement of their stakeholders in the following way:

Stakeholder	Importance	Influence	Involvement
Adult women (primary stake)	1	5	Partnership
Adult men (primary stake)	2	3	Partnership
Youth (primary stake)	2	4	Co-operation
Local Councillor	4	2	Consultation
Legal Advice Centre	3	2	Co-operation
Donor	3	3	Consultation

Molayezo decided to put a lot of effort and time into involving both adult men and women in all the key planning decisions. They realised that they could achieve little without community support and commitment and their plans needed to reflect the communities needs and interests. They believed that the process of analysing the situation and setting goals would be useful for community groups in itself. As their key goal is to build the skills and commitment in the community to take over the running of the advice office, they felt they needed to ensure the highest level of involvement. They decided to involve a number of community organisations, specifically organisations of women, during the planning process.

They decided not to make the same commitment to involving the youth. The youth organisations in the community are weak and could hold up the planning process. They worked out a process to communicate the thinking during the planning process to the youth and the Legal Advice Centre and to create an opportunity for them to contribute their own thinking and issues and to maintain their support. It is clearly important to maintain good working relationships with the Legal Advice Centre, the donor and the Councillor but their needs, interests and concerns must not be allowed to dominate over those of the primary beneficiaries. They decided to keep the Councillor briefed on progress and to ask him to use his influence to get office space if possible. However, they agreed to keep the advice office separate from the direct influence of the local political structures so that it could contribute to enabling the community to hold the Council to account when necessary.

Step 2: How to Analyse the Situation and Needs

The analysis step is about understanding the situation, problem or issue you wish to impact on better. It is also about understanding the needs of your target community in the context of that situation, problem or issue. It is intended to make sure that the approach you decide on to promote development, or to provide a service, is relevant and appropriate to the situation and needs it is intended to address. This analysis is important and should inform all the decisions you make in the rest of the planning process. It will help you in later steps to choose the most relevant and realistic goal, work out the most effective way of achieving your goal (objectives and strategies), plan to implement your decisions and plan what you will use to assess and evaluate your progress.

The purpose of this step is to build a common understanding about:

• The current situation and how it affects your target group;
• The deeper causes of this situation; and
• Future situation you want to contribute to creating.

1. Focus on your primary stakeholders needs and interests.

Almost all non-profit organisations aim to make some kind of positive contribution to society. They often have a key target group whose needs and interests are prioritised. This is the community you hope will benefit from your work. A community can be any of the following:

• All people in a large geographical area such as everyone living in the KwaZulu Natal; or
• All people in a smaller geographical area such as everyone in Umlazi or those in an informal settlement in Alexandra Township; or
• A specific group of people in South Africa as a whole, such as ex-prisoners or abused children; or
• A specific group in a particular geographical area, such as all women in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape or women entitled to maintenance grants in a particular rural village; or
• Other organisations, such as all organisations set up to oppose violence against women.

Target communities may be groups that have little power and influence because they have been marginalized through poverty, gender and race or they may be a more general group to which you are directing a particular service or message.

This step involves collecting and analysing the information you need to set goals that are:

• Relevant to your target community;
• Realistic in terms of what is possible and likely to make a difference; and also
• The most effective and appropriate contribution given the current situation.

In the Molayezo example given in Section 2, the organisation started with a very wide understanding of their target community when they developed their organisational strategy. At this point their target community was people living in isolated rural communities where poverty is severe. They used their general experience of these types of communities, and the contacts they had developed in some communities, to collect information and analyse the general problems faced by such communities. At this stage the analysis was very general and enabled them to develop a general organisational strategy for improving the impact they were having.

However, in the process of developing their organisational strategy into programme and project plans, they narrowed down the target community of their immediate programme work to five specific rural villages of which Mqanduli was one. They took a strategic decision to target their work at a limited number of very specific villages. This would act as a pilot project so they could learn more before extending the work to more villages. They committed themselves to identifying a further ten villages once they had completed the pilots with the five villages. Vusi and the fieldworker’s team then developed a general strategy for the programme directed at the five communities and based on the general needs analysis and organisational strategy. They decided, as part of the programme strategy to create a separate project for each community to ensure that the work done was relevant and appropriate to the specific needs of each particular community. This provided an even more specific target community for each project. Sipho took responsibility for the target community of Mqanduli. His first step would, therefore, need to be to lead a more specific needs analysis process for the community of Mqanduli.

The basic process of analysing needs is the same whether it is for an organisational strategy or for a project. The target community, however, is likely to be more specific in the case of a project than where organisational strategy as a whole is being developed.

The following are some ideas on the process of analysing needs.

2. Collect relevant and reliable information

In order to start on this process, you will need reliable information on the present situation. You will need information on:

• The situation, problem or issue you wish to change – if the organisation already has an accepted strategy in place, the focus of this will be influenced by the goal, purpose and strategic objectives of your organisation;
• The perceived interests and concerns of different key stakeholders, but particularly those of your primary stakeholders;
• How much impact you have had so far (if the planning is part of ongoing work); how key stakeholders feel about what you have achieved; what has helped to ensure successes and what is limiting what you are achieving; and
• The existing situation in your organisation, its strengths and weaknesses, the knowledge, skills, information, finance and other resources available.

See the separate guidelines on doing needs assessment and research. These can help you collect the information you need.

You will need enough information to enable you to:

1. Analyse the problem or issue by examining its causes and effects
2. Analyse stakeholders to assess how the problem or issue affects them; how they perceive it; what their concerns or interests are in relation to the problem; whether there are key differences or conflicts of interest; what opportunities exist for gaining the support of influential people; which stakeholders could become barriers or risks;
3. Analyse your experience so far to assess what seems to have worked well and what has not worked well and why this is the case; and
4. Analyse the existing capacity of your organisation (what it is currently capable of).

If possible, you should involve any primary stakeholders that you wish to establish a full partnership with in actually collecting and analysing the information, not just as sources of information. Other key stakeholders concerns or interests should be identified through the research process but only in relation to the core issues facing your target community.

Once you have collected the information, you will then need to analyse it. This really just means examining what the information means. Some ideas and questions that might help you do this are:

3. Analyse the situation, problem or issue:

Start by discussing what problems or issues identified are the most important ones. List them in order of priority and identify the most important. It is important to be as focused as possible, so try to narrow the issues down to one or a maximum of three key ones. For each issue that you believe needs to be understood better, you should discuss:

• What is the core problem or issue? – Try to identify it as clearly as possible. Problems or issues should not be seen as the absence of a solution but as an existing situation that is negative, for example, not "There are no shelters for abused women and children" but "In one out of three households a woman or child has suffered abuse".
• What effect is it having on the target community?
• What are the causes of this problem or issue? – Our planning should aim to address the causes as we see them, and so it is important that we agree what they are.

You could use a chart like the following to analyse the problems or issues. First agree the core problems, second write down what effects they have and then third discuss and agree what the causes of the problems are:

Causes	Problem / Issue	Effects
For each one, write down what you think causes the problem or issue. This will tell you what must change if you are to have a significant impact on the problem or issue.	Write each problem as clearly as you can. These should be the core problems or issues you have identified.	For each one, write down the effects this problem or issue has on the community. This will tell you why that issue is so important.

Check your thinking by asking whether the things you have written in the first column cause the problem or issue identified in the second column. Does this problem or issue have the effects on the community identified in the third column?

For example, Molayezo analysed one problem in this way:

Causes	Problem / Issue	Effects
Many do not know about the grants or how to apply for them.The transport to the nearest office where you can apply for a grant costs almost half as much as the grant is worth.Women have not mobilised to act together. Individual women have approached the Local District Council to help and the Local Council does not take an interest in this problem.	4 out of every 5 single mothers who qualify for maintenance grants are not getting them.	Households that desperately need the money don’t get it.Children are not getting sufficient nutritious food and are missing school too often.Women do not have confidence in the local government structure and feel powerless about their situation. Only three women said they thought the Council should take up their problem. None think the Council would do anything.

The information you have gathered can be used as a baseline, a marker telling you where you started and from. You can then use this to assess progress later when you come to evaluate how effective your work has been. In order to know what progress you have made, you need to know what the situation was when you started your work. For example, if your research at this point shows that a woman or child is being abused in one out to three households in your target community, you can go back later, after you have begun to work on this problem, to assess whether and by how much this situation has changed.

With complex problems or issues, recognising that there is a problem is only the beginning. You need to develop a deeper and shared understanding of what its causes and effects are. In the overall cycle of planning, when you reflect on your experience and evaluate your effectiveness, you may well find you now have a deeper understanding of both causes and effects and that this will help you improve the effectiveness of your response. In development work, if the target community develops a deeper understanding of the issues and problems that affect them, this is an important advance in creating the conditions for that community to act to produce sustainable change. The cycle of learning, the process of planning and evaluation itself should be empowering.

4. Analyse stakeholders.

The following questions might be useful for deepening your understanding of the target community and of the other key stakeholders.

• Target community – What are the key relevant characteristics of the target community? Who has influence in the community? Who has influence over the community? How does the community perceive the problem or issue? What experience has the community had in dealing with the problem or issue? What opportunities are available to the community and what relevant resources does it have? What are the existing barriers to the community dealing with the issue? What are the interests and concerns of the community in relation to the issue? What expectations does the community have in relation to the issue and what might they expect from our organisation?
• Other stakeholders - Who are the other key stakeholders? What are their concerns and interests in relation to the issue? Would they benefit or be negatively affected by action our organisation might take? Who else is working on or impacting on the issue or problem? Are they potential partners or supporters who can assist or might they oppose us? How dependent is our organisation on these other stakeholders for the success of our work? (You might want to revisit your earlier analysis of the potential influence or importance of different stakeholders after this discussion.)

