FEBRUARY 2008

The Justice Project

Using Strategic Planning to Increase the Impact of Advocacy

Samantha Levine Allana Jackson Alan Tuck

2008 The Bridgespan Group, Inc. Bridgespan is a registered trademark of The Bridgespan Group. All rights reserved.

Successful advocacy organizations are notable for their ability to mobilize quickly when events open a promising window for social change. But the more successful such organizations become, and the broader the agendas they pursue, the more challenging it can be to keep track of all the possible options for action, let alone to prioritize among them. This was the situation The Justice Project (TJP) found itself facing in the fall of 2006. After a number of significant successes, including the passage of the federal Innocence Protection Act, TJP was awash in many more opportunities to work for change in the criminal justice system than it could possibly take on. But in an environment where tactics may need to change overnight because of a high-profile media story, or where a Supreme Court ruling can provoke a sudden switch to legislative- rather than litigationfocused action, it wasn't clear how the organization's leaders could establish strategic priorities months, or even years, in advance. To help them clarify which options to jump on and which to pass by, TJPs executive team engaged in the organizations first formal strategic-planning process. Their goal was to strike the right balance: clarifying the organizations direction and priorities without stifling the flexibility that is so central to its success.

The Justice Project at a Glance

The Justice Projects roots trace back to co-founder John Terzanos experience with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF), an advocacy and humanitarian organization the Vietnam veteran also co-founded. VVAF is dedicated to addressing the causes, conduct, and consequences of war. Currently, it focuses on programs for soldiers and veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, economic assistance and humanitarian efforts for war victims, and advocacy efforts for other conflict-related concerns.1 In 1997,

VVAF is now known as Veterans for America, and continues to run programs on the ground in the U.S., Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

VVAF was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the international campaign to ban landmines. Fueled by VVAFs achievements, Terzano was eager to address other social justice issues. To that end, in 2000 he co-founded and became president of The Justice Project (TJP), a pair of linked 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities dedicated to creating a more humane and just world. 2 While TJPs mission is expansive, the organization has focused on criminal justice reform in the United States. To date, Terzano and his team have devoted most of their attention to capital punishment an issue that captures public attention in a way that many other criminal justice reform issues do not. They view work in this area as a way to build momentum for broader criminal justice reform. (The accompanying box provides a brief summary of how the criminal justice system is organized.) TJPs work entails developing, The Criminal Justice System Criminal offenses include felonies and misdemeanors, both of which may be punishable by prison terms. Felonies are typically more serious in nature, but states vary on which crimes constitute felonies or misdemeanors. Each state has its own criminal code, as does the federal government. Ninety-five percent of individuals in the criminal justice system are in a state system. A capital case is one in which the offender may be eligible for the death penalty if found guilty. The states and the federal government vary in terms of which offenses are eligible for the death penalty. Fourteen states plus the District of Columbia do not have the death penalty.

coordinating, and implementing integrated national and state-based campaigns involving public education and communication, research, coalition-building, litigation, and legislation. Over the past six years, these efforts have led to several significant successes at the federal and state levels. (The sidebar, Examples of TJPs Federal- and State-Level Accomplishments, provides more detail.)

Both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations are operated exclusively for charitable, religious, or educational purposes, but 501(c)(4) organizations are not subject to the same restrictions on lobbying activities. Both types of nonprofits are exempt from paying federal corporate income taxes. Contributions to 501(c)(3) organizations are deductible from the donors federal income taxes, while donations to 501(c)(4)s, with a very small number of exceptions, are not.

Sidebar: Examples of TJPs Federal- and State-Level Accomplishments At the federal level, TJP directed all aspects of a multi-faceted, multi-year campaign that culminated in the 2004 passage of groundbreaking federal legislation: the Innocence Protection Act (IPA), the first piece of death penalty reform legislation to be signed into law. The IPA provides funding for DNA testing of individuals who may have been wrongfully convicted and authorizes significant funds to help improve the quality of representation in capital cases. Another success at the federal level was the Kids Are Different campaign, designed to raise awareness of the fact that children and young adults are mentally, emotionally, and physically different than adults and therefore less culpable for their actions. Through coalition-building and communications work, TJP played a key role in directing a campaign that showed how a national and international consensus against the execution of juvenile offenders had developed. On March 1, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the juvenile death penalty in a landmark five-tofour decision. At the state level, TJP established and then collaborated with the Illinois Death Penalty Education Project to reshape the death penalty debate in Illinois and shine a spotlight on growing concerns with the states capital punishment system. TJP acted as a liaison to other national partner organizations. It also worked with the governors office to establish a commission that examined failings in the system. (The commissions report, published in April 2002, is widely viewed as the most comprehensive study of the problems with the criminal justice system and the death penalty. It is available on the web at: http://www.idoc.state.il.us/ccp/ccp/reports/commission_report/index.html.) Subsequently, TJP and other organizations lobbied state legislators to ensure overwhelming passage of major death penalty reform in November 2003. This legislation contained more than 20 measures intended to respond to the troubling history of wrongful convictions in Illinois. The provisions include: reforming eyewitness identification, recording custodial interrogations, and providing defendants with more access to evidence.

