The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Strategic Planning Presentation to LCCR Executive Committee

By Wade Henderson

September 23, 2009

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was created and built by strategic thinkers and visionary activists.  As we approach our 60th anniversary next year, we are honoring that legacy by making sure that LCCR and LCCREF are positioned and prepared to give strong, sustained leadership to the broader civil rights movement.

I am proud of the thoughtful, systematic strategic planning process that has brought us to this point.  It has drawn on the diverse strengths of our board members, coalition members, and allies.   And it has given us clear direction for the Leadership Conference of the 21st Century.

Let me start with a quick review of how we got here.

The first phase of our strategic planning began in 2001. The 2001 process took us from 12 employees to 35 employees. In 2007, we embarked on the second phase. Through this process, we:

• Assessed the needs of our coalition members and the national civil rights coalition as a whole.
• Grappled with questions about organizational structure, effective management, and positioning our organizations and our brand.
• Put plans in motion for LCCR and LCCREF to develop the capacities to carry out their respective missions.

In 2008, we embarked upon Phase III of our strategic planning process, in which we are asking: What do we want to accomplish in the next 10 years and how do we make it happen?

This phase happened to coincide with a series of extraordinary and transformative events:

• The election of our first African American president.
• The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression
• The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
• And efforts by the new administration to take on some the most significant challenges of our time, including health care reform, energy policy, immigration reform, and the need to restore credibility to the enforcement of our nation's civil rights laws.

Transition Project

Toward that end, the Leadership Conference undertook an extensive and comprehensive transition project led by LCCR Vice Chair Karen Narasaki of the Asian American Justice Center.

• The transition project took full advantage of the experience and expertise of LCCR members, relying on a set of task forces that completed an enormous undertaking in a very concentrated time frame.
• We distilled our priorities for the civil rights movement into a succinct but inclusive three-page document that identified the civil rights community's most important priorities and our opportunities to advance them. From this, we produced an ambitions set of recommendations for proactive and remedial legislation, executive orders, and regulatory changes.
• As a result, we a accomplished three of our major goals during the first 100 days of the Administration, passing:
• The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,
• Reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program
• And an economic recovery package that has assisted low income and disadvantaged people.

These are enormous achievements that are a direct result of our strategic planning and will be followed by an internal assessment to determine what additional work is needed and what new priorities we should take on

Planning for the Future of Civil Rights and Human Rights in the 21st Century

In January of this year as part of our strategic planning, LCCR and LCCR/EF, we invited 75 people to Tulane University in New Orleans to engage in a conversation about the future of civil and human rights.

This extraordinary "meeting of the minds" included key players within the LCCR family and distinguished individuals from across our movement. As a result of this rich and fruitful discussion – and in conjunction with our Task Force Co-Chairs – we developed a list of six priority areas of focus for LCCR:

1.  Providing a high quality public education to all

2.  Reducing poverty and ensuring Economic Justice

3.  Elevating our efforts to reform our broken criminal justice system

4.  Bringing a stronger human rights perspective to our work

5.  Creating a new vision through stronger communications and building our field capacity

6.  Implementing internal management reforms to become more effective

Where we are now -- a clear path forward

As indicated by our strategic planning, we have sought to elevate the level of our Field and Communication operations to the level of our Policy work.

LCCR's Field operations are key to increasing our effectiveness in Washington. Our Field Department is being asked to play a significant coordinating role in our policy agenda, and the campaigns we've undertaken so far have been enormously successful in building our capacity to move issues important to our community.

As examples:

• We co-chaired with the Alliance for Justice the successful campaign to confirm Judge Sonya Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our Field Department was instrumental in our ability to energize our community in support of Justice Sotomayor's confirmation.
• Our recently concluded Digital TV Transition Project proved to be a highly successful model for organizing and working more closely with on-the-ground partners and coalitions
• Our current Census 2010 project is building on that model, providing local organizations with strategy, materials, training, and operational support. Counting the hard-to-count populations within our communities will enable them to receive the political representation and the federal and private benefits that flow from the census and are critical to achieving opportunity and equality.

Likewise, building capacity in our Communications Department is integral to our success in promoting our civil rights and human rights agenda. In just the last few weeks, our Communications staff has enabled LCCR:

• To be quoted in a New York Times editorial on restoring the integrity and effectiveness of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division
• To place op-eds in influential publications such as Politico
• To produce high-quality video content that grabs the attention of Internet users and helps to bring our message and our priorities to new audiences
• To produce reports in-house on important topics such as the census in the Gulf Coast and restoring workers' right to organize, with a professional look and finish at a significant cost savings.

Planning for Growth and Sustainability

My goal, working with other LCCR leaders, is to make sure that LCCR is strong now and in the future.

Based on our strategic planning process, LCCR and the LCCR Education Fund are undertaking a "brand refresh" designed to complement the strategic planning process, help re-engage our various audiences, and introduce our organizations to new audiences that have not been reached before.

To guide us, we've retained a top market research firm and a visionary brand-identity firm to help us analyze our current brand and to conceive a new branding strategy to carry us forward.

I could not be more excited about the strategic planning process and where it has led us.

During the past 60 years, LCCR has changed America.  And now, in a rapidly changing America, LCCR is taking action and making the strategic investments needed to provide strong, stable, sustained leadership to the community of organizations and activists who are committed to an America that lives up to its civil rights promises and human rights principles.