5. Analyse your organisation

This is a very important area that is often forgotten. Organisations can get so involved in planning what needs to be done outside the organisation that they forget to analyse the internal needs of the organisation. Plans fail when the organisation does not have the right people, skills, information, structures, systems and processes to plan effectively, carry out the plan and monitor and evaluate what is being achieved so that plans can be reviewed and changed in the light of experience. As with the stakeholder analysis, you should be asking questions about your organisation’s capacity at every step of the planning process and planning to ensure you set goals, objectives and action plans around building and developing the capacity you need. The following questions are related to the different steps in the planning process but you should start thinking about these issues in this step:]

• At step 2, Analysing needs – What are our key strengths and advantages in this situation (such as knowledge, skills, experience, influence, finances, reputation and proven record of success)? What are we good at? What are our likely weaknesses or disadvantages in this situation? Who else is working in this area? What particular value, if anything, do we contribute? What have we learned from our experience about strengths we should build on or weak areas we need to improve.
• At step 3, Prioritising and selecting goals – You should take what your organisation is capable of into account in selecting goals. Questions related to this have been included in the criteria you could use to evaluation alternatives in that section. Some questions to assist would be : What capacity is required to achieve the possible goals we identified? What capacity do we already have? Which goal would make the most effective use of our existing strengths and experience? What is the gap between what our organisation is capable of now and what it would have to be able to do? What would we need to do to develop our organisation to achieve what is required? Can we realistically develop the capacity required? Are there other organisations that could and would do it better?
• At step 4, Develop clear objectives – Use the same questions as those for step 3 but ask them for each objective. In this step you should remember to include objectives related to your organisational needs, identified through an analysis of what organisational capacity will be required to achieve the developmental objectives you have agreed (skills, information, knowledge, staffing, structures, processes and systems etc.). These are called organisational objectives. They can make the difference between good plans that go nowhere and good plans that lead to real improvements in the lives of your target community.
• At step 5, Identify alternative strategies and select – In this step you will need to use your analysis of your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses to help you choose realistic and effective strategies. Again, organisational issues have been included in the criteria you can use to select the best strategy to achieve your objectives. Remember, if your strategy assumes that your organisation is able to do things it is not yet ready to do, this may either mean you need to find a new strategy, , or it may mean you need to make a note of activities you must undertake to build your organisation’s capacity.
• At step 6, Plan implementation - Your analysis of the organisational issues at each step should have enabled you to identify what action must be taken to develop your organisation so that it is capable of achieving the development objectives effectively. These activities should be included in your action plans for implementing your chosen strategies.
• At step 7, Plan for evaluation – In this step you will need to identify what information you will need to collect, from where you will get it, who should be part of collecting it and how you will store it. The systems and processes to do this will need to be built. Plans to do this should be included in your action plans for implementing your strategies.

The next step (prioritising and selecting a goal and purpose) is about prioritising – using your analysis to decide on a realistic goal and purpose to which all those who are essential to achieving them can commit themselves. This avoids falling into the "wish list" trap. The following steps are about concrete planning to ensure you are clear about what must be achieved to achieve the goal and purpose (setting objectives), implement decisions (planning for implementation) and evaluate progress (planning for evaluation).

Step 3: How to Prioritise and Select the Goal and Purpose

In this step you will use your analysis of the situation and needs to make decisions about what the broad aim will be; what change you aim to help bring about in the lives of your primary stakeholder community.

In the Logical Framework Approach (See Section 2), a goal is a general statement of the situation you aim to contribute to bringing about. Goals are the reason why you undertake any activity and are often fairly general and long-term. Often, the change that is needed to make a really meaningful improvement in the situation of your target community and in their lives is complex and would require many different efforts to achieve. It is still important for you to state this goal. The goal helps keep you focused on the important long-term change that is required, even though it is usually not possible for your organisation alone to bring about the change. It helps you work out what contribution you can and will make to bringing about that longer-term change. It also helps you identify the other organisations working toward that goal so that you can co-operate with them. It is your goal that explains the meaning of what you hope to achieve. Your analysis of needs will assist you to identify what change will make a significant difference to the situation, issues or problems identified.

In the Logical Framework Approach, a purpose is the result your organisation commits itself to achieving in order to make a contribution to the achievement of the longer-term goal. This should be something that your organisation can realistically achieve by itself. The purpose describes why your organisation, programme or project exists.

The goal and purpose must be realistic in terms of what your organisation is capable of either achieving (purpose) or making a significant contribution to achieving (goal). But they must also be relevant to the needs, interests and concerns of your key stakeholders who are the target community. Your discussion of what the most important problems and issues are and what you should aim to address will have to balance these two considerations.

1. Suggestions on prioritising goals and exploring what your purpose should be:

1. Look at your list of problems and issues. You will probably find that your analysis of causes and effects has shown that some of the problems have similar causes. Group these together.
2. You may also see that some of the problems have more important effects on the target community than others. Agree which ones these are and list the problems in that order – starting with the most important and ending with the least important.
3. Some of the problems may be ones that your organisation cannot really help with. Identify these and explain why you are not equipped to assist with these issues. Some time should be spent assisting the target community identify ways of dealing with these and providing contacts in other organisations that could help.
4. Look at the priority problems and issues and their effects and identify what your organisation could make a contribution to assisting with and agree what you will focus on changing.
5. Change the statement of the problem from describing a negative situation into a statement describing a positive situation – this is a possible goal, a future situation you believe you could contribute to bringing about.
6. Look at the main causes of the problem or issue you have used to formulate your goal. If your purpose is going to make a significant difference to the problem, it needs to address a cause of that problem. List the possible purposes that would make a significant contribution to the goal. Identify what your organisation could realistically change and eliminate those you could not change. Choose the one that will both make the most significant contribution to the goal but also realistically be achieved by you. Reword this from being a description of a negative situation to describing a positive result that your organisation could achieve. This is your purpose.
7. Use the information from your needs analysis to decide what you will use to assess progress along the way and whether you are making an impact on the goal. This process helps you clarify and agree what the goal means concretely and what you will use to evaluate.
8. Use the information from your needs analysis and the goal you have decided on to decide what you will use to indicate that you have successfully achieved your purpose. This clarifies what the purpose means concretely and how you will know you have achieved this result effectively.
9. Identify the external conditions that will need to exist for you to make a contribution to the goal and for you to achieve your purpose. Assess whether the purpose and goal are realistic in terms of how important these conditions will be to whether you are successful and whether these conditions are likely to exist. Work out if you can do anything to influence these conditions and note anything you will need to include in your activity plans.

In selecting your purpose, you will need to identify what would be the most useful contribution to achieving the goal you can make. This must be something that will make a significant difference, but also that is realistically achievable by your organisation. Choosing the best option is sometimes difficult. The following suggests a process to help you do this.

2. Using criteria to help you select a goal or a purpose

If there are a number of different possible goals or purposes that all seem important you may want to develop criteria to help you select one. Criteria are agreed factors you can use to evaluate different choices. You can use them to prioritise issues, assess ideas, evaluate achievements or make decisions. In this case, you can use them to evaluate the goals or purposes you have prioritised and decide on the one that fits all your criteria best.

Molayezo (in our example) used the following criteria to assess each of the alternative purposes they had identified in the discussion with community leadership and members:

• What will make the most useful contribution to the development of the community but also makes the most effective use of our strengths as an organisation? What we can offer?
• What will build the greatest level of commitment among our primary stakeholders?
• Is it relevant and appropriate to the situation we have analysed and the goal we have chosen?
• Is it affordable – do we have the financial resources?
• Do we have the capabilities (knowledge, skills, experience, information and influence) or can we get the support of others who do?
• How long would it take? Is this realistic?
• Would we have sufficient support from key stakeholders? If not, is there anything we can do to get their support?
• Does it contribute to the longer-term development of the community? Does it fit with our understanding of what is required to promote effective development? Will it leave the community, and especially the more vulnerable sections of the community, more in control of their lives?
• Will it lead to sustainable change?

3. How to write your goal and purpose

It is important to remember that the goal and purpose are not actions you will take (like building a clinic) but the impact or result you want these actions to have on improving the lives of people. The goal and purpose should be written to state the situation you want to see result in the actual lives of your target community. This ensures that, when you implement and evaluate your plan, your attention is on what must change as a result of your work and not just on "doing things".

For example, the purpose agreed by Molayezo and their target community of Mqanduli was not "To open an advice office in Mqanduli". This is not a goal – it tells us what the NGO will do, it does not tell us what will change in the lives of the community.

Molayezo, in our example, stated their purpose as, "The people living in Mqanduli have access to reliable information and advice and a centre around which to organise, in order to access their rights as citizens and improve their social and economic situation, within two years".

They further agreed that they would know the advice office was successful if it met the following criteria:

• Provides accessible, relevant and reliable information on citizen’s rights and responsibilities.
• Provides accessible, relevant and reliable information on resources and other initiatives that can assist the social and economic development of the community.
• Is under the control of the community within two years.
• Provides effective support to the community organisation’s efforts to mobilise the community.

