Wall of love for Good Plan

Working with the GoodPlan team was time well spent. The team, process, and discussions were very structured and productive. A sense of direction and next steps were clear. I encourage newer or transitional teams to engage with the GoodPlan.

I’ve just finished my first strategic planning process facilitated by GoodPlan. The experience was a good oneand the outcome for the will be benu. Remer proved to be a skillful facilitator who was well prepared at all times and kept the discussion on point. It will not be my last experience with GoodPlan..

Remer did an outstanding job leading our organization, CMLC, as we navigated the process of revisioning and reorganizing. He skillfully guided us through a concise historical review of CMLC, highlighting our past achievements. Together, we examined our challenges and developed a comprehensive outline for our next steps. Remer's leadership is both people-oriented and focused, ensuring that the group remains engaged and on track throughout the process. Definitely 5 stars. Sueann VonGunten

Remer took the time to deeply understand our goals, achieving equitable access to high quality youth programming while maintaining profitability and financial stability.  He created a model that was flexible, responsive to our needs, and high impact on our goals.  He is a valued thought partner!

Remer is gifted at eliciting a range of stakeholder input and helping to make sense of it. It is rare to find someone who is both a quick study and profound thought partner.

There was so much I enjoyed about working with GoodPlan. I appreciated that we started from the beginning and talked through where we came from, where we were at, and where we see ourselves going to really understand our own progression and evolving why's behind the work we were doing every day. Every session was approached and run openly, honestly, respectfully, organically, and conversationally, even while tough conversations were being had. Remer did a great job asking clarifying questions and making sure all were on the same page and speaking the same language before moving to the next step in our strategic planning progression and involved us in every step of the process making sure all of our voices and various stakeholders were thought about and represented in the plan. Remer and his team did a great job putting our plan in a very engaging and usable format for all of the stakeholders who it would be shared with, and not only gave us the plan but guided us on a strategy for rolling out the plan to both those internal and external stakeholders. One of our barriers to growth was that we were all so deeply engaged in our day-to-day work and specific funding relationships that we became siloed in our departments and partnerships. We also had evolved so much from our inception that our mission and vision was slightly misaligned with the work we were doing in this era of the organization. GoodPlan helped with facilitating some of those tough questions and conversations and encouraged us to think bigger as an organization, focusing on our realigned mission and vision as our anchor and thinking about partnerships from that central point. We were able to break down those barriers between teams and think more collaboratively about how and where our work does and needs to overlap in order to best serve our clients and partners. This confirmed that we were all doing great work and the work we should be doing, and helped put some structure and language behind it to continue to refer to as a team. What makes me most excited about the strategic plan is that it is both comprehensive and usable. It is truly a smart, good plan, well-structured, designed and thought about throughout the process in order to be a functional and living, breathing document. All of the pieces fit together and offer both challenging yet achievable and impactful goals and KPI's to accomplish as a team. It has been easy and natural for all of our team members and stakeholders to see themselves both individually getting excited about the areas that speak directly to them, and as a sum of parts working towards achieving this plan. Navigating the nonprofit landscape can be challenging and chaotic, and having a clear message, direction and a good plan can really help provide some stability and harmony in that space. GoodPlan really helped us reset and realign as an organization, one voicing our work, and providing the time, space and structure for us to engage in deep thought and conversation and to put a plan to paper. It has reenergized our teams both internally and externally and has given us the path to the growth we have been talking about and working towards.

The Youth Job Center team, working with GoodPlan and Remer Brinson, recently completed our new strategic plan. Remer encouraged dialog and opened our eyes to identifying where we were in synch and were there were fundamental misunderstandings about some of the basic issues that we were interested in addressing. His work and dialog helped us to identify and overcome these barriers and allowed us to put in place a plan that we look forward to executing over the coming years. I recommend GoodPlan and Remer because of his willingness to explore whereYJC is and where we want to go and to help us frame that path forward.

What I liked most about working with GoodPlan was the opportunity to think outside the box and challenge my daily assumptions, especially when it came to forecasting and strategic planning. GoodPlan truly pushed me to envision new possibilities for YJC. Before partnering with GoodPlan, our organization was primarily facing a growth barrier around strategic clarity and long-term foresight. While we excelled in day-to-day operations, we lacked a cohesive framework for scaling our impact and systematically planning for future opportunities and challenges. GoodPlan helped us overcome this by providing a structured & insightful process that encouraged deep reflection and forward-thinking. They guided us through a comprehensive strategic planning exercise that not only identified our core strengths but also highlighted pathways for sustainable growth and increased community impact. Their expertise allowed us to translate abstract goals into actionable strategies. The part of the strategic plan that excites me most is the renewed focus on expanding our reach and deepening our impact within the community, particularly through innovative program development and strengthened partnerships. The plan isn't just a document, but it is a dynamic roadmap for truly transforming more lives. Lastly, I think a nonprofit should work with GoodPlan because they don't just offer generic solutions, but they provide a tailored + collaborative experience that empowers organizations to unlock their full potential. They challenge you to think critically, forecast effectively, and develop a strategic vision that is both ambitious and achievable which can ultimately lead to more impactful service delivery.

