Last year, Next Stage proudly partnered with the Institute for Sport and Social Justice (‘the Institute’) on an expansive strategic planning engagement. The project ranked among Next Stage’s most visionary planning efforts, with the Institute’s leaders staking out a globally focused horizon for its social impact programming.
About the Institute for Sport and Social Justice
The Institute’s mission is to harness the power of sport to educate and empower leaders to create a safer, more equitable, and inclusive world. Founded by civil rights icon Dr. Richard Lapchick in 1985, the Institute has long been an innovative leader in leveraging sport as a platform for social change.
The Institute is perhaps best known for its Huddle Up program, working with university programs, professional sports teams, and leagues to deliver training on a continuum of topics including the following:
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB)
- Eradicating gender-based violence
- The power of transformational leadership
- Critical decision-making skills
Additional programs include the management of National Student-Athlete Day, PlayMakers of the Month, and Invisible Women in Sport. Signature events include the Giant Steps Awards Gala and the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.
The Need
Sporting events often serve as a platform for protest and social justice demonstrations. And, in today’s divisive and highly politicized climate, the Institute’s guiding principles and mission have never been more vital.
The Institute appointed Dr. Jeffrey O’Brien as its new CEO in 2022, transitioning leadership from its founder ahead of the organization’s 40th anniversary in 2025. With a staff and contractor team new to the organization, the time had come to engage in a multi-year strategic planning process to establish a roadmap ahead of the upcoming anniversary.
The Approach
Based in Central Florida, the Institute wasn’t familiar with Charlotte-based Next Stage. The organization reached out following a referral to learn more about the social innovation company’s strategic planning services. Next Stage was proud to step into the facilitator role for the Institute’s strategic planning process. The effort was led by CEO Josh Jacobson and Senior Director, Community Voice Helen Hope Kimbrough.
Jacobson and Kimbrough conducted a wide-ranging discovery process that included virtual planning sessions with a national task force and an in-person, multi-day retreat in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan. These phases of work built buy-in with the Institute’s leadership and created a platform for creating a game-changing strategic plan.
According to Dr. O’Brien, this reimagining of the Institute’s pathway forward came at a critical time for the organization and its staff and board leadership.
“Over several decades, the Institute had led the way in creating human-centered standards within the sports industry,” O’Brien said. “To move forward, we needed to take stock of our history while carefully plotting a course for our future. Thanks to the work of Next Stage, we now have the renewed clarity and defined roadmap we need to put our new pillars into practice.”
The Impact
The Institute’s various programs and service lines all focus on the same central value proposition: advancing social justice through sport. But to bring current and future programs into cohesion, the Institute needed to develop a theory of change to help tell the story of how the individual programs work together to create impact.
Through Next Stage–facilitated planning sessions, the Institute originated the concept “Change Me. Change Us. Change the World.”
- Change Me: We believe impact starts at the individual level. We educate and empower individuals to realize how they can make a positive difference.
- Change Us: We aim to build a movement of individuals who take what they have learned to inspire and transform their local communities.
- Change the World: We work with global partners to lift up and support their change-making efforts and advance equity, safety, and inclusion. The movement we envision emanates from individual and community-based action that, ultimately, will change the world.
This conceptualization helped to bring the Institute’s four pillars of impact (Training & Education; Community & Youth; Global Engagement; Knowledge Creation) into a connected framework, which set the stage for planning and ambition setting.
The result was a highly detailed strategic roadmap and implementation plan outlining a 3-year horizon toward a newly defined approach to the Institute’s work.
For Jacobson, Next Stage’s engagement with the Institute was a thrilling demonstration of the company’s capacity for supporting far-ranging impact.
“The Institute’s strategic plan is global in scope, placing the organization on the path to being a worldwide leader in creating a safer, more equitable, and inclusive world,” Jacobson said.
To learn more about the Institute for Sport and Social Justice and its impact, visit www.sportandsocialjustice.org.
To learn more about Next Stage’s strategic planning services, visit our website or reach out to Josh Jacobson at ceo@nextstage-consulting.com.
