Review by Jonathan B. Cook of the book Strategic Planning Workbook for Nonprofit Organizations (St. Paul. Amherst H.Wilder Foundation, 1986, 88 p.

This book provides some rudimentary information about operating planning. It says virtually nothing about strategic planning, other than its (appropriate) emphasis on one of the central concepts of strategic planning - the situation analysis (sometimes called environmental scan or audit). The text is best in its emphasis of the importance of vision, but the book never adequately explains this importance. The notion of vision is treated in effect as an intermediate-term concept rather than a truly long-term picture of an organization functioning at its best. Even the sample strategic plan given is actually an incremental three-year operating plan. (p. 84)