4. Summary

The goal needs to be something the organisation, programme or project can make a realistic contribution to achieving and that will make a valuable impact on the problem or issue identified.

The purpose statement of an organisation, programme or project should be:

• Clear enough to indicate what change is to be brought about;
• Specific about who will benefit from the change;
• Relevant to the key problems and issues arising from the situation;
• A result that can realistically be achieved; and
• Recognised as important by those who must contribute to achieving it.

Step 4: How to Develop Clear, Specific Objectives

At this point in the planning process, you should know where you are now (analysis of needs arising from the present situation), what situation you want to contribute to bringing about (goal) and what concrete contribution you intend to make (your purpose).

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Now you need to develop clear and specific objectives that describe the results you must achieve to achieve your purpose and make a significant contribution to your goal.

There are three basic types of objectives:

1. Development objectives – these indicate the change you wish to make or contribute to making in the lives of your target community. Both what we have called the goal and purpose in Step 3 and the objectives that you will develop to achieve them in this step, Step 4, are development objectives. They describe the situation or result you want to create. They do not describe what you intend to do. Their purpose is to clarify the commitment you are making to the positive impact you work will have. They are, therefore, the basis for evaluating your progress and the effectiveness of your work.
2. Organisational objectives – these describe what you will need to do to develop your organisation so that it is capable of achieving the development objectives.
3. Activity objectives – these describe what you will do to achieve the development objectives. Activity objectives indicate the actions you intend to take to achieve the development and organisational objectives. These are the strategies you will use to achieve each objective. You will decide on these strategies in Step 5 and finalise them as activities in your implementation plan in Step 6.

General tips for setting useful specific objectives:

1. In the Logical Framework Approach (See Section 2, Part 2), specific objectives describe the things you will need to achieve r to reach your purpose. In some versions of the Approach, they are called "outputs". They may be development objectives or organisational objectives.
2. As with the goal, you should state your objectives as the result you want to achieve, not what you intend to do to achieve it. Molayezo, in our example, looked at their needs analysis, goal and purpose and the signs they would use to know whether they had been effectively achieved. They then used these to develop a number of objectives. One of their objectives was, "Four out of five women who currently qualify for maintenance grants have been able to access them effectively within one year". This is one result they believe they will need to achieve in order to achieve their purpose. It will enable the community, and especially women, to use the service provided by the Advice Office to get their grants effectively. This result will also contribute to breaking the community’s feeling of isolation and helplessness. It can provide a basis to strengthen the community’s ability to organise and to pressure local government to take up their issues, especially opening a pay point closer to the community. Improved income for those that qualify for a grant will also make a direct contribution to improving the economic and social situation of those households. Finally, achieving this objective could mean that the community becomes more committed to supporting their organisations and maintaining the Advice Office. You can see from this example that Molayezo and the community will be able to use this objective to evaluate what progress is being made and whether real benefits in the lives of people in the community have resulted. This is better than an objective that says what you will do, for example "To provide advice and information to assist women who qualify for maintenance grant to access their grants". This does not tell us what real benefit must result, only what you will do.
3. Objectives should make it clear who will benefit. In the example given above, it is clear that the intention is for "women who qualify for maintenance grants" to benefit.
4. Objectives should be as specific as possible so that everyone who must contribute to achieving them understands them in the same way. This also allows you to evaluate how you are doing clearly. Specific objectives tell you who should benefit, how and by when. You can be even more specific about how people should benefit by giving targets about quantity (how many) and quality (how well). The above example is specific about who should benefit (women who qualify), by when (within one year), and their target for how many (four out of five) and about how well (access the grants effectively).
5. Objectives may often not be something that the organisation, programme or project can guarantee to achieve alone. Success may depend on what others do or do not do. For each objective, it is important to use your needs analysis, and particularly the stakeholder analysis, to identify who else could affect whether you achieve your objective. Next to each objective write down what assumptions you are making about what else needs to happen and by whom for your objective to be achieved. You will need to analyse this when you come to looking at strategies for achieving each of your objectives in the next step. When you plan the action you will take to achieve your objectives, you will need to include plans to do as much as you can to ensure these things happen, even though they are generally out of your complete control.
6. Don’t forget to set organisational objectives that indicate how you need to develop your organisation’s capacity to achieve the goal and development objectives. These could, for example, relate to finance, key skills you will need to build or further develop, staffing or the structures, processes and systems of your organisation. If there are too many, group them and include the detail in the action plans you will develop to implement the objectives.

The specific objectives agreed by Molayezo and the community to achieve the purpose of the Mqanduli project were:

• Four out of five women who qualify have successfully accessed their maintenance grants within the first year;
• The community is able to present clear proposals to the Council on the location of pay points for pensioners and people on other government grants and to mobilise a campaign in support of this proposal within six months.
• The community has successfully mobilised around four additional areas of basic needs within two years, using the information and support provided by the advice office.
• The community is able to take control of the advice office within eighteen months.

Step 5: How to Identify Alternative Strategies and Select the most Effective

Strategy is the approach we take to achieving the agreed objectives. Effective strategies involve choosing the most effective and realistic way of getting the results we have agreed on. This step is about deciding on your approach to achieving each objective.

If the best way to achieve your objective is not immediately clear to you, you will need to look at the variety of possible ways you could achieve each objective and choose the most effective and relevant approach.

If the approach to achieving an objective is already very clear to you, and you believe it will almost certainly lead to effective results, you can skip this step. But, it is often useful to test out these beliefs by briefly looking at what alternative ways there may be and discussing whether your assumptions about the best way of doing this are right. Again, more participation can enable you to find new and improved ways of doing things. We often get stuck in the way we think and need new ideas to challenge us to think in new ways.

Our thinking about our approach usually depends on how well we have understood the problem. If we have understood the problem as the absence of a solution, we have blocked our thinking about the problem by jumping to answers before we have really understood the problem. For example, when organisations are not achieving what they want to achieve, they often think that staff training is the obvious answer. They state the problem as "a lack of training" rather than identifying what is going wrong. The cause of the problem could be something different. For example, it might be that the organisation is not providing enough resources and information to the people doing the work, not that those people do not know how to do the work. The answer may be that we need to improve how we plan so that the required information and resources are identified and provided on time.

In the Molayezo example, the programme responsible for working with the communities to provide access to advice and information decided that they needed to change their strategy. They decided to give the responsibility of working with each community to one person to co-ordinate instead of different members of staff all taking responsibility for providing advice in different areas and on different issues, as had happened in the past. This strategy would allow one person to work with the community in a way that ensured that the service provided was based on a deep understanding of that specific community’s needs. It would also enable that person to develop a strong relationship with the community organisations. This had not happened before. Molayezo chose this strategy because they believed it would build sustainable capacity to provide advice and to organise around needs inside the community rather than just individual specialists outside the community providing advice.

It is very important to keep your problem analysis in mind when you look at alternative strategies and do not jump to conclusions about what should be done. This is a strategic approach. How you understand the problem is very important because it is the basis for your decisions about what should be done and how. This step, therefore, involves using your problem analysis to look at different ways you could achieve the results you have made a commitment to achieving in your objectives.

General guidelines on developing and selecting from alternative strategies:

1. Look at your analysis of the problem that relates to each objective you have decided on.
2. Look at the causes you have identified.
3. Each cause is expressed as a negative problem in your analysis. Turn each one round to a positive situation. For example, the NGO in our example, took their analysis of the problem that women who qualify for maintenance grants are not able to access them around in the following way. This suggested to them some of the elements of the strategy they could use to achieve the objective:

Causes	Objective	Effects
Women who qualify have the information and knowledge they need to apply for the grants.The civic and women’s organisations mobilise a campaign to get a pay point opened in Mqanduli where all residents can receive their grants and pensions.Resident’s, and specifically women, are able to effectively and constructively engage the Council as their representatives to raise local problems and issues for resolution and insist on transparency and accountability.	Women in Mqanduli who currently qualify for maintenance grants have been able to access them effectively within one year	Households that desperately need the money available through grants are getting it.20% more children get sufficient nutritious food and are able to attend school regularly.Residents, and specifically women, have confidence in the local government structure and feel they have ways of improving their situation.

4. Although using your analysis to start to explore possible strategies is useful, do not limit your thinking too much to this at first. It is useful to allow a completely open discussion of all the possible ways you could use to achieve your objective. Important new ideas can come up and everyone’s ideas can be recognised and openly discussed. Give everyone a chance to think about the best approach and then write them all down without discussion, even if they do not seem relevant or realistic to others. Only after everyone’s ideas are recorded should you discuss the benefits, disadvantages or relevance of the alternatives suggested.
5. Ask everyone to think of the criteria that should be used to assess the different strategies. Criteria are agreed factors you use to evaluate. You can use them to prioritise issues, assess ideas or make decisions. In this case, you can use them to assess the alternative strategies suggested and make your decision. The benefit of this is that it makes the decision about what approach to use transparent and open. Some useful criteria used to discuss each alternative strategy by Molayezo in the discussion with the Mqanduli community leadership and members were the following:

• Is it relevant to the objective? - Is it an effective way to achieve the objective?
• Is it affordable – do we have the financial resources?
• Do we have the capabilities (knowledge, skills, experience, information and influence) or can we get the support of others who do?
• How long would it take? Is this realistic?
• Would we have sufficient support from key stakeholders? If not, is there anything we can do to get their support?
• Does it fit with our goal?
• Does it contribute to the longer-term development of the community? Does it fit with our understanding of what development requires? Will it leave the community, and especially the more vulnerable sections of the community, more in control? Will it lead to sustainable change?
• Is this the most efficient way of using our resources? – Could we get the same results using an approach that would use less of our resources?

