Strategic plan 2008-2013

Further down this page, you'll find the final Strategic Plan that the Friends of the Earth Board agreed in November 2008. This page is also being used to tell you how the organisation is responding to the present uncertainties in the economy.

Lots of you are probably wondering how the financial crisis is affecting Friends of the Earth. Like most organisations, we're planning for uncertain economic times ahead. Friends of the Earth regularly reviews its income forecasts, and they are now being revised for the coming years.

We're also acting to avoid a forecasted funding gap in Friends of the Earth's present budget year to June 2009, by reducing expenditure across the organisation. We've made savings in most areas of the strategic plan, while still aiming to maximise the impact of our 2009 priority campaigns on Low Carbon Communities (working title), the Food Chain Campaign and Copenhagen.

Changes to particular campaigns will be communicated through campaign networks as they're finalised, but the following measures are likely to be of interest to all local groups.

We are:

• reducing the Local Group Support Fund to small grants only, for the time being.
• replacing Conference 2009 with a series of ‘low carbon' connected, regional events at the same time in September (designed to comply with constitutional commitments)
• withdrawing support for the Youth and Education network.

The exact nature of the savings in each area are still being finalised and we're doing everything possible to minimise the impact of the measures being taken. We also have a ‘hard frost' on recruitments, which means most vacancies will not be filled, with a few exceptions where roles are essential to the delivery of our priority campaigns.

The strategic planning process

The first draft of the strategic plan was created in December 2006. Following an initial consultation with staff and local groups in early 2007, the Organisational Management Team (OMT) updated and expanded the document to provide a second draft plan. In response to further feedback from local groups, staff and the Board via a second consultation in May/June 2007, the OMT updated the document further.

Using the resulting revised Aims and Objectives, the OMT then worked with staff, the Board and, for some areas of the plan, local group members to finalise the detail of the plan. This was signed off by the Board in November 2008. The plan is now in its first year of delivery.

Archive of documents (most recent first):

• Strategic Plan 2008-2013 - final version
  Nov 2008
• Draft Aims and Objectives
  May 2007
• Stage 2 of the next strategic plan - where we are up to and what next
  March 2007
• Summary of stakeholder feedback
  Feb 2007
• Implications of the proposals so far
  May 2007
• Briefing and feedback form
  Jan 2007
• The thinking so far - a guide to inform your feedback
  Jan 2007
• How local groups can help to develop the next Five Year Plan (2008-2013)
  Dec 2006
• Introductory letter
  Dec 2006

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