186 – Strategy vs Tactics – How to Include Both in Your Volunteer Planning

October 30, 2025

Episode #186: Strategy vs Tactics – How to Include Both in Your Volunteer Planning 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast, Tobi Johnson breaks down one of the biggest pitfalls in volunteer planning: confusing strategy with tactics. She explains why a plan that’s just a long list of tasks will never move your mission forward and what to do instead. 

If you’re ready to shift from “busy and reactive” to “focused and strategic,” this episode is packed with inspiration and actionable guidance. Plus, Tobi introduces Vision Week 2026, a hands-on, five-day planning experience designed to help you confidently create your annual volunteer engagement plan with expert support! 

Strategy vs Tactics – Episode Highlights 

• [01:35] – Why Solid Planning Matters 
• [03:10] – Strategy vs. Tactics Defined 
• [06:15] – The Risk of To-Do-List Planning 
• [07:20] – Aligning Volunteer Engagement with Organizational Goals 
• [12:20] – Real-World Example #1: Improving Program Outcomes 
• [15:45] – Real-World Example #2: Growing the Volunteer Base 
• [18:40] – Real-World Example #3: Boosting Staff Buy-In 
• [22:10] – What Strategic Volunteer Engagement Really Means 
• [24:00] – Why People Avoid Planning 

Strategy vs Tactics – Quotes from the Episode 

“You need a system in place that’s clear, standardized, efficient, and that gets results. In addition, and maybe this is the most important, you need a volunteer program design that directly contributes to your organization’s most critical goals.”  

“People won’t follow you if they don’t know where you’re going, and if you haven’t shared it in a written plan and really help people understand how your goals and objectives within, or your strategies and tactics.” 

Helpful Links

• VisionWeek 2026 
• VolunteerPro Impact Lab 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #134: 8 Annual Planning Mistakes & How to Avoid Them  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #82: Nonprofit Strategic Planning for 2024 in 3 Simple Steps 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #168: Note to Nonprofit Execs – Supporting Volunteers is Everyone’s Job 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #186 Transcript: Strategy vs Tactics – How to Include Both in Your Volunteer Planning 

Tobi: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Volunteer Nation Podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and today I want to talk about strategy vs tactics and how to include both in your volunteer planning. Now, I hope this. Episode will be super helpful for anybody listening, but it’s a particularly helpful episode and want to give a shout out to My Vision Week Strategic Planning Bootcamp participants. 

I think for you folks, this is going to help you get a good grounding and solid understanding of some of the things we’ll be working on. A better understanding of strategy vs tactics and just. Get you in the right head space to hit the ground running and get that plan done by the end of the week. 

Shout out to you all. I hope this is really helpful, and everybody else, of course, too. Here at the Volunteer Nation Podcast, we help leaders of volunteers like you build stronger teams, stronger organizations, and stronger communities. And that really can’t happen unless we have a solid plan in place. 

Winging it doesn’t really work, especially in today’s complicated world, and we’ve really gotta have a plan of action, not only to know what we’re doing, but also to share with key stakeholders. And to be able to set some boundaries around what’s possible and what might be too much of a stretch and lead to burnout. 

And so, it’s important to plan and one of the biggest challenges is in our planning, is to understand the difference between strategy vs tactics and understand what’s really driving your volunteer engagement plan. Is it a real strategy? Or is it just a set of tactics now? I said that you probably think I’m more strategic than tactical, but they’re both needed. 

But if you’re only focusing on tactics and your strategic plan starts to feel like, uh, glorified to-do list, then we’ve got to make sure we are integrating some of those tactics into it. So, I want to give you some examples where you can see how I am not only. Discern between strategy and tactics, but I also talk about how we align your volunteer strategy for volunteer services with the strategy of the larger organization. 

So, there’s a lot in this episode. If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in the weeds chasing tasks, reacting to what’s urgent and never quite getting ahead, this episode is for you, and I hope you enjoy it. So, here’s what we’re going to talk about, why so many volunteer plans fail, the crucial difference between strategy vs tactics, and how you can use both to design a plan that actually works for you and stick around because I will also share for those of you who had not yet enrolled in Vision Week 2026, our annual strategic planning workshop, I will share a little bit of information on that as well. So, let’s get started by breaking down the definitions. 