6. Once you have had an open discussion of all the alternative strategies and have assessed each one in terms of your agreed criteria, you are ready to select the most appropriate one and to begin planning to implement your chosen strategies.
7. Decide what criteria you will use to evaluate the successful achievement of each objective. The criteria should at least include three factors if possible: time (by when), quantity (how many) and quality (how well). These criteria should be clear enough to enable you to assess progress or evaluate what was achieved.
8. Don’t forget the objectives related to developing your organisation’s capacity. Don’t forget to look at alternative strategies for achieving your organisational objectives. Don’t jump to decisions here either before looking at possible alternative ways of achieving these objectives. The criteria for assessing these strategies can be adapted from those used to assess the strategies for the development objectives, but the key one is whether each alternative will build the required capacity in the most cost effective and sustainable way.

The process suggested above is time consuming and you may not need to do this for every objective. However, a systematic and careful process can save you wasting time, resources and energy later. The advantages of such a systematic process of selection are that it can:

An Approach to Planning

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What is in this guide

1. Why should you use this approach?
2. How to ensure the right amount of involvement in the planning process.
3. How to plan systematically.
4. How to plan strategically.
5. How to use the planning cycle for ongoing learning and improvement.

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This section is part of the planning guide which is broken into four sections. Section 1 is an introduction to planning. This section deals with an approach to planning called Logical Framework Approach. Section 3 provides guidelines on how to use each of the planning steps. A guide to facilitators of planning workshops is provided in Section 4.

1. Why should you use this approach?

The approach used in this guide is based on the Logical Framework Approach (LFA). This approach has been chosen because:

• It is systematic;
• It creates a transparent basis for the processes of planning and evaluation;
• It enables effective participation in decision-making; and
• Most donors like organisations to use this approach when they make requests for funding.

The approach can seem complex if you are not used to it. This section is should help you understand and use it effectively. Do not let the approach intimidate you. If it does not help you, do not use it. However, you should try to ensure that the approach you use is in line with the six key things that help ensure planning is effective, as outlined in Section 1: An Introduction to Planning, Part 3. The following section will give you ideas on how to do this. The Logical Framework Approach (LFA) is also used in the guidelines on how to complete each of the basic planning steps that is provided in the next section (Section 3: How to Plan). We have given an example of an organisation, Molayezo, using the LFA to help you see how it could be used. The link to this example is at the end of this section. Most of the examples in the later Section 3 are built on this example.

2. How to ensure the right amount of involvement in the planning process

You need to work out the following things to decide who should be involved in the planning process and how much they need to be involved:

• Why participation is important;
• Who has an important stake in your work;
• Whose needs, interests and concerns should be given priority;
• Who should be involved in the planning in some way;
• What power different stakeholders should have over the decisions you will make in your planning process;
• How should the different stakeholders be involved; and
• What you need to do to help them get involved effectively.

1. Why is participation important?

Most people agree that participation in planning processes is very important. The involvement of staff and of your target community is particularly important for organisations involved in development work or providing a service. But other individuals, groups or organisations may also need to be involved in some way. Some of the potential benefits of involvement are:

• Better understanding of the strategy and plans.
• Increased commitment and support for achieving them.
• Better decisions in the planning process because of a wider range of relevant input.
• More relevant decisions because they are based on experience and local knowledge.
• More efficient and better implementation through increased understanding and commitment.
• More sustainable gains because of the increased commitment, skills and understanding developed in the target community.
• Better accountability by making information and decision making power available to a wider group of people.
• Improved equity through carefully ensuring that the views, needs, concerns and interests of the less powerful and articulate people and groups are heard and can influence decisions.

2. Who should be involved, why and how?

It is clear that participation has many potential benefits. But, it can be difficult and can take time to achieve. If we are not clear about why we are doing it, we may abandon it once differences of opinion or challenges to our established way of thinking make us uncomfortable. Participation can take extra time and resources and so we should carefully assess its benefits in any situation. Many people have noted that participation for participation’s sake can limit progress or even stop progress altogether.

You do not need to involve all stakeholders in the same way. It is important to discuss who should be involved and in what way. Participation and involvement can mean many different things. The following are a range of different possible kinds of involvement:

• Agreeing to give time or money once the planning decisions have been made;
• Providing information and opinions when asked or through a survey;
• Being consulted before the actual decisions are made by others;
• Being informed of decisions that have been made;
• Participating in decisions about what should be done, why and how, using information collected by others;
• Participating in collecting the information needed to make decisions and then in the process of analysing what the information means and deciding what should be done, why and how.

We need to work out carefully what participation is needed, by whom and why and then make a firm commitment to this. The following are some different ideas on participation and suggestions that can help you find a good balance between "getting on with it" and a process that includes more people:

• "Community development workers who merely help people become ‘comfortable’, who simply do things for people – identifying and analysing their problems for them, and ‘doling out’ answers, are part of the problem, not part of the solution." (PNG LikLik Book)

People need to be part of the thinking not just the doing. This is particularly true if people will need to change, if the problems are complex, or if the success and sustainability of the project depend on the ongoing commitment of others. Participation can mean that once work starts, progress may be faster and people may be more committed and able to find solutions when problems come up. It leaves the target community more in control of their own lives and development.

• "Community participation is the voluntary involvement of people in deciding for themselves about change. It grows out of their critical awareness of social and economic problems and helps build their capacity to address these problems. It is based on the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. It emphasises:

• people rather than technology
• community motivation rather than (consuming) service
• a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach to planning" (Boyd, D and William, D)

Involvement in the process of planning helps build shared understanding and can help communities to feel more capable of improving their own lives or; feel more like active agents of change towards a goal they themselves have chosen. Involvement in these decisions can be the beginning of change. It can make people feel they have the power to change their circumstances. This is the basis of development, which often requires people to change and take a more active role in their own lives and communities if it is to be sustainable.

• "A fatal error is to throw answers like stones, at the heads of those who have not yet asked the questions." (Tillich, P)

Careful involvement of staff and your primary target group in collecting information about a situation and analysing what it means creates the basis for commitment to action. It builds a deeper agreement about what needs to change and why it needs to change. It also creates the basis for ongoing learning about how to make the change happen. This learning will help everyone take responsibility for tackling the problems that will come up.

• "A common outcome of consultation is the generation of a wish list for which those consulted have no sense of responsibility or ownership." (Handbook of Social/Gender Analysis, Coady International Institute)

For this reason, it is not enough to just ask people what they want, but to involve them in a systematic process of analysing their needs and identifying realistic options to addressing problems and issues. It is also important that the planning process clarifies the roles various people and groups will need to play in carrying out decisions. Planning should encourage people to think realistically about what is possible. A good planning process helps staff and other stakeholders take responsibility for making realistic decisions and for carrying out the decisions made.

It is not only staff and your primary target community whose involvement you need to consider. Development work or providing a service usually depends on a fairly wide range of other people, groups and organisations for its success. These are called stakeholders. Stakeholders may be:

• people who should benefit;
• people who will use the service in some way or benefit indirectly;
• specific interest groups;
• people whose active participation is necessary;
• people who stand to gain or lose even though they are not your key target community;
• others who are working to achieve similar goals; and
• people through whom you need to work to reach your target community.

Any and all of these individuals, groups or organisations may affect your work in important ways. You may need their active support or you may simply need their broad support. They may be potential allies and partners or they may be potential opponents of change. In order to work out whether and how to involve them you will need to conduct a stakeholder analysis. A stakeholder analysis involves deciding:

1. Who all your stakeholders are;
2. What kind of stake they have in your work;
3. Which stakeholders are important for your work or have a big influence;
4. Who are primary stakeholders and who are not;
5. How you can gain the support of potential allies and partners;
6. How you can reduce the influence of potential opponents;
7. Whose needs, interests and concerns should be given priority; and
8. Who should be involved in the planning process and how – what level of involvement and in which step(s) in the process.

See Section 3, Step 1, How to prepare to plan, where you can get more information, advice and examples on how to analyse stakeholders as part of your preparations.

3. How to plan systematically

There are many different approaches to planning systematically. They each recommend slightly different approaches and often use different words (for example, "aim" and "goal" for the same thing, "immediate objective" and "purpose" for the same thing). The systematic approach to planning we are suggesting in this guide is based on an approach called the Logical Framework Approach (LFA). It is widely used by donors and others. Donors often expect those applying for funds to use it to support their request. It can seem complex but is actually not that complex. In this approach, systematic planning involves reaching agreements in four areas:

1. What you must achieve and how. There are four kinds or "levels" of objectives that must be agreed on: Your overall long-term goal; your purpose; the specific objectives you must achieve; and the activities you will do to achieve each objective. These terms are explained below.
2. What important conditions will need to exist for you to be successful.
3. What criteria or indicators you will use to evaluate your work.
4. Agreeing where, how and from whom you will get the information you will need to evaluate your work.

The following explains what each of these areas means in more detail.

