Our Future

Strategic Plan 2006 – 2009: Achieving a Vision, Fulfilling Our Mission and Having Impact

After nearly 50 years in business, The Lumpkin Family Foundation created its first strategic plan in 2001. The Plan was designed to make The Foundation a more effective and focused grant-maker through a number of important organizational initiatives. Thus, The Foundation began systematically to engage its community through involvement in grant-making programs and through a community-wide advisory committee. We also developed a system to measure The Foundation’s organizational effectiveness in the same way we expect our grantees to measure their own.

The Foundation also made good on most of the program commitments outlined in the plan. For example, we began making grants, and providing direct programming, to build organizational capacity among nonprofit organizations in Central Illinois and environmental organizations in downstate Illinois. We also refined the focus of our conservation grants and made some grants that, we believe, contributed to our goal of having a measurable impact on philanthropy in the region. However, our plan was ambitious – even aspirational in nature. In truth, we failed to achieve the impact that we hope ultimately to see in our key strategic areas of interest. For example, in Central Illinois, we have not yet witnessed the creation of a healthy, strong, nonprofit sector! But we are working on it, and we have developed some measures to tell us what progress looks like.

Therefore, our new plan, approved by our Board of Trustees on November 3, 2005, is more an addendum to the first plan than it is a newly-minted statement of our intentions. Board and staff are energized by the progress brought about by the original statement of goals and strategy and, with a few modest changes to that original plan, have re-dedicated themselves to achieving its important goals.

Goals and Strategies 2006-2009

Click here to see a summary of The Foundation’s goals and strategies