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Hi everyone, Anthony Taylor here from SME Strategy. We help leadership teams implement their strategic plans, and I love sharing very cool things in the world of strategy and strategic planning. And I'm so excited to be able to share this out of the City of Victoria, BC, where we have one of our offices, and what they've done to engage community and move their strategic plan forward.
So I found recently that they basically created this grant program. They said we are going to give community grants for projects that align with our strategic priorities. So the city had their strategic priorities, and they said Dear community, apply for a grant that is going to help us move our goals forward. They have eight strategic areas. And so those strategic priorities, their strategic objectives, are good governance and civic engagement, reconciliation and indigenous relations, affordable housing, prosperity and economic inclusion, health/well being in a welcoming city, climate leadership and environmental stewardship, sustainable transportation and strong livable neighborhoods.
We can help you align your team around a clear vision, mission, values, goals and action plans,
so you can lead your organization more effectively and get better results.
So as a city, they said Hey, this is what we want to accomplish. Are we going to be able to do it all ourselves? Probably not. What's going to be important for us to be able to move forward? And they said, Great, let's put it to the public. The public can use this budget that we're going to allocate so they can move projects. So instead of having to do all of the heavy lifting ourselves, we're gonna put it out to the community. They had half a million dollars in funding.
Last year, they gave out 53 grants to community organizations, in order to move that forward. I thought it was so cool. Not only does it move forward, and communicate what their objectives are, but it really does the broad engagement around the strategic plan. It helps other people get involved and engaged. And it just helps move it forward and help people buy in. Very, very cool process. Very, very cool system. I love seeing organizations that make it easy to buy into the plan, and they walk the walk as it relates to moving their plan forward. So shout out City of Victoria.
I'd love to hear feedback from how last year's went, so if anybody watches this from the City of Victoria, let me know how your 2021 went. I'm sure you have a scorecard for your community projects. And I'd love to hear how that went.
If you see anything else that's cool in the world of strategy, be sure to reach out, drop them in the chat, drop them in the comment section. I'd love to feature them on our channel to give you examples and to allow you to be inspired. You know, just as I talk this through.. One cool thing, as a company, if you've got strategic priorities, you could fund mini projects. You could say "I've got $50-100, you know, $1,000 budget within my company, as long as you have an idea that will help move our strategic priorities forward.
I love this model. I'm going to hopefully duplicate it with some of our clients and I'd love to hear stories if this done successfully in your organization. So shout out City of Victoria.
My name is Anthony Taylor from SME Strategy. Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe.
We'll see you soon!
