The officers of the Brotherhood of Temple Israel of Sharon MA believe that its organization while fortunate to be very successful cannot rest on its laurels. Nearly all of us were new in our officer roles especially VPs and President. We decided to take a step back and look at our organization the demographics of its board and membership and programming. Like most clubs we have a dedicated core group of active members who sit on the board and run our programs. We struggle at times to get 'new blood' to volunteer. We agreed that a dedicated one-day strategic review could help to lay the groundwork for our future success and our ability to sustain the organization.

To be successful we limited our agenda for the day to the high-level strategic elements that any organization wrestles with. Some of the agenda came from a survey of our Past Presidents to understand what issues ideas or concerns they had. We knew of the importance of including our past leaders' input in the process. In surveying the past presidents we kept it simple and asked only two questions: 1) If we could only focus on one thing in 2015-2016 what would that be? 2) If we could change or improve one program what would that be and how would you change it? (Survey questions and responses attached). Additionally as part of the strategic planning session we also invited one of the most experienced past presidents to participate in the meeting in order to maintain a sense of continuity from past to present to future.

Every officer needs to feel included during the session. To accomplish this we assigned each officer one part of the meeting to lead (agenda attached). Following this process permits everyone to have a chance to understand a particular issue in more depth and to facilitate a portion of the meeting.

First we lacked a Mission Statement. With almost 40 years in existence we knew what we did and why we did it but we did not have a formal statement that we could ensure aligned all of the great work our club does. Spending time outlining the key elements of our mission in a succinct format enabled us to express what our Brotherhood means to us to our membership to our synagogue and to our community. It also allowed us to review how we aligned with the mission of our Temple and the mission of the FJMC.

Second the club's By-Laws had not been thoroughly reviewed or amended in almost 30 years. In several instances how we acted contradicted what our By-Laws stated. Committees that existed in the By-Laws no longer functioned in the real world. We spent time prior to the meeting reviewing the By-Laws individually and then discussed each of our thoughts as a team during the strategic planning session. We proposed several changes to the By-Laws that reflected better how we operated as an organization.

The third area of focus was on 2016 and beyond. What are our immediate goals and what to do we hope to achieve 3-5 years down the road? We all knew that we could not change everything in a single year. Many goals reflected the feedback from the past presidents. We also considered FJMC's Keruv Initiative and how we could do a better job incorporating it into our By-Laws and programming. We reviewed past programs and discussed how we felt about some long-time programs and if we should either take a break from them or discontinue them altogether. In the end we determined three major goals: 1) Increase both membership and the number of active members; 2) Build a strong working relationship with our new Rabbi; and 3) Improve our processes and execution of our programs. We have achieved the first two goals as our club membership is at an all-time high with a few more active members and we have a good working relationship with our Rabbi. Improving our processes and execution is a work-in-progress and we have commitment to develop a better playbook and use technology to improve our workflow and communications.

Minutes were kept throughout the meeting and reviewed at the end. Each officer was assigned different follow-up items.

From a budget perspective we ensure that the annual strategic planning session is included as a line item. We hold the session at a local hotel conference room. Being offsite enables us to focus completely on the work that we need to accomplish. Budget is currently allocated at $400 and each of the officers contributes approximately $25 towards the balance. This includes room rental and food. We brought our own projector as the rental at the hotel was very high.