1. Agree on what you must achieve and how – 4 levels of objectives

The LFA uses four levels of objectives to help you clarify what you want to achieve and decide what action you will take. Each level is linked to the next, so that you can systematically work out what must be achieved to achieve your overall purpose and make a significant contribution to the effective development of your target community (your goal):

Systematic planning involves knowing where you are at present and working out what must be done to change this to the situation you would like to see exist (your goal). Planning involves working backwards from the goal and deciding how you will contribute to achieving it. This makes sure all your plans and activities are relevant to this goal. The four levels of objectives are:

To decide these four levels of objectives you should:

• Level 1, Goal: Clarify and agree your broad goal. This is the change required to improve the lives of your target community. As this is often too big and complex for your organisation (programme or project) to achieve alone, your goal describes the future situation you wish to contribute to bringing about. For most development organisations this involves contributing to a concrete improvement in the situation of your target community that leaves them more in control over their own lives. It is an important longer-term vision that will make change really meaningful but will need the contribution of many other efforts to achieve it. This prevents you limiting your vision to what you alone can achieve fairly quickly. It helps you to link your vision and work to the efforts of others who share the same broad goal. Its value is that it forces you to always keep the longer-term goal in mind and to ask whether your work is making the most effective contribution to achieving your goal that it is possible for you to make. It can also help you identify other stakeholders that may be needed to contribute to the longer-term goal. You can then include plans to ensure your work takes this into account.
• Level 2, Purpose: Clarify and agree the purpose your specific organisation, programme or project expects to achieve. This is the direct result you hope your work will have and the contribution your organisation, programme or project will make to the achievement of the overall goal.
• Level 3, Specific Objectives: Develop specific objectives describing the concrete results you need to achieve in order to achieve your purpose. They show the approach (strategy) you will use to achieve the purpose.
• Level 4, Activities: Identify and plan the activities and resources that will be needed to achieve each objective. This is the strategy you will use to achieve each objective.

2. Agree, for each level of objectives, what important conditions will need to exist that are outside your control – your assumptions

These are conditions that will need to exist for you to succeed but are outside the control of your organisation, programme or project. In the LFA these are called assumptions. They are the conditions you assume will exist as you plan. Important conditions are those that may cause you to fail to achieve your objectives if they do not exist. Examples of such conditions could be that you assume you will get support from government or other NGOs or donors. Your planning should include how to reduce the risk if these conditions do not exist. This might, for example, include efforts to ensure the support of an influential stakeholder, like a local councillor, a government department or a donor. Identifying these assumptions in your planning is useful because it also allows you to check whether these conditions do actually exist as you implement your plans. This gives you an early warning system for potential problems. You may need to revise your plans if these conditions do not exist as you assumed they would.

3. Agree, for each level of objectives, what criteria or indicators you will use to measure and evaluate

These are agreed criteria or indicators you will use to evaluate whether the objective has been effectively achieved and has had the results you expected. You will need to do this for each of the four levels of objectives. The criteria or indicators at the activity level are the resources you will need.

Criteria are the things we use to make judgements. For example, we might judge the effectiveness of a plan to start a crèche by seeing whether the parents support the plan and are committed to supporting the crèche. These are our criteria for judging the effectiveness of the plan.

Indicators are used when criteria are too general and we need more concrete signs to indicate whether we have achieved the criteria or not. Indicators are agreed signs of successful achievement that will make it easier to assess later whether we have in fact successful achieved what we intended. In the example above, "support" and "commitment" are general ideas and we would all understand them in different ways. Indicators could then be used to clarify what you will use to judge your success. For example, you might use the number of parents who support the plan or take an active part in fundraising as indicators of "support" and "commitment" in the following way: The indicator of "support" for the plan could be that "20 out of the 32 parents who attended the first meeting attend all further meetings agreed on". The indicator of "commitment’ might be that "each parent gives more than 4 hours each month to joint fundraising activities". Clear, concrete criteria and indicators are the basis for effective evaluation. They explain what successful achievement means concretely for you.

Criteria or indicators should record your agreements on what successful achievement will mean. To do this they will usually need to include "how many" (quantity), "how well" (quality) and "by when" (deadline). It is often easier to find and agree indicators of quantity ("20 out of 32 parents") and deadline ("within two months"). It is often harder to find and agree indicators of quality, signs that we have not just done something (how many and by when), but done it well. But, these are very important indicators. They will guide us in deciding on the best ways of achieving the objective successfully. They will also lay the basis for agreement on whether we achieved it effectively. For example, if we say we ran 20 workshops by June, this tells us nothing about whether people learned relevant and useful things. It is worth giving the time and energy necessary at the planning stage to discuss what "doing something well" actually means and finding indicators for evaluating this. In this example, we might use the indicator that "participants agree the workshop achieved all the learning objectives set at the start of the programme effectively." Or, you could use the indicator that "the organisations from which participants came agree that, after the workshop, participants were able to do the things the workshop had intended to teach."

More information on developing effective criteria and indicators is given in How to plan for evaluation in the more detailed guidelines on How to use the basic planning steps.

4. Agree, for each of the criteria or indicators, where and how and from whom you will get the information

In this area of the planning, you will decide where, how and from whom you will get the information needed to assess achievement. For example you might agree that you will get it from interviews with specific people, from reports or from the minutes of meetings. This is important because you will often need to include plans to collect this information in your activities. In the example above, the source of information for the indicator "20 out of the 32 parents who attended the first meeting attend all further meetings agreed on" could be the minutes of meetings with parents or attendance register.

Summary of the logical framework

This systematic process is the basis of the Logical Framework Approach to planning. It involves four levels of objectives:

• Level 1 : Goal
• Level 2 : Purpose:
• Level 3 : Specific objectives; and
• Level 4 : Activities

and four areas of planning

• Area 1 : Setting objectives;
• Area 2 : Agreeing your assumptions about conditions that must exist but are outside your control;
• Area 3 : Agreeing criteria or indicators for evaluating your success; and
• Area 4 : Agreeing where, how and from whom you will get the information you need to evaluate.

Here is an example of a table you can use to summarise all your planning decisions. The four levels of objectives have been listed down the left hand side and the four areas of planning have been listed across the top.

Note: The numbers indicate the order in which you can deal with each area (although in practice you may need to move back and forwards sometimes as your planning shows you things you did not think of earlier).

Objectives	Criteria or indicators	Source of information	Important assumptions
(1) Goal :(The changed situation in society you aim to contribute to achieving)	(8)	(11)	(5)
(2) Purpose(The result the organisation, programme or project is expected to achieve)	(9)	(12)	(6)
(3) Specific Objectives(The specific results that must be achieved to achieve the purpose)	(10)	(13)	(7)
(4) Activities(The actions that must be taken to achieve each objective)	(14) Resources(The resources that will be needed to achieve the activities - including people, finance, information, specific skills and equipment etc)

Once you have completed your planning, you can use the plan to check whether your logic makes sense to you by working up from the bottom of the logical framework. If you complete all the activities, will you achieve each specific objective? If you achieve all your specific objectives, will you have achieved your purpose? If you achieve your purpose will you have made a significant contribution to the achievement of the goal?

This framework is useful as a guide to help you plan systematically and as a way of summarising your thinking. But, if it does not make sense to you, do not use it. The key is to develop an agreed plan that will guide activity effectively towards a valuable goal and enable you to evaluate and learn from your achievements. Do not end up worrying more about filling in the squares than getting an effective and relevant plan in place. The basic planning steps at the end of this section are intended to help you develop these effectively.

An example of how the organisation we have called Molayezo used this approach is accessible at the end of this section. It includes an example of what a summary based on the Logical Framework Approach would look like.

4. How to plan strategically

Planning strategically is about using a systematic approach to make the most effective choices about what your organisation’s objectives should be and the approach you will use to achieve them. Planning strategically is also about making sure that everything done in your organisation is strategic and makes the most valuable contribution to the organisation’s overall goal and purpose. This means you will need to develop a clear overall organisational strategy before you develop programme plans or project plans. The organisation’s overall strategy must be the basis for all other planning in the organisation. This will ensure that everything done by your organisation makes the most strategic contribution to positive change in society (your goal) that it can.

1. What is strategy?

Strategy is the choices you make about your objectives (all four levels) and the choices you make about the approach you will use to achieve your objectives. If your planning is strategic, it means you have given careful thought to how best to achieve what you want. All planning should be strategic. Planning that is strategic involves:

• Deepening your understanding through an analysis of the current situation as it affects your target community, the situation you wish to bring about and your experience so far;
• Considering ALL the possible options for WHAT you do and HOW you do it and choosing the most effective ones based on your analysis.

Strategy is not just a plan on paper; it is what you actually do and how you use your resources to do it. When we assess our strategy, we don’t assess what we said we would do but what we actually did. Often the strategy we plan and the strategy we actually use in organisations are different. The reasons for this in non-profit organisations are usually those listed above in the section listing "specific challenges" we face in planning. The planning we have done was not effective and the plans were not revised when necessary. For these reasons, effective strategy development should ensure that everyone in the organisation and often some key stakeholders are involved in systematically making the choices about your approach.

Planning strategically involves choosing the best approach through:

• Analysis – So that you have understood the problems or issues you want to change and the situation in which you will have to do it before you make the choice about how to do it. This means you need to analyse:

• The current situation to understand what is causing the problem or issue and the effects it is having;
• The needs of the target community you intend to benefit so that you choose a goal and purpose that is relevant to these needs;
• The interests and concerns of all key stakeholders who can affect what is achieved so that you can understand who might support and who might hinder you in your work;
• Your own organisation and what it is capable of so that you can make the best use of its strengths and plan to address its weaknesses.