Beyond its specific state and federal initiatives, TJP also has maintained an active roster of broader-based communications and educational work. TJP often pursues these efforts in response to media reports on a particular court case. For example, TJPs communications team has been involved in shaping media messages for a number of death penalty cases. In 2005, the organization packaged its policy goals into a National Agendaa set of eight reforms that would move the nation purposefully towards a fair criminal justice system. (See box: The National Agenda). TJP developed the National Agenda as a way

to guide policy makers in implementing needed changes, and also as an education tool for policy makers, the media, and the public. The National Agenda Recording of custodial interrogations Improving eyewitness identification procedures Expanding discovery in capital cases Ensuring standards for the appointment and performance of counsel in capital cases Improving forensic evidence testing procedures Improving standards for admissibility of accomplice and snitch testimony Ensuring proper safeguards against prosecutorial misconduct Expanding access to post-conviction DNA testing By the fall of 2006, TJP was working on or coordinating reform campaigns in four states (Illinois, Texas, Tennessee, and Georgia), was involved in or closely monitoring several federal-level developments, and had a full roster of national communication and education activities. TJP had entered into most of this work

opportunisticallya high-profile set of cases had led TJP to begin work in a given state, for example, or a funder had urged the organization to tackle a new issue. Such situations continued to present themselves. But both Terzano and Joyce McGee, TJPs executive director, were increasingly concerned that the organization was in danger of spreading itself too thin. In addition, Terzano and McGee felt that public perception about the death penalty was changing. While Americans still largely supported it as a concept, faith in some of its specific applications was eroding. This shift was due in part to the increased national discourse about the fairness and accuracy with which the death penalty was used. At the same time, partner organizations were focusing more narrowly on death-penalty-only issues such as the legality of lethal injection, and fewer funders were open to supporting broader criminal justice reform. (In fact, The Pew Charitable Trusts four-year commitment to funding TJPs criminal justice reform work was coming to an end in 2007. Pews early investment in TJP had been critical to many of the organizations successes.) Such a rapidly-changing environment meant that managing the organization would only become more challenging.

Key Questions
To address these concerns, TJP, with the financial support of The Atlantic Philanthropies, began a strategic-planning engagement with the Bridgespan Group. McGee and Terzano were joined by five Bridgespan consultants in a highly interactive four-month planning process beginning in November 2006. The primary questions the team worked to answer were: What were the organizational strengths that had made TJP successful in its work to date? Given those strengths and their knowledge of how social change occurs in the criminal justice arena, what specific goals does TJP want to hold itself accountable for in criminal justice reform, over what time period? What activities should TJP focus on in order to move furthest toward its goals? What should the balance of state work, federal work, and communications and education activities be to achieve the desired outcomes? Given the ever-changing nature of advocacy work, how can TJP balance the desire to hold itself accountable for definite goals, with the need to ensure that the organization has the necessary flexibility to respond quickly and appropriately to changing circumstances?

Understanding TJPs Strengths

In order to develop a viable strategy, the team felt, they first needed to be able to articulate the organizations strengths. TJP had been achieving success, but its leaders had never stepped back, unbundled their efforts, and thought about why the organizations work was effective. What specific approaches, or processes, could the team identify as significant factors in the organizations achievements to date? They began by reviewing TJPs past successes, including those from Terzanos experiences at VVAF. One of TJPs most important strengths, they realized, was its ability to find and articulate the right starting point for its work. As Terzano explained, It is critical to the success of any campaign to analyze and develop the right point of entry, and to articulate a careful rationale as to why change is needed. You have to start with a message that is going to resonate with policy makers and the public to ensure that real change is possible. For example, in 1999, before they had entered into any work to reform the criminal justice system, Terzano and his staff had studied the people and players involved in the issue, existing policies and suggested reforms, the relevant political and social processes that might lead to change, and the existing political landscape. They had also conducted polling to develop a deep understanding of how the public perceived the issues and what messages and approaches might resonate most. For what we wanted to achieve in criminal justice reform, it was clear how we needed to proceed, Terzano recalled. The morality of the death penalty wasnt a viable entry point. Issues of innocence, fairness, and justice were. With this key organizational strength articulated, the team began to map its activities in the three main pathways to reform: state-level work, federal-level work, and broaderbased communications and education efforts. For its state and federal initiatives, TJP worked primarily through what it refers to as the campaign model. Each campaign could employ a combination of the major advocacy tacticslegislation, litigation, communications, research, and coalition-buildingto achieve a very specific goal. The organizations Kids Are Different campaign, for

