Durham SU is developing an organisation strategy to help us choose and commit to some areas of long-term work from now until 2027. 

Spending months doing a big survey, and then writing and launching a fancy, detailed plan for the next five years is the way we used to do strategy. It’s the way most charities used to do strategy. It wasn’t working well for anyone. Plans lost touch with students quickly and we left them on the shelf. Now, we're trying to do something more dynamic, regular and succinct - leaving plenty of space for adaption, student leadership and collective intelligence.

Below we're sharing our draft 'Strategy on a Page'. In it are the themes of both impact and opportunity that emerged when we listened to and researched students' experiences and priorities, and when we raised our eyes to see what's on the horizon. 

It's a draft because how we describe, measure and take action on this work is still being explored, articulated and informed by our student community. You'll notice our measures in our 'Big Issues' goal are still under construction - that's because we know this is the right work, but we don't have enough data yet to know where we should aim. That will be part of our work over the next year. But we don't think the fact we're still having conversations about the detail is a reason not to share the outline. Soon we'll share more of that detail and a more polished and more formal document and webpages with you. At that point you'll see:

• Projects for the next 18 months that progress these goals (because we think that's a reasonable timeframe to make tangible plans)
• Indicators and measures to make ourselves accountable for our progress and help us learn as we go (but which don't mean we have to spend all our time measuring and none doing)
• Context and insight for these plans and measures
• An invitation to engage with, shape and challenge these plans in different ways and spaces

We want thoughts and feedback on what we've got so far from any interested students. You can pop them in the comment box, or send an email georgina.lambert@durham.ac.uk to have a chat.