• Informed choices about your options – Using your analysis to make informed choices about the most relevant and realistic goal, purpose specific objectives and the most appropriate way of achieving them.
• Linking – All planning, activities and decisions on the use of resources in the organisation should be linked to the strategic choices you have made about your strategic approach.
• Learning – Using your past experience to check and question your thinking so that you can improve your understanding, your choices about the best approach, your planning and what you are able to achieve.
• Reviewing and revising your plan based on your learning as you go on with the work to keep the plan relevant and useful.

2. Strategic Planning – linking organisation strategy to programme and project planning

There are three basic kinds of planning used in organisations:

• Planning to develop an organisation strategy
• Programme planning
• Project planning

Programme and project plans must be based on the organisation’s strategy. The following explains what these different kinds of plans are. It also explains how these different kinds of plans could be linked, using the Logical Framework Approach, in order to ensure that all planning and everything an organisation does is strategic.

Organisation strategy

Organisation strategy is the overall strategy of the organisation. It is the choices you have made about the contribution your organisation intends to make to building a better society (goal or vision), what your organisation exists to achieve (purpose or vision) and the approach you will take to achieving it (specific strategic objectives). This provides the framework for everything else in the organisation. All other planning of programmes or projects should be based on this overall strategic framework.

The following diagram shows how the four levels of objectives form the basis for an organisational strategy.

1. Goal :(The changed situation in society your organisation aims to contribute to achieving)

2. Purpose(The result the organisation is expected to achieve)

3. Specific Objectives(The specific results that must be achieved to achieve the purpose)

4.Activities(The actions that must be taken - what must be done, by whom and by when)

Programme planning

Programmes are identified using the organisation’s overall strategy. A programme is the longer-term action that will be taken to achieve each of the specific strategic objectives agreed on in the overall organisation strategy. Programme planning is about turning organisational strategy into coherent and co-ordinated longer-term implementation plans using the strategic objectives agreed on. The organisation’s work is done through different programmes. Programmes may be sets of service-related activities or groups of projects that are intended to achieve strategic objectives in ways that are relevant to the organisation’s strategic purpose (mission) and goal (vision) and target community.

Programmes have their own goals and purpose but these must be based on those of the organisation and are often based directly on a specific strategic objective identified in the organisation strategy. Programmes should also be planned using a strategic approach based on analysis (of the situation, needs, stakeholders and organisation’s capabilities) and choice of the best strategy for achieving the purpose and goal. The basic planning steps suggested at the end of this section will be as useful with programme planning as with developing the overall strategy. Examples of programme areas for an NGO opposing violence against women could be running a helpline; lobbying for policy change in a particular area; mobilising and organising women against abuse; and conducting ongoing research into the impact of different efforts to stop violence against women.

The following diagram shows how organisational strategy and programme planning can be linked using the four levels of objectives of the logical framework:

Organisational strategy
Goal :This is often called the Vision (The changed situation in society your organisation aims to contribute to achieving)	Programme planning level
PurposeThis is often called the Mission and states what the organisation aims to achieve, how and who its target community is. (The result the organisation intends to achieve)	The organisation’s purpose becomes the goal for each programme(The changed situation in society each programme aims to contribute to achieving)
Specific Objectives(The specific results that must be achieved to achieve the organisation’s purpose)	Each objective becomes the purpose of a particular programme(The result the programme is expected to achieve)
Activities(Who will take responsibility for developing each objective into a programme plan and by when.)	Specific Objectives(The specific results that must be achieved to achieve the programme purpose)
	Activities(The actions that must be taken to achieve each objective)

Project planning

Projects are more defined and limited. They are usually identified through planning for a particular programme and are designed to achieve one of the specific programme objectives. Projects are usually shorter-term and more concrete than programmes. They are often intended to achieve a specific result by a specific time and/or within a specific budget. Examples of project areas could be establishing a new counselling centre within a year, bringing out a publication within three months or conducting a campaign for the improvement of laws prohibiting pollution to coincide with Human Rights Day.

Projects may involve people with different kinds of skills and knowledge to work out the best way of achieving the objective and contribute to its achievement. Projects have their own goal and purpose but these should be relevant to the organisation’s (and the programme’s, if they are part of a programme) goal and purpose. Projects should also be planned using a strategic approach based on analysis (of the situation, needs, stakeholders and organisation’s capabilities) and choice of the best strategy for achieving the purpose and goal. The basic planning steps suggested at the end of this section will be as useful with project planning as with programme planning or developing the overall strategy.

The following diagram shows how project planning can be linked to organisational strategy and programme planning using the four levels of objectives of the logical framework:

Organisational strategy
Goal :This is often called the Vision (The changed situation in society your organisation aims to contribute to achieving)	Programme planning level
PurposeThis is often called the Mission and states what the organisation aims to achieve, how and who its target community is. (The result the organisation is expected to achieve)	The organisation’s purpose becomes the goal for each programme(The changed situation in society each programme aims to contribute to achieving)	Project planning level
Specific Objectives(The specific results that must be achieved to achieve the purpose)	Each objective becomes the purpose of a particular programme(The result the programme is expected to achieve)	The programme’s purpose becomes the goal for each project(The changed situation in society each project aims to contribute to achieving)
	Specific Objectives(The specific results that must be achieved to achieve the programme purpose)	Each objective becomes the purpose of a particular project.(The result the project is expected to achieve)
	Activities(The actions that must be taken to achieve each objective)	Specific Objectives(The specific results that must be achieved to achieve the project purpose)
		Activities(The actions that must be taken to achieve each objective)

Click here for an example showing how Molayezo used the Logical Framework Approach to link organisation strategy, programme planning and project planning. (see Click 1 – example of nesting LFA)

5. How to plan for evaluation

The systematic Logical Framework Approach outlined above includes planning for evaluation. It lays a systematic basis for transparency and accountability through providing a clear record of agreements. It allows for the inclusion of all those with a stake in the success of your work. It also lays a good basis for agreement about what was achieved effectively, what was not and why it was or was not achieved effectively:

• Your analysis of the situation and needs of your target community should have provided you with useful baseline information that tells you what the situation was when you started. If you are going to know how far you have come, you need to know where you started.
• The first three levels of objectives (goal, purpose and specific objectives) should have recorded agreement on the results you expect to achieve, or, in the case of the goal, that you expect to contribute to achieving. You will be able to use these to see if you have achieved these results.
• The assumptions about the conditions that need to exist for the achievement of each level of objectives should have been noted and recorded. Plans should have been made to reduce the risk of them not existing. This record of assumptions allows you to monitor whether these conditions do in fact exist and whether your assumptions were right. If the conditions are important but highly unlikely to come about, you will need to revise your planning. This enables you to identify things that could derail your work in enough time to do something about them.
• A key step in planning for evaluation is to clarify and finalise the criteria or indicators you will use to evaluate successful achievement of each objective at each level (but not necessarily at the activity level unless you think this is useful). Your needs assessment and discussion of alternative strategies will already have given you some idea of what criteria or indicators you should use to evaluate your success.
• The final step is to agree what information you will need to be able to evaluate the achievement of your criteria or indicators, where you will get it, how and from whom. You may need to add plans for collecting this information to your activity plans.

The Logical Framework Approach to planning includes all these ways of ensuring evaluation possible and useful. More information on planning to evaluate is given in Step 6 of the basic planning steps.

click here for an example of how criteria and indicators could be used. The example shows how Molayezo used the Logical Framework Approach to agree criteria and indicators for evaluating their organisation strategy. (see Click 1 – example of nesting LFA)

6. How to use the planning cycle for ongoing learning and improvement

Planning and evaluation are key parts of the basic cycle of learning and development for individuals, groups or organisations. We plan, take action and then we reflect on the action taken. We look at what happened as a result. This enables us to evaluate, to make more general judgements about what works well and what does not. We then plan on the basis of this learning and move back into the cycle to improve on our achievements. This is particularly important if we do not have a clear, 100% reliable road map for how we get to where we want to be. The planning cycle assists us to learn and continually improve our understanding of how to make better progress. Planning should always start with evaluation. Planning, as the diagram shows, should not be treated as an event you do once a year. It is part of an ongoing process of assessing our achievements that should happen every few months. You may have a longer-term plan covering a year or two, but you should change you plans if your evaluation shows you need to.

The Logical Framework Approach and the Basic Planning steps outlined in Section 3 help to make sure that you learn effectively by:

• Using a systematic process to make your thinking and agreements clear;
• Emphasizing the importance of analyzing your experience as well as analyzing the situation to deepen your understanding and improve your strategy;
• Ensuring that your strategic choices about what you will achieve and how are clear so that you can check them later on the basis of experience;
• Helping you clarify the assumptions you are making so that you can later check whether they were right; and
• Helping you make clear agreements in advance about what successful achievement will mean so that you can assess it later and also check whether your criteria and indicators were useful and relevant.

Section 3 uses the Logical Framework Approach as a basis for the guidelines on how to plan using the basic planning steps.

If you want an example of how this approach could be used before you read the more detailed guidelines on how to use the basic planning steps,

Click here for an example showing how Molayezo used the Logical Framework Approach to link organisation strategy, programme planning and project planning.