So, what’s the difference? Strategy vs tactics. What is the difference? Strategy is your big picture. It’s the what and the why. It answers what do we want to achieve? Tactics are the how, they’re the steps, actions and activities that move you toward your strategy. If you think of it like this. 

Your strategy is the destination on your GPS. You know where you’re headed. It’s on the horizon. You’ve typed it in, and you know that’s your goal. That’s where you want to end up. Your tactics are the turn-by-turn directions in the GPS that get you there. So, take a left, get in the middle lane, take a right, go through three stoplights. 

Whatever it is, your tactics are telling you step by step how to get to that ultimate destination. But here’s where many organizations go wrong with this. They skip strategy altogether. They start directly with tactics. And again, if your planning looks like a glorified to-do list all the time, which there’s nothing wrong with to-do lists, I write ’em up for myself as well. 

But that shouldn’t be your annual plan, right? So, we want to make sure that when you’re thinking about strategy vs tactics, if you hear yourself saying things like this, hey, we’ll just host another volunteer fair or attend another volunteer fair to recruit volunteers. Or we’ll just post more on social media to attract volunteers. 

Or we’ll just send out different recruitment emails. If you’re thinking of those are tactics. If you’re thinking about your rock. Volunteer recruitment approach. Those are tactics. These are all good ideas if they ladder up to a larger strategic goal. When tactics are disconnected from strategy, we stay busy, but we’re not always productive. 

So, we have to learn how to work smarter, not harder. And part of that is being strategic. In addition, strategic volunteer engagement means that your volunteer program is fully aligned with your organization’s mission and goals. It’s not operating in its own bubble, regardless of how your organization operates, so you can integrate your strategy with your larger organization’s goals, even if your organization is operating in a silo. 

Even if your organization is operating in, in silos, I should say, multiple silos, you can start to change the tide of that by working from within. And so, many elements of your volunteer strategy, the first step is to make sure that they roll up to your organization’s goals, objective strategy. In some way it must be clear to anyone reading your plan how volunteer engagement actually supports the organization’s larger goals. 

Gang, this is why you exist. This is why there is volunteer services, whether you’re a department of one, whether you’re paid or not paid. This is why volunteers are engaged in organizations to support organizations. It’s to meet the organization’s goals. It’s not part of it. It’s part of, and sometimes we get lost in that, and we think we’re apart from it, but we’re not. 

The goal of engaging volunteers is to meet the organization’s larger goals. And it’s something we really practice this alignment on day one of Vision Week, we really dive into this a little bit and, and start to, I have some frameworks that I use to help people surface where those alignments might be. 

And we want to make sure that all our participants can build a plan that links the day-to-day work that they’re involved with, with the big picture of the organization moving ahead. And it’s such a key to buy-in when you can show people, you can draw a straight line between what’s going on. In volunteer engagement and what’s going on at the organizational level, and you can show how you are supporting those larger goals that can help people understand the resources you need, the meetings you need to be part of, and the places volunteers need to be. 

Active. And so, it’s helpful to know that I’m going to take a break for a quick break, and after the break I want to dive into some examples of what this alignment looks like and how we are discerning between strategy vs tactics. Okay. So let’s take a quick pause from my discussion about strategy vs tactics and how they can be used in planning. 

And after the break I’ll give you those concrete examples. So don’t go anywhere. I will be right back. Hey, are you looking to upgrade and modernize your volunteer program? Or maybe you’re building one from scratch, and you’re just not sure where to start. If so, we’ve got the perfect resource for you, the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab. 

Having built several direct service programs from the ground up, I know that it doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a clear process that takes careful attention with a focus on impact. In the end, you need a system in place that’s clear, standardized, efficient, and that gets results. In addition, and maybe this is the most important, you need a volunteer program design that directly contributes to your organization’s most critical goals. 

