Building a Compass for a Changing Landscape

In 2025, the National Forest Foundation (NFF) was at an inflection point. Catastrophic wildfires and other threats to forests were on the rise, the National Forest System faced increased visitation from a renewed interest in the outdoors, and changes in Washington D.C. meant a need to pivot on priorities. The organization was leading with a steadfast commitment to creating impact on the ground and also welcomed a new CEO. To channel all these phenomena into opportunities, the NFF needed more than a typical five-year plan: they needed a strategic compass. Creating a meaningful, actionable plan in this landscape meant building for transformation, not predictability.

We partnered with NFF to create a flexible, participatory, and deeply place-based strategy. We worked side-by-side with NFF’s leadership, staff, Board, and partners across the U.S. Forest Service to co-create a vision of the future, one that would resonate with each of the U.S.’s 154 National Forests and the 20 National Grasslands, as well as the communities that depend on these public places.

This wasn’t strategy work done in a vacuum. We adapted our process in real time to reflect shifts in the policy environment and changing organizational needs. The result was a living framework rooted in collective insight, nimble enough to respond to change while anchored in an immutable mission. Through working groups of foresters and strategists collaborating together, comprehensive surveys, in-person workshops, and interviews, we aligned stakeholders on the current moment, envisioned a bold future for 2040, and crystallized NFF’s unique role in stewarding that future. Our involvement with partners in the forest service and NFF staff was critical to early success and buy-in. Engagement and support for the strategy was far-reaching at NFF; the board was highly engaged and collaborative from the beginning.

We also visited the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, WI, where for over 100 years, scientists, foresters, and other partners have innovated and advanced technologies that protect American communities and companies. Perhaps most critically, we worked hand-in-hand with NFF to dream big and uncover what the organization truly needed to realize its purpose.

With all these inputs, the resulting plan articulated audacious goals, defined strategic pillars, and made space for regional and local identities to show up fully. It was personal and scalable, actively shaped by creative groups of experts, offering clarity on where NFF needed to go while navigating uncertainty along the way. While the plan had measurable elements and tangible precision interwoven, people were most excited about the time spent on organizing principles; honing mission, vision, and values; and focusing on what work needed to be done in the future. Critically, NFF colleagues could see exactly where they fit in the plan. Despite so many different perspectives, the plan was unanimously adopted by the Board and is in the process of being implemented today.

The final strategic plan was ready to be used for external engagement as a fundraising tool or communication document as much as it could be used everyday by internal staff to guide decision making. Since the plan’s adoption, NFF has already begun bringing it to life, hiring directors aligned to the new strategic pillars and securing early investments to advance wildfire resilience, land and watershed restoration, and recreation enhancement. With this shared compass in hand, NFF is stepping confidently into the future, equipped to lead amidst complexity, and act with clarity and purpose.