Since its inception, VANI has consistently undergone a strategic planning process every two to three years to envision the future and plan accordingly. These processes were aimed at making VANI relevant to the rapidly changing social, political and economic scenario.

All these years we have done the strategic planning process with our own internal mechanisms and the working committee members used to lead the exercise. This time, however, the task was entrusted to an external agency as it was "perceived that internal exercises in revamping had failed to facilitate a paradigm shift in VANI's functioning and to bring about necessary and desirable changes." It was felt that probably a prospective looking exercise rather than an exercise in evaluation being carried out by an external agency would prove to be more fruitful.

The consultants conducted extensive interviews with various stakeholders and submitted a detailed plan for 2004-2008. The members of VANI are the internal stakeholders, while external stakeholders include donors, government, media, academia, political parties, trade unions, etc.

The strategic plan developed for VANI rests on a framework called the 'Five S' model. The model begins with defining the scope within which the organisation will operate on and what it will and will not do. Having defined the scope the second step is to evolve strategies that can deal with internal and external challenges. The plan recommends VANI to look at the challenges related to civil society's space in India. This necessitates a suitable structure to achieve the goals and this includes the election of a governing body, selection of professional staff, and efficient coordination of both. The plan identifies staff recruitment and retention as a very important function to produce quality services and outputs. Ascertaining the services that VANI could provide its members is the fifth step and this informs the scope to determine new limits.

VANI will work on the following four areas of intervention or goals in the next four years:

Influencing national government policies and laws that regulate or restrict the role and space of civil society; Influencing multilateral and bilateral donor agencies' policies and programmes that impinge on civil society's role in promoting the rights and livelihoods of the poor and disadvantaged; Improving governance in civil society organisations; Building and strengthening state-level coalitions.

VANI is expected to deliver tangible results in the above-mentioned areas through the following implementation strategies:

A standard procedure for policy research in order to come up with well-researched articles on the implications of policies; policy consultations to generate debate on the issues; representation to the government accompanied by a report in the form of policy briefs; developing a policy database. Create a forum to dialogue with multilateral agencies on the contractual relationships that the State and Central Governments enter into with NGOs in their projects. Identify the areas in which members require support. Building greater presence in States in a phased manner and identifying enthusiastic network partners at the state-level in conjunction with whom it can work to carry forward its agenda at the local level.

Working Party Model

To implement this plan the structure and staff pattern proposed is a 'Working Party Model' that consists of the Working Committee, VANI Secretariat and Advisory Committee for each of the goal areas.

The proposed units and staffing are:

National and State Government Policies Multilateral and Bilateral Aid Agencies Regional and State-Level Networking and Capacity Building Organisational and Membership Management