The Impact of Strategic Planning on Egyptian Nonprofit Organizations’ Performance: An Assessment Using the Balanced Scorecard Approach

Abstract:

The relationship between strategic planning and organizational performance has been rarely examined in the public and nonprofit sector (Stone and Brush, 1996; Stone, Bigelow, and Crittenden, 1999). Also, most of the research has been confined to examining the nonprofit sector in the western society and very little has been conducted in nonprofits in developing countries like Egypt. The current study attempts to build upon the recommendations provided by Robinson (1992) and empirically examine the effect of strategic planning on nonprofit organization’s performance effectiveness in Egypt. An assessment of performance effectiveness will be made using the multiple perspectives of performance effectiveness measurement offered by the balanced scorecard. The balanced scorecard is advocated as a tool to promote governance application in managing the nonprofit sector in Egypt which is expected to intensively flourish after the January 25th revolution. A retrospective cross sectional research design will be applied to compare the performance of strategically planning nonprofits versus this of non strategic planners. The balanced scorecard performance effectiveness scale will be used for data collection as the survey instrument. A purposive convenience sample of Egyptian nonprofit organizations will be selected for participation in the study.  Proposed research results will build on prior research, conducted in other contexts, which concludes a positive impact of strategic planning protocols on nonprofit organization’s performance as measured by the balanced scorecard. These results are expected to have important theoretical as well as practical specifically policy implications to the field of nonprofit management.