Client Story

The Crawfordsville Masonic Temple Foundation (Foundation) was formed with a gift from the Masonic Lodge of their building. The Foundation is working to refurbish and renovate the building, which includes The Masonic Cornerstone Event Center. The building dates back to 1901 and has been a cornerstone in the community. The Foundation was incorporated in May of 2014 to rehabilitate and preserve the Masonic Temple and has expanded its use in the community as an events center.

The board of directors is a working board, and they hired Transform Consulting Group (TCG) to create a new strategic planning process that helps cast a vision and roadmap for a sustainable future for the Foundation.

Using our 4-step strategic planning approach, we accomplished the following: 

COLLABORATE – We brought together key board members to create a list of stakeholders who should “weigh in” on the plan. This included board members, volunteers, community members, funders, and other community partners. We outlined a plan for gathering the feedback using surveys and key informant interviews.

ASSESS – We conducted an organizational review of the Foundation by analyzing financial and historical data. We completed market research to understand the opportunity and need for a community event center. We identified 17 other indoor community event centers in the surrounding region to compare their capacity, amenities, cost, and location. We researched peer organizations of other Masonic Temples that had converted their historical facility into a community event center.  We solicited feedback from key individuals and organizations in the community. We then summarized everything into a report to share in advance of the planning retreat.

FACILITATE – We facilitated a full-day strategic planning retreat with the Foundation team. We incorporated small and large group activities to review the data and information gathered, discussed key takeaways and findings, and reached a consensus on the top goals and strategies. We also spent some time building unity and alignment with the board. The first part of the retreat focused on reaching agreement on the goals. The second part focused on determining the strategies to get there.

CREATE – We created a strategic plan report, communication plan, implementation and tracking template, and one-page overview to help share the plan publicly and keep the Foundation on track. We also met with the full board to discuss implementation strategies and the next steps to operationalize their strategic plan.