Trends in Strategic Planning and Management Practices of HIV/AIDS Community-Based Organizations

Strategic planning is “a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it.” Such disciplined efforts are crucial for community-based organizations (CBOs) to survive in volatile funding environments, changing political priorities, and unstable public support. CBOs that provide HIV/AIDS services are particularly vulnerable to threats to organizational sustainability due to the stigma attached to the services they provide.

HIV/AIDS community-based organizations are on the forefront of outreach efforts targeting populations most at risk for or affected by HIV/AIDS and are well regarded by communities as trustworthy resources for HIV/AIDS education and information. The strong connection between communities and CBOs places a premium on the capacity of the CBO to provide effective and sustained programming.

To build organizational capacity of HIV/AIDS community-based organizations to provide highly effective and sustainable behavioral interventions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has funded through the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) the CDC/ASPH Institute for HIV Prevention Leadership (Institute) since 2000. Each year, prevention program managers working in CBOs are selected for intense capacity-building on effective public health practice and strategic planning and management.

The Institute has been collecting data on the strategic planning and management practices of HIV/AIDS community-based organizations participating in their capacity-building programming. This presentation reports the trends observed over the last five years and provides recommendations for building CBO capacity to conduct strategic planning and management.