That’s where the Volunteer Pro Impact Lab comes in. When it comes to effective volunteer engagement, our bespoke volunteer strategy Success path model, which is the heart of our resources and strategic advising, will help you transform your volunteer strategy from fundamental. To a fully mature what’s  

Speaker: working now approach and all in less time with our online assessment, you’ll quickly gain clarity on precisely where to focus your efforts and we’ll provide recommendations for the exact steps needed  

Speaker 2: for sustainable growth. 

Regardless of how large or small your organization is or what your cause impact area or focus is, our program development and implementation support model will help you build a strong foundation so volunteerism can thrive at your good cause. If  

Speaker: you are interested in learning more, go to ball pro.net/join and we’ll share how to get started and what’s involved. 

Again, that’s ball pro.net. Forward slash join. 

Speaker 2: Okay, we’re back with my discussion about strategy vs tactics, and I’m gonna kick us off with some concrete examples of how they might be used in your volunteer engagement plan. So let’s talk about real world examples. So let’s make this real with a few examples of how strategies and tactics can work together and also be nested below your organization strategy. 

Let’s start with example number one, improving program outcomes. Most nonprofits have goals around improving program outcomes, so our organizational goal might be to improve program outcomes. Across by 25% across all programs. Now that’s super vague, not vagueness. It’s not actually vague, but it is very all encompassing. 

Generally that wouldn’t be, it would be related to a specific program, but you get the gist. It’s improving a specific program or all programs by 25%. We’re just using this as an example. It’s not a good goal, it’s not a bad goal, et cetera. So that might be the organization’s goal. The volunteer strategy that supports that goal is to make sure that the right people are in the right seats, equipped to make an impact. 

And when we talk about people, we’re talking about volunteers. So that’s the strategy to make sure that. You have sourced the right volunteer talent to help support that growth and improvement in outcomes. The tactic for this would be assessing your current volunteer knowledge, skills, and abilities, and filling any gaps they might have. 

That volunteers might have with new training or recruiting people with the skill sets you need. So it’s about needs analysis. The tactic is about understanding what are the skills and what are the skills gaps that are happening as we’re sourcing volunteers to make sure our volunteers are matched with the proper roles. 

Of course, with that agency goal, the organizational goal of improving outcomes, there are lots. Of tactics and lots of volunteer strategies that might roll up to that improvement of those goals. It might just be more volunteers. It might be improving volunteer productivity. In this case, in this example, the strategy is to I improve the talent match between volunteers. 

And the roles they’re placed in. And the tactics are to assess the volunteers knowledge and skills and if there are any knowledge or skills missing, then to be able to fill, backfill those with new training or recruiting people with the right skills. So it’s a talent match strategy with some tactics on how to do that. 

That’s a really interesting way, a really interesting way, strategically to address that organizational goal. I’m trying not to pick things by the way that are super obvious, right? We wanna try to look a little bit deeper here, and so you can see all the different ways that we can roll this up together and align. 

So let’s look at a another example. Growing the volunteer base, the organization goal might be to increase active volunteer engagement by 15% next quarter. Now, you may think, well, isn’t that the volunteer strategy or the strategic goal for volunteers? Yes. However, I encourage you that any large scale goals around volunteerism should actually be owned by the agency. 

Should actually be owned by the agency or organization. Now, your organization may be starting a new program, and so maybe their goal or organization goal might be, we are gonna start this new program or expand this new program, or offer this new program in a different place or at a different time, or with different topics or different target audience, whatever it is, and we will need X number of volunteers to support that. 

So that’s another twist on that organizational goal. So how would volunteer strategy vs tactics support this goal? How would they roll up? So, a volunteer strategy might be to, to optimize the volunteer lifecycle, to reduce turnover. So the strategy might not be recruit more people. The strategy might be. 

To reduce the load on recruitment by retaining more volunteers and maybe engaging them in new roles. You can see how retention vs recruitment is the strategic approach in this example. So if the organization wants to increase its active volunteers by 15% next quarter, if you just reduce your turnover rate by 15%. 

