On November 16, 2020, the WACD Board of Directors voted to adopt a new strategic plan.

This plan has been under development throughout calendar year 2020. WACD board members, WACD staff, and a working group of conservation district representatives worked together to craft the new plan. The resulting plan provides a strong framework for building detailed annual work plans.

The plan is built in two sections. Section 1 covers “evergreen” elements that should rarely need to be changed: mission, vision, and principles. These three elements are fundamental values that act as guideposts as we perform our work.

Section 2 covers the more changeable elements of goals, approaches (or actions without details), and a scorecard. They are intended to evolve as conditions change. These elements are transitional steps between the values/principles in Section 1 and annual work plans that provide more detailed descriptions of action steps and measures.

Section 1: Mission, Vision, Principles

MISSION

Put simply, our mission is why we are here, describing in the briefest terms the unique value that WACD provides:

WACD serves as the collective voice of conservation districts to help them achieve their purposes.

VISION

The vision statement succinctly describes our ultimate desired destination:

WACD aspires to fully support conservation districts in their implementation of locally developed conservation programs.

PRINCIPLES

Principles are descriptions of our most fundamental values. Our values frame and support specific goals and strategic approaches. Principles/values should be evergreen: not changing from year to year. They form the firmament upon which to build annual work plans and the signposts to guide our decisions along the way.

Ten guiding principles are adopted:

1. We exist to advocate for, and support, member conservation districts.
2. We serve people with dignity and respect, acting with integrity and operating with transparency and accountability to all.
3. We continually seek to become more capable in serving members, including maintaining financial strength, enhancing board capacity, and improving staff capacity.
4. We value and recognize our people for excellence in performance, including teamwork, innovation, timely completion of tasks, and support of others.
5. Our responses to conservation issues are founded on proven methodologies and science.
6. We form and support strategic partnerships to maximize our effectiveness and to reduce duplication of effort.
7. We seek to conserve natural resources in the way we operate our organization.
8. We believe in, and uphold, the practice of locally-led, voluntary, incentive-based conservation.
9. Private lands – and those who steward them – provide unique and valuable conservation of renewable natural resources to be used today and by future generations.
10. Because natural resources cross jurisdictional boundaries and ownerships, all lands – and the people and entities that manage them – are important in conserving renewable natural resources.

Section 2: goals, approaches, scorecard