National Vision to Local Action at CAGP
How the Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP) engaged chapter leaders from across the country in a participatory process to translate a bold national strategy into meaningful, locally grounded action, while navigating diverse realities, power dynamics, and capacity constraints.
The Client
The Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP) is a national nonprofit professional association in Canada dedicated to advancing strategic charitable gift planning.
The Challenge
While the vision was compelling, the challenge was clear:
- Chapters across Canada operate in vastly different contexts, from large, well-resourced urban centres to smaller, volunteer-led regions spread across wide geographies.
- Chapter leaders were navigating real pressures: volunteer burnout, succession planning, declining engagement, uneven access to resources, and uncertainty about how far their role extended beyond local programming.
- There was a need to create alignment without erasing local autonomy, and to surface honest concerns without positioning chapters as “out of step” with national direction.
- Power dynamics were present between national leadership, chapter executives, and volunteers particularly around expectations, accountability, and EDIB commitments.
CAGP needed a way to move beyond presentation and compliance toward shared ownership, clarity, and action.
Our Approach
1. Deep Listening Across the Network
We began with confidential pre-session surveys and one-on-one discovery conversations with chapter leaders from different regions and chapter profiles. This surfaced:
- What chapters were proud of and where they felt stuck
- Where the national strategy resonated and where it felt abstract or challenging
- Unspoken tensions around equity, leadership succession, and volunteer capacity
This listening phase ensured the session agenda reflected real chapter realities, not assumptions from the centre.
2. Thoughtful Preparation with National Leadership
In advance of the gathering, we worked closely with CAGP’s senior leadership to:
- Clarify intentions for the session
- Name sensitivities and power dynamics explicitly
- Align on what success would look like beyond “a good conversation”
This preparation ensured national leaders arrived ready to listen, not defend, and to engage as partners in sense-making.
3. A Participatory, Values-Anchored Session Design
The in-person session was intentionally structured to balance reflection, peer learning, and action:
- Chapters explored the national strategy through guided questions that invited both excitement and critique
- Peer-to-peer dialogue surfaced shared challenges around engagement, equity, and sustainability
- A practical EDIB-in-practice primer helped translate high-level values into locally realistic actions
- Chapters identified short-term “easy wins” and longer-term stretch goals aligned with their capacity and context
Rather than prescribing solutions, the process emphasized choice, realism, and momentum.
The Impact
The session marked a meaningful shift in how CAGP’s strategy is lived across the network.
- Increased clarity and alignment: Chapter leaders left with a shared understanding of the national direction and greater confidence in how their local efforts contribute to it.
- Stronger trust between national and chapters: Open conversations reduced ambiguity and helped normalize differences in capacity, geography, and pace.
- Concrete, locally owned commitments: Each chapter identified tangible actions they could realistically advance, avoiding the common pitfall of over-commitment.
- A replicable framework for implementation: The process produced practical tools (including monitoring templates and shared language) that support ongoing follow-up and learning.
- Renewed sense of leadership and belonging: Leaders reported feeling seen, heard, and supported, rather than managed, within the national network.
Why This Matters
For federated or chapter-based organizations, strategy often fails not because the vision is wrong but because people are asked to implement it without space to make meaning together.
This engagement demonstrated how a content-light, relationship-heavy facilitation approach can help organizations:
- Navigate power dynamics with integrity
- Hold complexity without rushing to false consensus
- Translate values into action without sacrificing local nuance
For leaders and facilitators working in national, volunteer-driven, or highly distributed systems, CAGP’s experience offers a powerful example of what’s possible when strategy is treated as a collective practice, not a document.
To say we had a great experience working with Sayid Consulting would be an
understatement. We engaged Manal and her team to lead an important and complex
discussion with our CAGP Chapter leaders from across the country. With such a diverse
group—often facing very different realities—we knew the conversation would be
challenging.
Manal dove in fully to understand the group, our context, and our hoped-for outcomes.
She worked closely with us to co-create an agenda and approach that was thoughtful,
purposeful, and clearly oriented toward results. Her team paid close attention to every
detail that would contribute to a positive and engaging experience for participants, but it
was Manal’s facilitation skill that truly stood out.
Manal brings a quiet but commanding presence that creates a safe space for
participants to share their views. She listens deeply, leading with kindness and empathy,
while also asking the right questions to drill deeper, surface clarity, and help find
common ground. I would not hesitate to recommend Sayid Consulting to organizations
navigating complex conversations, and I very much look forward to our next opportunity
to work with Manal and her team in pursuit of our mission.
