CBN 2022-2024 Strategic Plan
CBN’s 2022-2024 Strategic Plan was adopted December 14, 2021.
The plan calls on CBN to sharpen our work and return to CBN member capacity building as a primary area of focus.
Strategic Plan HIghlights
NEtwork Leadership Framework
The National Alliance of Community Economic Development Associations (NACEDA) team guided CBN staff and Board to the Network Leadership Framework Principles during the Thriving Networks Assessment process. In many ways, they represent our network’s existing approach to this work. Going forward, we will be leaning into these more intentionally as north stars:
Focus on mission before organization
Manage through trust, not control
Promote others, not yourself
Build constellations, not stars
Images by The New Network Leader
Growth Priorities
Priorities for CBN
As part of the Thriving Networks Assessment process, CBN board and staff members prioritized three (3) key areas for growth in our next strategic plan:
Priorities for CBN members
The Thriving Networks Assessment process also revealed that CBN members had the most agreement about their own capacity to improve and priority to grow in five (5) key areas. These themes will underpin CBN’s 2022-2024 capacity building programs:
Clarifying our Value Proposition
Updated Mission and Vision Statements
CBN’s previous mission statement was vague and broad, which played a part in allowing us to sprawl into lower-impact initiatives in recent years. Our new mission statement more clearly states the difference we’re committed to making and the specific people, places, and things we aim to impact.
CBN supports, connects, and celebrates organizations working to champion St. Louis region communities, especially those most impacted by systemic disinvestment.
CBN’s previous vision statement was functional, but did not focus on St. Louis neighborhoods that have experienced the most disinvestment and oppression. Our new vision statement incorporates this as our ultimate intrinsic desire and what we want most.
We envision a St. Louis region where neighborhoods that have been historically marginalized, especially minority neighborhoods, have equitable access to the resources and opportunities available to our area’s most privileged neighborhoods.
Impacted Leadership Framework
A common point of tension that emerged during the strategic planning process is that most CBN stakeholders and partners agree that CBN has been involved in too many things and that we need to focus. However, there has been little agreement about what we need to focus on, since everyone has different opinions depending on the “hats” they’re wearing and the organizational interests they’re representing.
To address this, CBN staff and Board developed a framework that will allow us to first agree on who should be selecting our core priorities so that we can begin shaping a new, more focused approach to our work.
Our Impacted Leadership Framework draws on a concept from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy:
Impacted Leadership is the leadership of communities that are directly impacted by injustice—including economic, environmental, and racial injustice.
This is complemented by Privileged Support, which is the intentional support for impacted leadership from communities and people that can identify their privilege and want to see a rebalancing of power.
Going forward, CBN’s Impacted Leadership members will define our priorities, and members on the Privileged Support side of the spectrum will come to the CBN table to support the priorities that Impacted Leadership members have set.
These two definitions exist on a spectrum, not as a binary. Personal and organizational identities are intersectional and complex. That said, our starting point for defining Impacted Leadership for our network is as follows and includes both geographic and demographic criteria. This definition may morph and change over time as CBN members come together with CBN staff and Board to operationalize the framework.
Focusing our work
A key point of consensus that emerged during the strategic planning process is that CBN has been spread too thin, trying to be too many things for too many different actors in the community development ecosystem. As a response to this, CBN staff and Board took a deep look at CBN’s current book of work and developed a framework to use to prune away initiatives that are no longer appropriate for us to house or lead.
Keep + Grow
Initiatives that CBN plans to retain and grow over the next three years
Member capacity building and support for peer learning.
Racial equity work.
Our Annual Community Building Awards event.
CBN’s strategic relationships with the St. Louis Association of Community Organizations (SLACO) and Invest STL as key partners.
Exploring and potentially establishing a viable individual membership program.
Significantly Modify
Initiatives that CBN plans to retain on some level, but significantly change over the next three years
Align policy and advocacy work currently being done by supporting external coalitions within the CBN network “umbrella.”
Modify communications and storytelling activities to align with our Impacted Leadership pivot.
Scale Back + Cut
Initiatives where CBN plans to transition leadership to other partners or sunset entirely
Backbone support for other coalitions and collaboratives (except the St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative, for now).
Activities not primarily focused on place-based community building and place-based community building organizations.
CBN Strategic Planning Process
More details about the planning process are available in the full 2022-2024 Strategic Plan document.