Recruiting members and keeping them active

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What is in this guide

1. Why do you need to recruit members and keep them active
2. Important things to know about recruitment
3. How to set up a membership system
4. How to develop a recruitment strategy and plan
5. How to keep members active

1. Why do you need to recruit members and keep them active

All organisations have a reason to exist and work to do - having active members may be crucial to implementing your plans successfully. This guide is aimed at organisations that have a membership base. It will help you to set up a system for membership, a strategy for recruitment and a plan for keeping your members involved and active.

Organisations usually have members because:

• the organisation represents its members [for example a trade union or civic] or
• the oganisation needs members to do its work [for example a welfare organisation], or
• a combination of both [for example a political party]

Your constitution should be clear about your goals and about the role and tasks of members. The constitution together with your action plans should guide you about who you should target for recruitment. For example a political party may wish to recruit as many people as possible, but only people who agree with its policies. A trade union may wish to recruit all the workers in a factory, regardless of their views. A welfare organisation may only want members who are prepared to work as volunteer counsellors for a certain number of hours every week.

Members are the base of most organisations and we should take them very seriously. Organisations often get off to a good start and recruit many people, only to lose them after a few months. Once you have recruited someone, you should work hard to keep them happy and active in the organisation. There is a natural process in organisations where:

1. Some of your supporters in the community will become members
2. Some of your members will become committed activists
3. Some of your activists will become leaders.

If you want to keep on generating more activists and leaders for the future, you have to have programmes to develop members into activists, and activists into leaders.

2. Important things to know about recruiting members and keeping them active

Amongst many reasons that organisations have for recruiting members the following are the common ones:

The more different types of people you have in your group/ organisation, the more representative it is of your target community. This will ensure greater community support for your group/ organisation.

Members bring skills and experience that they can use to benefit the organisation.

More members mean that you can do more work as an organisation.

The more members you have in your group/organisation the more different ideas and opinions are expressed and discussed, this will lead to better decisions being taken.

Who should you recruit as members?

Think carefully about the members you want to recruit. Look at the aims and programmes of your organisation and the kind of people you need. Target people who:

• Form part of the constituency you want to represent or work with
• Identify with the aims and objectives of your organisation.
• Support and want to work for your cause.
• Have skills and experience that will help your work.
• Can influence other people and get them to also join the organisation.

Membership system

Every organisation needs a proper system to record members, their contact details and their status. Discuss the type of system that will work best for your organisation. Here are some of the issues you should consider:

• Will you screen members or can anyone join?
• Will you charge membership fees - if yes, how much.
• Do members have to renew membership every year?
• If you have a renewal system, how will it work?
• Will you give members a card or some other proof of membership?
• Will you keep your records on computer or on paper?
• What details do you need to know about members?
• Who will administer your membership system?

Recruitment strategy and methods

Before you start a recruitment drive, make sure you have a proper strategy in place.

• You have to be clear about who you want to recruit - your target group.
• Decide a goal for how many members you want to recruit and how much time it should take.
• Your recruiters must understand your organisation and the interests of the target group and what they can say to persuade people to join.
• Different areas, organisations and sectors where you will find potential members, must be identified.
• A membership system must be in place.
• Look at the human and material resources you have available to use for recruitment.
• Decide on the best methods and times for recruitment.
• Work out an action plan and budget

Keeping members active and involved

Recruiting members should be only the beginning - if you do not manage your members well, communicate with them and motivate them to work for the organisation, you will soon have to recruit more members. You should have a clear plan and process for keeping members involved.

On the next few pages we give more detailed tips on how to do everything discussed in this section.

3. How to set up a membership system

Type of system

Discuss the type of membership system that will suit your organisation. For all the systems listed below you will still need a form for members to apply. You can give some proof of membership like a card or a badge, or you can simply keep a register of members. Here are a few different types of membership to choose from:

• Free membership
  Members apply to join, fill in a form and if approved, become a member.
• Voluntary contributions
  Membership is free, but members are encouraged to make donations to the organisation. Churches are a good example of this system.
• Paid membership - renewed each year
  Members pay a membership fee every year - decide what people can afford and make provision for people who cannot pay. If you choose this system you need a clear process for renewal every year. Remember that people will join in different months and will have to renew one year later. You need a system to let them know and to collect their fees from them. You will also have to suspend members who fall behind.
• Paid membership - monthly contribution
  Members pay a small amount each month. This system needs a lot of administration to keep it up to date. It works best for organisations like trade unions who can get deductions made from wages.
•  Paid membership - once-off fee
  Members pay once to join the organisation and remain members until they resign or are expelled.
• Automatic membership
  People in a certain area or sector automatically become members and there is no fee or system. Anyone can attend meetings and vote. An example of this is a residents organisation in a block of flats.

Process for joining

Once you have decided on the type of system you have to develop a process for joining.

• Decide whether people should apply on a special form, if yes, design the form
• Should new member be nominated by existing members?
• Will there be any interview or screening process to exclude people you may not want as members?
• How will you inform people once they have been accepted as members?
• Will you have a probation period or will new members have the same rights as existing members?
• Will you organise training or induction for new members?

4. How to develop a recruitment strategy and plan

Set your goals and targets

Do not start recruiting members until you are clear about what members your organisation needs. Think about your organisation's goals and plans and discuss who you should target to become members - for example: are you looking for people from a specific constituency or people with specific skills or people with specific views.

Decide a target number for how many members you want to recruit and where you are most likely to find them. Set a deadline for by when you want to achieve your goals and target number.

Decide the message you want to communicate to potential members

Why should anyone join your organisation? Unless recruiters can answer this question, they will not be able to persuade people to join. Discuss what you can offer your target constituency and how you will persuade them to join.

Identify where potential new members can be found

Once you have decided who your target members are, you have to discuss where you can find them. You have to know your area well and understand the constituency you are targeting. If our constituency is, for example, school learners, you can simply go to all schools in the area. If you want to recruit more broadly from a geographic community you have to look at the best way to find new members. Work out whether you should recruit by calling a public meeting, or by going from door-to-door, or by approaching organisations and sectors and going to their meetings and events, or through sending recruiters to busy public places like shops and taxi ranks.

 Recruitment methods

• Set up a team
  The task of recruitment is enormous. No person can do it alone. A team of people (between 5 - 10) should do work on recruitment and development the recruitment plan and implement it. Other members should also be encouraged to recruit new members whenever they can. Recruiters should be well trained to persuade people to join.
• Gather necessary resources for recruitment
  It is important for the recruitment team to ensure that before recruitment starts, all resources like recruiter forms, pamphlets, telephone numbers of members that can be contacted for joining, etc are available

• Time recruitment well
  Recruitment can happen at any time and should be an ongoing part of your work. But it is an especially good time when you are:
  - Doing a membership drive
  - Running a campaign on a topical issue
  - Holding other public events.

• Sectoral work
  If you want to recruit through other organisations and sectors, make a list of all the sectors and organisations, the name of a contact person and the telephone numbers where they can be reached when needed. Write to them or meet with them and ask if you can come and address one of their meetings or set up recruitment tables at their events.

• Target key people for recruitment
  Your organisation will also need additional skills and talents and may want to target specific individuals for recruitment. You could also target someone who has influence over others and will be able to popularise your organisations. Make a list of key individuals in your community that you would like to have as members and go and visit them individually.

• Door-to-door
  Identify a target area in your community and sent recruiters from door-to-door to discuss your organisation and to try and persuade people to join.

• Information tables
  Tables staffed by recruiters can be set up in public places like shops, sport events and taxi or bus ranks. You should always have a table at all your own meetings or public events. Make posters and decorate the table so that it attracts attention.

• Personal contacts
  The best recruitment method is through personal contacts. We all know people who share our interests and members should be encouraged to bring their friends to meetings.

• Meetings and Advertising
  Advertise in local papers and community radio that you are looking for members. Invite them to a public meeting or provide a contact person for them to approach. You can also send letters to individuals or use pamphlets to encourage people to join your organisation.

5. Keeping members active

Many organisations lose members as fast as they recruit them. There are common problems we all have in keeping members involved and active. Here are some typical ones:

• The organisation's meetings are long and boring
• Members do little other than to listen to leaders talk
• A small clique has all the power and does not encourage others to get involved
• Members are not valued and are never thanked or praised for the work they do
• Members feel useless or frustrated
• The organisation has no projects that members can be involved in
• Members feel that they are getting nothing out of the organisation.

People usually join an organisation because they want to do something for their community. But they also want something out of being a member. You should find out what motivates members and make sure you manage them so that they stay motivated and involved. Members are usually motivated by:

• Feeling that they are valued by the organisation and making a contribution
• Opportunities to learn new skills or get education about issues that interest them
• Working on issues that will improve their lives or the lives of their families and communities
• Feeling part of a team
• Activities that entertain them or add to their social life
• Rewards in terms of status, personal development or access to employment opportunities.

Here are some of the things you should do to keep members motivated and involved:

• Do an introductory induction workshop for all new members so that they understand the organisation and its work
• Welcome and introduce all new members at the beginning of each meeting
• Run regular education and development sessions for all members - either as part of regular meetings or in special workshops
• Encourage members to get involved in projects and campaigns
• Give people responsibilities and tasks and team them up with experienced members - they will feel useful and valued
• Thank people and praise them in meetings for work done
• Structure your meetings so that they are exciting and everyone gets a chance to participate
• Organise social events for members such as picnics, parties and outings
• Leaders should spend time talking with members and getting to know them

Understanding your constituency

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What is in this guide?