Hey, you’ve met your goal right now. The tactic might be to map out the volunteer journey and pinpoint emotional and informational needs at each step, which I’m a huge proponent of. I do journey mapping with my consulting clients. I was just on a call yesterday and, and they were telling me how much they enjoyed that process and how many aha moments that it really. 

Gave them in terms of understanding where to make improvements and to streamline their processes. So volunteers had the best experience ever. So the strategy is to optimize the volunteer lifecycle to re reduce turnover. The tactic is to use journey mapping. Analyze where there are problem areas and to make improvements. 

So again, we’re stacking these, they’re nesting in below each other. So the organizational goal, increase active volunteers by 15%. Next quarter. The volunteer strategy is to optimize the volunteer lifecycle to return, reduce turnover, and the tactic is to map out. That volunteer journey and pinpoint those informational and emotional needs at each step so that they can be addressed and met. 

So you start, I hope you’re starting to get ideas about how these align. Example three strengthening staff buy-in the organizational goal might be. Every department actively uses volunteer support. Now, again, this could be the goal of volunteer services, but I think it, it’s better the goal of the organization. 

Now, you may not have control over what goals the organization. If you’re a leader of volunteers, you may not have control over what the organization’s leadership decides its goals are, so you have to go with whatever goals they have. That doesn’t also mean that you don’t have your own goals as well. So not every goal you have in your strategic planning process needs to roll up to your organization’s goals. 

Not all of them. It doesn’t have to be an exact, exact mirror, right? Doesn’t have to be an exact mirror. But you do wanna make sure there are some concrete ways, if there are ways for volunteers to support those goals or volunteer engagement to support those goals that. You are considering that and including it in your plan. 

So if the organization’s goals, as every department actively uses volunteer support, volunteer strategy vs tactics might look like this strategy is to improve staff understanding of the volunteer value. So what are the values that volunteers bring beyond a free pair of hands, beyond the economic value? 

What are the other values that volunteers bring? And there are so many we all know. I could go on and on. I could do a completely, and I think I have in the past actually. Done episodes on this. So the strategy might be to improve staff understanding of the volunteer value and the tactic might be we’re gonna offer short, fun volunteer partnership trainings for all staff, not just program heads and not just supervisors, right? 

Of volunteers. So you see how these work together. Your strategy gives direction, your tactics make it doable, and everything should roll up to that organizational goal. So again, if the goal is every department actively uses volunteer support, that’s your organization’s goal. Your volunteer strategy might be improved. 

Staff understanding of the volunteer culture so that they’re more open to welcoming volunteers into different roles. And then the tactic might be to offer short fund volunteer partnership trainings for all staff, not just program leads, not just program department heads, and not just supervisors of volunteers. 

When all of these are in alignment, your volunteer program can present itself and it stops being quote unquote, just extra help and starts being a strategic advantage for your organization when you align the organization’s goals with. The strategies and tactics within volunteer services, again, paid or unpaid, whether you’re department of one or a big department, doesn’t matter. 

When these goals are aligned, you become a strategic advantage. Now, again, I’ll repeat, you don’t, not every one of your annual plan goals needs to roll up to your organization’s goals, but there needs to be some, and if you’re having a hard time, then. There’s something wrong with what’s going on because the purpose for volunteers within an organization is to support the organization’s larger objectives and goals. 

So usually when you start looking through your organization’s larger objectives and goals, you can start to see how volunteers, the implications for volunteerism. Now, whether or not your organization takes you up on those is another story. And so when you have this alignment completed, it’s always a good idea to talk to your supervisor and say, which of these are the most compelling? 

Which of these should I include in my final plan? Right. But it really, when you align these things, it really shows you as a strategic, it shows volunteer engagement as a strategic advantage. This is what we mean by strategic volunteer engagement, or what I mean by strategic volunteer engagement. I know a lot of people use that term. 

Mine is that it is strategically positioned. To be an advantage for your organization and then all your plan needs is to be incorporated into a written plan. This is one of the essentials to building buy-in. People won’t follow you if they don’t know where you’re going, and if you haven’t shared it in a written plan, briefed people on it. 