example, began with research on adolescent brain development and international standards for adolescent criminal sentences. TJP then packaged those findings into materialsbrochures, press releases, and talking point papersthat could be used by a coalition of groups such as the American Bar Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Child Welfare League of America. The organization also distributed selected materials to the mainstream media to raise public awareness of the differences of adolescent minds, and to key individuals who might be able to influence Supreme Court clerks and justices. The team believed that the campaign had been successful because of this coordinated, multi-pronged approach. The team also articulated the often-complex relationship among the three pathways. Each, it seemed, influenced and drew on the others. Legislative reform at the federal level could lead to legislative reform at the state level and vice-versa. Broader-based communications and educational activities could create the climate for reform at both the state and federal levels. The team used TJPs work with the Innocence Protection Act to illustrate and prove these relationships. Beginning in the 1990s, a few states passed laws giving convicted inmates access to evidence for DNA testing that might not have been available at the time of trial. Thanks to these laws, some prisoners were cleared of the crimes for which they had been convicted, resulting in a number of high-profile exonerations. Capitalizing on the publicity, TJP put together a campaign to craft and support passage of the federal Innocence Protection Act, which directed all states to allow access to DNA testing. Statelevel reform, supported by communication and education, led to federal-level reform. Reform then traveled back out to the state level, as the passage of the IPA led many states to enact post-conviction DNA testing laws. In sum, the right pathway (or combination thereof) depended on the specific opportunities available at the time. Team members also examined TJPs state-level success factors in more depth, reflecting on its work in Illinois, Texas, and Tennessee. At a very high level, the work looked the same across all three states. The organization had used its ability to identify and publicize a compelling entry point to build interest and momentum around an issue. It had then bolstered existing local advocacy efforts, created local groups if none existed, and provided training needed to carry out future change. With that infrastructure in place, TJP had then pulled back into a smaller, more supportive role.

But underneath those similarities were key differences. In Texas, where other established advocacy organizations were already focusing on capital punishment, TJPs efforts had centered on building and strengthening a coalition. By contrast, in Tennessee, where there had been no advocacy infrastructure, the organization needed to invest significantly more effort and time, given that theyd been starting essentially from scratch. Succeeding in a given state, thus, required a tailored effort that took into account other organizations activities and capabilities, as well as the states political environment.

Homing in on Goals
Armed with an understanding of the organizations strengths and a more comprehensive view of the various paths to reform, the team began to articulate TJPs goals. Which changes would TJP hold itself accountable for over the next 10 years? At first, answering this question seemed like a daunting task. Without knowing exactly what windows of opportunity would be open in the near future, how could TJP know what it would be able to achieve? To help them get more specific, team members decided to break the question into three parts and look at each pathway separately.

THE STATE PATH

At a very high level, the team realized that the National Agenda represented a viable set of goals; the eight reforms were specific enough to allow TJP to measure progress against them. Putting all of them in place in each state, however, could easily comprise the organizations life work. Rather, the team needed to specify how much progress TJP would hold itself accountable for achieving: Was TJP trying to get reforms enacted in every state, or only a few? Would a state have to put in place all eight reforms for TJP to consider it a success? If not, were some reforms more critical than others? And over what time period did TJP want to observe progress?

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How many states, and which ones?

Given the organizations available resources, TJPs leaders decided to focus the organizations efforts on the four states in which it was currently active, and to add a limited number of states in future years. Thats not to say TJP did not endeavor to advance criminal justice system reform beyond its target states, however. The vision was that its state reform successes could serve as models for other states in which TJP was not working actively. In choosing new states, they felt strongly that decisions would need to be made in real timethat they could not create a definitive list of which states to target when. They knew all too well how unpredictable the windows of opportunity were. A state that appeared unattractive one year might look dramatically different the next after a key election or a high-profile criminal trial. They also decided, however, to identify several criteria by which new states could be evaluated, when the time was right. First and foremost, the opportunity in a given state needed to align with the National Agenda reforms. Provided it was aligned, TJP would consider three additional factors: whether TJP had or could acquire the resources to enable it to work effectively in that state; whether rectifying the presenting issue was likely to lead to broader systemic changes; and, finally, whether the state was ready in terms of having available partners, committed supporters, and a politically viable environment.

