Hyde Park Community United Methodist Church

We are excited to share with you that Hyde Park Community UMC is embarking on a strategic planning process! This process will allow us to check in with our church and community, understand how we can continue to improve our ministries, and to create strategies to better achieve our mission: to share the love of Jesus to transform lives, Cincinnati, and the world.

Healthy organizations engage in this type of process every 5-10 years in order to function at their highest level. As our last strategic planning process began 9 years ago, as we are living into a post-pandemic world and we have new pastoral leadership, now is an ideal time to engage in this process.

Our process involves four phases:

Stage one involves collecting data from our members, constituents, neighbors, and community partners. This will be done through surveys and individual interviews with a representative focus group during the month of February.

Stage two involves working through the data and formulating a plan. Our consultants will guide a group of 54 stakeholders who have agreed to be a part of our Strategic Planning Team in this work in March and April.

Stage three will involve offering the whole of the congregation opportunity to review and give feedback for the plan. Once it is finished and reviewed, the congregation will be invited to approve it.

Stage four will be the implementation of the plan of action.

Our Consultants:

This past fall pastors Suzanne and Todd led the Servant Leadership Board to send out a Request for Proposal to several firms who offer Strategic Planning for churches. The responses were vetted by the SLB and two consulting groups were chosen. The Bank of America consultants come to us at no charge. Strategic planning and board training is included as part of their fee structure for managing our endowment. The Measurement Resources Corporation is doing the demographic work for our information collection.

Eric Weinheimer is a Senior Vice President and Philanthropic Strategist for the National Consulting and Advisory Practice at Bank of America Private Bank, based in Chicago, IL.

In his role, Eric delivers customized consulting and advisory services to nonprofit clients’ boards of directors and senior leaders. His areas of expertise include strategic planning, board governance, revenue diversification, and social enterprise.