As previously announced on the AVI website, Auditory Verbal International, Inc.� (AVI), the worldwide association promoting the Auditory-Verbal approach as the first choice for listening and speaking for children and adults with hearing impairment, has embarked on an extensive strategic planning process in partnership with internationally recognized strategic planner Gary J. Stern, President of Stern Consulting International, specializing in nonprofit strategy, marketing and performance. The strategic planning process is intended to set the course of the future for the association, focusing particularly on the next five years, but contemplating opportunities and challenges that are likely to stretch through the first half of the twenty-first century as well.
To inform its strategic plan, AVI is developing an “environmental scan” designed to identify the key facts and trends likely to affect the Auditory-Verbal approach and the association in its future work. Members of the AVI Board and association committees were involved in the strategic planning research as well as an intensive two-day retreat in February 2004, during which the draft outline for the association’s plan was developed. A final plan is expected to be approved in late spring with member feedback.
AVI�s strategic planning process will be led by a Strategic Planning Steering Group, chaired by AVI�s incoming President and Chairman of the Board, Steven R. Rech, J.D., and includes AVI Board members Chellie Lisenby, Judith Marlowe, Ph.D., FAA, as well as Donald Goldberg, Ph.D., Certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist�, and AVI Executive Director & CEO Sara Blair Lake.
AVI’s planning consultant, Gary J. Stern, is an internationally recognized expert in the field and is the author of Marketing Workbook for Nonprofit Organizations Volume I: Develop the Plan (2d edition, 2001), adapted as the official marketing workbook of United Way of America, and Marketing Workbook for Nonprofit Organizations Volume II: Mobilize People for Marketing Success. Mr. Stern has worked in partnership with the internationally renowned Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management (now Leader to Leader Institute). In this capacity, Mr. Stern edited the revised edition of the Drucker Foundation Self-Assessment Tool, authored the Tool Process Guide, and led the Drucker Foundation Training Team. His clients include the American Lung Association, American Academy of Neurology Education and Research Foundation, United Way Canada�Centraide Canada, The Bureau for the Advancement of Medicine in China, and a wide variety of other nonprofits and associations, across the fields of health and human services, international relations, education, nonprofit capacity building, arts and entertainment, religious organizations, environment, fundraising and volunteerism.
For more information contact the AVI office at (703) 739-1049 or via e-mail at [email protected]. 