How many reforms, and which ones?

Based on TJPs past experience, TJPs leaders felt that with a robust infrastructure and two or more of the eight National Agenda items in place, a state would then be able to continue implementing further reforms without a substantive TJP presence. The order in which the reforms were implemented didnt seem to matter. In fact, the opportunity to push forward different reforms in one state versus another was one of the places where flexibility was critically important.

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Over what period of time?

Team members determined that TJPs involvement in a state would typically last between four and seven years, depending on the states reform-readiness. This estimate informed a set of annual targets for what TJP could accomplish at the state-level. The annual targets aggregated up to a 10-year goal of achieving two or more of the eight National Agenda reforms in TJPs four current states plus seven to 12 additional states. Over the same time period TJP would create a robust state-level infrastructure to utilize the campaign model to carry out further reforms.

THE FEDERAL PATH

The federal criminal justice system accounts for less than 5 percent of all criminal convictions. While TJPs leaders felt reforming it was important, there were simply more opportunities at the state level. As a result, they decided to gear TJPs federal-level work only towards completing the work-in-progress to get the Innocence Protection Act fully funded. Mindful that TJP needed to maintain the flexibility to respond quickly if the environment changed, however, they also decided to monitor the federal criminal justice system landscape, to ensure that if a specific threat or opportunity arose, the organization could consider timely action.

COMMUNICATIONS AND EDUCATION

While TJPs communications and education work was clearly critical to the organizations success, team members also realized that its real value was in supporting the previouslydescribed state and federal goals. Accordingly, they decided that a specific goal would not be needed for this area. They did, however, explore whether the organizations communications and education work would need to change in any way to better advance the state and federal initiatives. Two insights emerged. First, in order for TJPs reform work in a small number of states to lead to other states adopting similar reforms, communications and education efforts would need to highlight the reform successes. Other states would then see the reforms and independently adopt them. While the organizations communications activities

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sometimes included this type of work, TJP would need to make these efforts more consciously and proactively going forward. Second, in order to help each target state prepare for the time when TJP would exit, the team determined that the organization would need to build the capacity of local organizations and individuals to do their own communications and education work.

MAINTAINING FLEXIBILITY
Although team members acknowledged that these goals incorporated important elements of flexibility, they felt strongly that TJPs strategy should explicitly recognize the fact that the organization could shift its activities and still be on strategy. Non-target states could suddenly become ripe for reform; new federal legislation could be introduced; or a court ruling could lead to rapid changes at either the state or federal levels. To ensure that the organization would be open toand prepared forthese potential shifts in focus, the team articulated an additional goal: to accommodate and respond to changes in the environment, on an ongoing basis. Team members acknowledged that this goal sounded vague. But making it a distinct part of the organizations strategy had several important implications. It meant that TJP would have to dedicate resources to monitor the environment, at the federal level and for all states. It meant that TJP would need to create a process to filter opportunities as they came along, to determine when action was needed. And it meant that TJP would need to acknowledge that if a response were warranted, the organization would reallocate resources as necessary to take action.

Implementation and Progress

With a complete plan in hand, TJPs leaders have shifted their sights to implementation. Making the strategy actionable has had implications for almost every aspect of the organizations work, beginning with Terzanos role. The team had agreed that TJP needed systematically to monitor developments in the criminal justice reform arena at the federal and state levels. TJP also needed to be purposeful about staying in touch with key stakeholders and potential partners, in order to ensure that the organization would

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learn, early on, about key opportunities. Last but not least, TJP had to pay more attention to development and its long-term financial sustainability. Terzano has taken on those responsibilities and begun to dedicate significant time to them. Nine months later, he reports that the shift from being in the thick of day-to-day activities to working on longerterm issues hasnt always been easy, but he has begun to make progress. As he put it, Ive been so involved in the day-to-day activities at TJP for so long that its sometimes hard to leave that work and focus on the organizations bigger picture, but I know we cant all be involved in everything. I need to take a more external perspective, and Im working to do that. TJP has also made some important shifts in its state-specific activities. Since the strategic plan called for TJPs work at the state level to focus on achieving a subset of National Agenda reforms and building a robust state infrastructure, TJP staff now have a clearer vision of success and thus know when its time to exit a state. At the end of the teams strategic-planning process, for example, TJP had not yet officially exited any states, though its work in Illinois and Georgia was largely complete according to the new state-level objectives. TJP has now officially transitioned its work in these two states over to local organizations, and has moved into a consultative and monitoring role. The team has also articulated plans for expected transitions in other states in which TJP has a presence. The staff has also begun a more conscious effort to monitor developments in a group of potential target states, to ensure that TJP will be ready to begin work in a newly targeted state within 12 to 18 months. They have developed a list that includes states where the death penalty is in active use, and where some base level of discussion about criminal justice reform issues has already started. These criteria indicate that a given environment will more likely be receptive to the messages and focus that TJP specializes in delivering. This scouting work has also given TJP a clearer picture of advocacy groups and coalitions already working in each potential state. As a result, the organization is better able to estimate the time and resources it will likely need to invest to make substantive progress. Another important change at the state level has been to tailor TJPs work even more consciously to meet that states particular needs. Now, with a screening process for new states that yields a more thorough understanding of each states reform readiness, the