Youth Job Center is a growing nonprofit organization that helps out-of-school and disengaged youth find career and employment opportunities through training and job preparation. Working with GoodPlan was truly beneficial to our organization due our growing work that needed to be redefined and communicated with a clear vision. YJC's growth barriers were our siloed program structure and funding infrastructure. GoodPlan was able to help us address these challenges by providing a unified program model and strategies that positions our organization to approach our priorities with streamlined processes, strategies to achieve goals and Key Performance Indicators to keep YJC focused on high-quality training for our young people and community leadership in youth workforce development. The plan's ability to create "one voice" for our organization is truly the exciting part for me. If you are looking for a way to be both a student and leader of your nonprofit's work, consider working with GoodPlan.

Remer and the team at GoodPlan did an amazing job orchestrating a thoughtful strategic planning process. I appreciate their attention to detail, capturing the history of our organization, ensuring multiple voices from our many stakeholders were included, and providing us with a structured process that was collegial and led to the creation of a plan that reflects a bold and strategic direction for our organization. We're very excited about what's ahead and couldn't have shaped this new vision without the expert leadership from our friends at GoodPlan.

What I liked most about working with GoodPlan was Remer's ability to take complex thoughts, ideas, topics, and drill down to specific focus areas that would build on an already strong foundation and allow our program to grow. Our program was limited in growth - both programmatically and in human capital - due to funding limitations. GoodPlan helped use think systematically and was able to break down the logistics in a structured and meaningful way. I'm most excited to see the strategic plan play out over the next three years that will grow us personally, professionally, and programmatically. GoodPlan listens, learns about your mission, and crafts strategies that are usable for organizations with limited time and capacity.

Working with Remer at GoodPlan on our strategic plan was an excellent experience. We were able to share ideas that had been percolating within our team for years and share what challenges existed. Now, those ideas have structure, goals and metrics to focus our work over the next three years. Each time we met, there was purpose behind our conversations, clearly driving us toward a finished product. Remer helped to create an environment in which even I, as a person who jumps right into logistics, was able to dream about where we could be in three years time. This strategic plan is our roadmap and we are ready to take off!

GoodPlan was key to supporting our program in the navigation and structure build for our next strategic plan. The time and effort invested, from GoodPlan and our team, was something that evolved into a wonderful reciprocal experience. That experience yielded what will be the driver for our next three years of work and beyond. The strategic plan we developed makes me most excited because it feels like the first time in over a half-decade that we are positioned to see our program grow, to serve more people and to make a more significant impact in our State and within our communities. A nonprofit should work with GoodPlan if you desire the opportunity to not simply asses where you are as a program or organization, but to determine how to harness the good energy you bring and to amplify that in your work for years forward.

GoodPlan allowed our organization to come together and traverse some huge challenges—challenges that hadn’t even existed when we first began our six-month strategic planning process. With GoodPlan, we identified pain points we hadn’t seen before and created space for honest reflection across teams. The platform made strategic planning feel less overwhelming and more actionable. Its tools helped us not only align around shared goals, but also respond to major shifts in real time with a sense of clarity and cohesion. By the end of the process, we had a strategic roadmap that truly reflected our values, our priorities, and the realities of our work. GoodPlan didn’t just help us plan, it helped us adapt, grow, and move forward together.

Very organized, personalized, and collaborative. Remer really makes you and your team feel like you are his only client (I hope we aren't!). His attention to the depth of detail for your unique situation and organization is commendable, and yields a rich, meaningful final plan. Throughout the process whenever I checked in with my team during one-to-one meetings, they had only positives to say about Remer and the process. While I'm not surprised because Remer is an exceptional professional, it did exceed my expectations. My team is pretty honest with me if something is not working well :) I would recommend Remer without reservation and enthusiastically.

Remer has a talent for drawing all planning participants out so that all perspectives are heard. The insighful questions he asked from the beginning, as he was developing an understanding of our organization, forced us to clarify and align our understanding of our core mission and the programmatic framework we depend upon to deliver it. Above all, we realized that the way we define our terms and think about our programs was misaligned across different functions in the organization, and not clearly understood by the Board. Developing a common vocabulary was key to distinguishing core from incidental features of our programs, enabling us to prioritize activities that compete for finite resources and attention. We are excited to have articulated a clear vision and developed measures of success that empower us to set a path and and pursue our core mssion rather than than simply responding to funder priorities and the funding opportunity of the day. Being able to articulate our purpose and how we deliver on it will be key to winning new funding opportunities, enhancing our capacity to deliver for clients, helping *them* to frame an understanding of *their* goals and develop a plan for success. Remer was the essential facilitator in this transformative proccess.

I highly recommend working with GoodPlan and Remer Brinson. Remer is a strong, effective facilitator. He set expectations for the overall process and every meeting, and met them. Our final plan feels organic and achievable, and I feel confident that we could not have reached our goal without his leadership.