And really help people understand how your goals and objectives within, or your strategies and tactics, I should say, within volunteer services roll up to the organizations. Larger goals. If you wanna learn more about how I approach buy-in, check out Volunteer Nation episode 1 68. A note to nonprofit execs supporting volunteers is everyone’s job. 

So I really start to make the case that we are an integrated a case for integration vs creating silos. Last, I hope these three examples have helped you kind of start to align these inside Vision Week. Our first day, our ready step of our ready, set, go process. We’re gonna do a lot more of this alignment work, and you’ll have a chance to do breakout, go into breakouts, talk with others about what they’re, how they’re aligning. 

I’ll be sharing my frameworks, an easy post-it exercise that helps you with this alignment work. It’ll be included in your work. Book, so it’s something we’re gonna work on. I just want you to start thinking about it now and really have a clear picture of what strategy vs tactics are and how they can be employed. 

Last thing I wanna end with is there’s something that I tell every volunteer manager I coach. Planning isn’t just about predicting the future. Sometimes that’s the reason people don’t plan. They tell us so often, I don’t have time to plan. I don’t even know where to start. And we think that planning often we blame it on it’s a time issue, but planning the lack thereof or people’s inability to plan, I believe is a confidence issue. 

It’s that we are not sure and we’re afraid to predict the future. It’s not, planning is not about predicting the future. It is about making best guesstimates, but it’s more about preparing for the future, and so we know the pace of change isn’t slowing down. If you’re waiting for things to calm down before you plan, you might be waiting a really long time. 

It just doesn’t seem like the world is getting very easily easy or easier. And so I want you to think about how a strong flexible plan gives you the confidence to adapt no matter what comes next. That’s why we. Created Vision Week 2026. It’s a live five day planning experience happening November 3rd through seventh, where you’ll learn to envision the future for your volunteer program, build a strong foundation for next year, and design both strategies and tactics that support your organization’s biggest goals. 

And you’ll walk away with a finished draft of your annual volunteer engagement plan and the confidence to bring others on board so it. Goes all the way to completion. If you go to vol pro.net/vision, you can save your spot. If you’re already enrolled in Vision Week, go ahead and jump inside the community and look at the post on how to prepare for Vision Week. 

In the start here thread, I’ve got some information about some things you might wanna try to find to help you give. Get clues if you don’t have them in writing somewhere. What are the clues? What are the goal? Big goals and objectives for my organization? I don’t know. I give you some ideas of things you wanna bring to help you consider that and pinpoint that as well as people to talk to and other items you might wanna bring along to help you with your planning process. 

Also, just give. Us a shout out. I would love to hear from anybody who’s listened to this podcast. I’m gonna post the link inside the community once we go live so that you can listen there. So as you think about the year ahead, I wanna leave you with one question. Is your plan strategic or is it just a list of tasks? 

Is it a roadmap for transformation or is it. You spinning on a gerbil wheel as fast as you can. We really want to combine strategies and tactics so that we don’t just manage volunteers or manage our time, that we mobilize the community and this takes true planning and strategy. So if you’re ready to do that, join us for Vision Week 2026 next month. 

I’m recording in October right now, but  I’d love to see you in November. Third through sixth. Together we can turn your big vision into a clear set of actionable steps for the year ahead. Again, just go to vol pro.net/vision to register and I’ll see you there. I’ll put the link in the show notes and in the meantime. 

Keep leading with purpose. And remember, people can’t follow you unless you have a plan. So make sure you have one for the year ahead. And if you’re not sure how you’re gonna get that plan done, I hope you join us at Vision Week. And for those of you who are already enrolled, I cannot wait. To work with you. 

It is such a fun week. It’s super high energy, and this week we’re doing breakout so you can meet each other live and share ideas as well. All right, everybody, so take care. If you like this episode, I hope you’ll share it with a friend and give us a rating or review. And if you’re ready for more from the Volunteer Nation Podcast, join us next week. 

Same time, same place. Take care, everybody.