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organization outlines different ways of workingincluding different staffing structures, different consulting needs, and different types of support from national stafftailored to complement the resources already present in each state. At the federal level, implementing the strategic plan has meant refocusing several key staff positions. With a more complete and explicit understanding of the activities that are needed to effect change, TJP has begun to bring on board staff with deep knowledge of many of the tactics used in campaigns (enacting legislative change, litigating, building coalitions, communicating and performing research)even if they do not have a great depth of knowledge about death penalty or criminal justice reform issues. We realized that deep content expertiseyears of work on death penalty or reform issueswas less important to our work than the ability to manage campaigns and use the tools well, said McGee. Passion for criminal justice reform is important, but you dont have to have worked on this specific issue in the past to be effective. While there is a learning curve in terms of content, the tools are transferable from issue to issue. Some of our best new hires came from different issue campaigns, but they deeply understand the tools. TJPs goal at the federal level is to obtain full funding of the Innocence Protection Act. While TJP did not have any other major federal-level work underway at the conclusion of the planning process, it was involved in strategy sessions and discussions with partner organizations about possible actions to undertake. With its new focus, TJPs leaders have been able to clarify their role in such discussions, ensuring that they are involved enough to be able to effectively monitor the landscape and take advantage of clear opportunities, but making no new commitments of organizational resources to campaigns that are not central to their focus. The communications function at TJP has been extremely active and important since the organizations inception, but the new strategys guardrails implied that communications needed to be specifically focused on supporting work at the state and federal level. By hiring a new communications coordinator with advanced skills, wrapping up some commitments to partners on non-core issues, and consciously using a good proportion of the director of communications time to coach and mentor state-level staff, TJP refocused its communications efforts. With regard to the organizations explicit commitment to flexibility, TJP has identified certain resources (both dollars and slices of individuals time) that can be called upon as

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needed. The organization has also included placeholders in its final strategic plan and budget, which represent unknown but anticipated activities. In the next five years, for example, TJP anticipates that it will need to run another federal-level campaign, though the exact nature of that campaign is unknown. The strategic plan includes dollars and resources, starting in 2009, for that federal campaign. If the campaign needs to occur in 2008 or 2010, or if it requires more or fewer resources than anticipated, adjustments can be made. But such adjustments will be easier than carving out something that hadnt been anticipated at all. The strategic-planning process also has generated multiple over-arching benefits for TJP. For one, it has helped TJP staff better understand the effect of their work. There are almost always dozens, if not hundreds, of groups working on the same or a similar issue. When success is achieved, its very difficult to know how muchor how littleone organizations work has contributed. Most advocacy organizations use surrogate measures, like the number of calls theyve made or letters theyve sent to members of Congress, or the number of articles theyve been cited in. But those metrics do a poor job of tracking movement towards the true goal. With its strategy now in hand, TJP can meaningfully measure the progress its making towards its clear and specific impact objectives. Above all, the strategy and the process of developing it have resulted in a roadmap that TJP can use to make choices about future activities, not only in the realm of criminal justice reform, but also with regard to new social justice issues. The planning process has also given TJPs leaders a powerful way to talk with potential funders about the organizations work more broadly, and to make a compelling case for funding that will support the overall organization and not simply specific issues or activities. The Justice Project has achieved great success using a social justice change model developed over the years by John [Terzano] and VVAF, said McGee. But after going through this strategic-planning process, not only have we articulated that model, we have improved upon it. We are more focused and know where to engage and, perhaps more importantly, where not to. Were impressed with how much having a plan has had an impact on all aspects of our organization.

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Since completing the plan, TJP has received significant funding for core support and its state work from The Atlantic Philanthropies. Other funders, including foundations and individual donors, have also expressed interest in supporting TJPs work.

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