Organization: Friends of Shelby Park and Bottoms
Location: Nashville, TN
Sector: Environmental
Project: 3 Year Strategic Plan
Length of Project: 5 months

THE SCENE
Shelby Park and Bottoms is the third-largest park in Nashville, Tennessee: 1,300 acres. The Park and Bottoms feature a variety of natural and manmade resources: from streams, archaeological features, and environmental preserves to ballfields, playgrounds, and picnic shelters. Friends of Shelby Park and Bottoms (FOSPB) has been working for over sixteen years to attend to this park.
Segregation was an important undercurrent in the history of Shelby Park and one that kept a significant portion of Nashville’s population from enjoying its scenic grounds for much of the 20th century. Today, the legacy of segregation is seen in that the park’s surrounding East Nashville community has a median income of $59,000 per year and faces numerous barriers to accessing the park.

FOSPB is aware of this history and wishes to build a strategic plan that ensures access and utilization by their BIPOC neighbors and partnering with organizations who will introduce the park to new users.

OUR APPROACH
Flying Whale led a team of four (3 staff, 1 board rep) through four phases of work: research, design, operationalize, and communicate.

Research Phase: We discovered that FOSPB has been known as coordinators of great events and managers of great projects. For the past 16 years, they have been working alongside Nashville Metro Parks to preserve, enhance, and promote Shelby Park and Bottoms. This means they have measured their success through outputs such as:​

• Number of acres of invasive species cleared

• Number of volunteers engaged and hours served

• Number of trees planted
   

Now, with the introduction of this new three-year strategic plan, they are eager to both address the park’s history of inequity and invest in its future.

Design Phase: We determined what is changing as a result of this plan. They are now focusing on increasing park utilization and community mobilization. This represents a shift in our identity away from event and project coordination to an organization that activates the power of community. Now they will measure their impact by tracking their ability to engage and mobilize:

• Increased utilization by underrepresented individuals

• % of park initiatives designed and executed with community

• Increase in accessibility
   

Operationalize Phase: We developed an organizational chart that shifts roles and responsibilities toward the goals of the plan. We created a project tracking system to convert the goals of the plan with daily routines. We also created a fundraising plan that prioritizes activity for the small team to raise needed funds for this plan while also supporting their current capital campaign.

Communicate Phase: We build a board presentation for the plan. We wrote the plan into a full narrative that could be sent to the designers!
 

THE RESULT OF THE PROJECT
Shelby Park and Bottoms is set up to become a national model for activating inclusive community support for the care of an urban park.

• Shifted board governance structure from working board to governance board.

• Created a new organizational chart that supports a community partnership priority.

• Created a 3-year budget that ensures the organization can meet the goals for each pillar of the plan.

• Created an evaluation plan for the new goals with associated measurement instruments.

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DELIVERABLES WE CREATED FOR THE TEAM

1. Work Plan: describes the order of projects we worked through allowing the team to determine who to invite along the way

2. Full Written Narrative Of the Plan: the written plan for an external audience

3. Strategic Plan Spreadsheet includes:

   • Logic Model

   • Program Activity Audit

   • Infrastructure Audit

   • Staffing Plan

   • Project Management Sheet

   • Program Evaluation Sheets

   • External Stakeholder Research Sheets

4. Custom built evaluation tools: to be used to measure outcomes

5. Strategic Plan Slide Deck includes:

   • Kickoff Meeting slides

   • Research Findings

   • Board Retreat slides

   • Final Plan presentation to the board

6. Fundraising Plan includes:

   • An audit of potential fundraising strategies

   • Revenue goals for selected strategies

   • Gift tables for selected strategies

   • Major donor portfolio template

   • Infrastructure checklist for improving fundraising activity

   • Fundraising budget sheet

   • Staffing plan for fundraising over the next 3 years

   • Donor touchpoint checklist