From Diagnostic to Strategy: Shaping NASBA’s Future Together
On December 15, 2025, NASBA launched its strategic planning process with a half-day retreat that brought together the two groups that will help guide it. These groups include a 10-person volunteer task force representing state board members and executive directors from NASBA’s eight regions, along with three current members of the Board of Directors, and a 13-person staff task force composed of new and longtime NASBA leaders. To ensure candor, encourage innovative thinking, and avoid groupthink, a dual-track process has been established. Each group will separately explore the seven key areas or “rooms” of the NASBA “house” identified by NASBA’s yearlong Diagnostic study: brand, meetings, communications and engagement, the internal landscape at the association, governance, deregulation, and the alignments the Diagnostic also revealed among stakeholders.
Each task force member—after revisiting the rich feedback provided by a remarkable 90 percent of NASBA’s membership during the 2025 Diagnostic—will propose near-and far-thinking recommendations that address the conclusions in each room. To balance the thoughtfulness with momentum, the task forces will address one room per month. The recommended initiatives will then be reconciled and prioritized by the two groups, harnessing the strengths of the individual and the collective, and ensuring the plan is integrated and cohesive.
Rather than creating a plan that merely outlines aspirations, NASBA will map out how and when each initiative will move forward. To maintain the spirit of the Diagnostic, members will be invited to share their perspectives at every stage, helping to shape and strengthen what NASBA is calling a “responsible reinvention.”
“The Diagnostic showed us what taking risks and doing things differently can achieve. We don’t want that momentum to stop with this project. Too often in processes like these, the outcome falls short when the hard work isn’t done. That’s why I’m encouraged by how strategically this process has been designed. We’re staying grounded in member feedback, while also giving ourselves the time and structure to think creatively—first as individuals with diverse expertise, then boldly as representative groups, before bringing those perspectives together in a practical way that truly transforms aspirations into action,” said NASBA President and CEO Daniel Dustin.
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