1. Why is it important to understand your organisation's constituency
2. Key things you should know about your constituency
3. How to collect information about your constituency

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1. Why is it important to understand your organisation's constituency?

Organisations and leaders that are successful are those that understand the people they work with. Every organisation has a constituency - that is the target group that you are trying to mobilise, organise, influence or recruit. You can only be effective as an organiser if you go to the people you want to organise, learn from them, understand their conditions and work for change at a pace that they can accept.

You probably think that you know your constituency well and have many opinions about what people see as their problems and what their attitudes are. Remember that activists often see the world differently from ordinary people. It is very important that you do research to really find out what people see as their problems, how they see solutions and what their attitudes are to change.

There are many cases where organisations fail to reach and mobilise their chosen constituency. For example there are lots of progressive youth organisations and yet the youth are said to be politically apathetic. It may be that youth organisations still work in the same ways that they did in the apartheid era, but the youth of today may no longer be interested in politics in the same way as they were in the past.

Constituencies constantly undergo change. By collecting information on the conditions and changes and analysing them, organisations can plan better to make a positive impact.
 
All organisations have a goal. It is like travelling on a long road to arrive at a destination (goal). If your organisation wants to get there quickly with minimum problems you have to plan. Planning requires us to find out information about the route that we are taking. We need to know where potholes exist, where there are dangerous bends and curves and where the road is safe. Understanding your constituency and the environment in which you work are the first steps in good planning. [see guide on planning]

2. Key things you should know about your constituency

Different organisations need to know different things. Here is a broad list of the types of things you may want to know. It is divided into three categories:

• The people you are targeting
• What exists in the area where they live - the physical environment
• Community life - what else is happening in the community

The people you are targeting:

• Their practical needs and problems
• Issues that worry or concerns them
• Their hopes for the future
• Their attitudes towards, and opinions about, the issues you focus on
• The spread of age groups, gender, employment status
• What they do with their free time - membership of organisations, clubs, religion

What exists in the area where they live - the physical environment

• Types of housing, basic services like water, sanitation and electricity
• Schools
• Roads
• Essential services : hospitals, clinics, ambulance, firefighting and police services
• Postal and Telecommunication
• Sport, parks and other recreational facilities
• Government Offices - Welfare, Revenue Services, Home Affairs
• Local Council facilities (paypoints and service centres)
• Shops, Markets and Banking Facilities
• Factories
• Places of Worship
• Community Halls
• Access to transport

Community Life - What else is happening in the Community

• Political Organisations
• School Governing Bodies
• Community Policing Forum
• Local Development Forums
• Trade Unions
• Civic Organisations
• Religious organisations
• Youth, Women, Business, burial societies, stokvels and other organisations
• The Local Councillor/s and Ward Committees
• MP or MPL
• Traditional leaders
• Sport and cultural clubs
• Gangs, crime, taxi rivalries and loansharks

3. How to collect information about your constituency

Now that we have an understanding of what information you need as a leader to understand your constituency, we will look at how you go about getting this information. You can get information from official sources, through community meetings, by doing interviews to draw up a sector profile or through focus groups. This section contains more details about each of these methods.

Official Sources

• Schools and Crèches can provide enrolment figures as well as gender breakdowns
• Hospitals and clinics can provide details of admissions and details of the major health problems facing the community
• The local Police Station can provide crime statistics
• The Local Council can provide details on:
  • Registered voters from the voters roll
  • Plans to develop the area
  • Payment levels for services
  • Backlogs in the provision of services
• If the council has completed its Integrated Development Plan it may be able to provide fairly accurate details on population size, employment status and plans to develop the area.
• You can visit the website of the Municipal Demarcation Board. There is a breakdown of information from the last population census for each Local Council Area.
• Check with both non-governmental and government agencies for any studies conducted in the community you work in.
• You may find the Needs Assessment tool in our Guide on Gender and Development useful in organising the information you have collected.

Community Meetings

Community meetings can be convened to hear the views of people on a particular issue. For example, a meeting of the community could be called to discuss the proposed closure of a school. The meeting can hear the views of the community and work out plans to resolve the issue.

Sector Profiles

Your organisation may want to collect information on the problems and attitudes of a sector (youth, women, elderly) of the community. This information is very useful when planning campaigns targeting these sectors. They are especially useful when conducting campaigns aimed at changing peoples' behaviour. Sector profiles are usually conducted by choosing a sample (a percentage of the total targeted sector) in an area. Interviews are conducted on an individual basis with each interviewee.

All interviewers will have to be trained and briefed. See Guide on Campaigns for more details on doing community opinion research.

Here is an example of a form that can be used to interview students at tertiary institutions:

A. PROFILE OF STUDENT

1. GENDER: M ____F_____ RACE: ____________ (for demographic purposes)

2. AGE: _________________________

3. COURSE CURRENTLY STUDYING: __________________________

4. YEAR OF STUDY: ____________

5. Are you staying on/off campus? ________

6. How do travel to campus? (Tick appropriate option/s)

Bus	Train	Taxi	Lift Club	Own Car	Other, Specify

7. Do you receive a bursary? _________

8. If yes, what does it pay for? (Tick appropriate option/s)

Tuition	Residence	Course material	Transport	Other, Specify

9. If no, who is paying your fees? _____________________________

10. Do you have a part time job? ______________________________

11. If no, is it out of your own choice? ________________________________________

B. CAMPUS LIFE

1. What do you do between lectures? (Tick appropriate option/s)

Sit in the cafeteria
Play sport
Sleep
Participate in the activities of student organisations, clubs and societies
Spend time with your partner

2. Do you participate in the activities of any student organisation club or society? _____________

3. If yes which organisation, club or society?___________________________

4. If not, why not? (Tick appropriate column)

I have no time
Organisation, clubs or society does not cater for my interests or needs
Just not interested
They don't exist on this campus

5. What would you like to see these organisations, clubs and societies doing for students?
___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

6. Did you vote in the last SRC election? Yes__________No____________

7.If not, Why not? ___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

8. List the 3 biggest problems confronting students on campus?

1: ________________________________________________________

2: ________________________________________________________

3: ________________________________________________________

9. Do you think that the SRC is doing enough to address these problems?

______________________________________________________________________________

C. PERCEPTIONS ON SOUTH AFRICA

1. What are your five greatest concerns facing young people in South Africa?

a. _______________________________________________

b. _______________________________________________

c. _______________________________________________

d. _______________________________________________

e. _______________________________________________

2. Do you think that government is doing to enough to address these concerns?

3. What can we do as students to address these concerns?

4. How do you feel about the following statements? (Tick appropriate box)

STATEMENT	STRONGLY AGREE	STRONGY DISAGREE	NOT SURE
I feel happy mixing with people of all races
I only socialise with people that are my own race
I feel discriminated against because of my race
I will vote in an election
I'm positive about the future of South Africa
I will probably emigrate/ leave South Africa one day
South Africa has a lot to offer young people
Students have a responsibility to get involved in compulsory community service for a short period after completing their studies

D. STUDENTS AND HIV AIDS

1. Is enough being done to educate students about HIV and AIDS?

Yes__ No ___

2. Do you think that students: (Tick appropriate box)

	Yes	No	Not Sure
Are faithful to one partner
Condomise and practise safe sex
Take the threat of HIV and AIDS seriously
Abstain
Understand how HIV and AIDS is contracted

3. Is violence and rape serious problems facing women students? _____________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________

Focus Groups

After completing a sector profile, your organisation may want to get more information as to why people have certain views, attitudes of beliefs.

For example:

In the sample, Sector Profile Form we asked students if they felt discriminated against because of their race. After collecting and analysing the forms, we may find that over 90% of African women students felt discriminated against because of their race. To find more information as to why these women feel this way we may convene a group meeting of about ten of these women. Your organisation needs to work out a way of recruiting willing participants. The best way may be through direct contact. This group will be focused on specific discussion topic, i.e. "Perceptions of Discrimination amongst African Women Students".

The meeting should be chaired by a skilled facilitator whose key responsibility is to ask questions that keep the group focussed on the topic. The facilitator should not take sides or give opinions, but remain as neutral as possible. His/her role is to make everyone feel comfortable so that they can talk honestly about the topic.

Careful planning needs to take place before the meeting of the group. We may decide to select a women facilitator to make the environment less threatening. The facilitator must create an environment where group members will respond to her questions as well as be prepared to engage other participants.

Unlike the Sector Profile, where the questions asked required direct responses (yes or no), responses in a focus group will take the form of discussion with lost of detail.

Examples

Why do you feel discriminated against?

What can be done to deal with the problem?

What can we do to involve more women students in dealing with this problem?

The facilitator may ask further questions to get responses that are more detailed. The facilitator will also have the opportunity to examine how people reactions through facial expressions and non-verbal signs.

The meetings of the group should be recorded, so that your organisation and the facilitator can reflect on and analyse the discussions. Your organisation will have to look for the common themes emerging from the discussions and work out what can be done to address the problem.

Once your organisation has worked out a programme to deal with the problem, invite the group participants back to discuss your programme. Get feedback on whether the programme can work and whether women students are prepared to get involved in addressing this problem.

Your organisation may also use the results of a focus group to directly engage people with power. For example, you may want to target the administration of the University to make changes to policies that discriminate against women.