Section 3. Creating Objectives

To obtain results, we need to articulate the outcomes and changes we hope to achieve.

This section focuses on developing specific objectives that can help make your vision and mission a reality.

What are objectives?

Objectives are specific, measurable results that an initiative intends to achieve. Objectives specify how much of what will be accomplished by when and, when appropriate, compared with what starting point or baseline. For example, one of several objectives for a community initiative promoting connection and support among older adults might be: "By 2030 (by when), increase by 20% from baseline (how much) the percentage of older adults who report daily contact with someone they can rely on for social support (of what)."

There are three broad types of objectives. They are:

• Process objectives. These describe important planning, implementation, policy, partnership, or organizational steps needed to support the initiative's broader goals. For example, a neighborhood improvement group might adopt and begin implementing a comprehensive plan for improving housing conditions.
• Behavioral or practice objectives. These describe measurable changes in what people, organizations, institutions, or systems do. For example, a neighborhood improvement initiative might seek to increase the number of homes receiving needed repairs or increase the use of an existing home-repair assistance program.
• Community-level outcome objectives. These focus on measurable changes in conditions or outcomes across a community or population rather than only on individual behavior. For example, the same neighborhood group might aim to increase the percentage of housing in the community that is safe, affordable, and in good condition.

These types of objectives aren't mutually exclusive. Many initiatives will benefit from objectives that describe implementation, changes in practices or systems, and community-level outcomes. The mix you need will depend on your mission and the work required to achieve it.

Objectives should be S.M.A.R.T. + C.:

• Specific. They clearly identify how much of what is expected to change and by when. When appropriate, they also identify the population, setting, or baseline against which change will be measured.
• Measurable. Information about progress toward the objective can be collected, observed, detected, or otherwise assessed.
• Achievable. The objective is feasible given available resources, evidence, community conditions, organizational capacity, and the timeframe involved.
• Relevant to the mission. Your organization understands how the objective contributes to its broader vision and mission.
• Timed. The objective includes a timeframe for achieving or assessing the intended change.
• Challenging. The objective is ambitious enough to represent meaningful improvement while remaining credible and attainable.

Why should you create objectives?

There are many good reasons to develop objectives for your initiative. They include:

• Establishing benchmarks that can be used to assess progress.
• Giving members of your organization, community members, partners, funders, and others a clear way to understand what the initiative is trying to accomplish and what progress has occurred.
• Helping your organization focus on activities and strategies that contribute to meaningful results.
• Helping participants and partners coordinate their work toward shared long-term goals.

When should you create objectives?

Your community organization should create or revise objectives when:

• Your organization has developed or revised its vision and mission statements and is ready to take the next step in the planning process.
• Your organization's focus has changed or expanded. For example, perhaps your organization's mission relates to care and support at the end of life. You have recently identified new resources that could also strengthen support for people grieving the death of someone close to them. Expanding into this work would require objectives describing what the organization intends to accomplish.
• The organization wants to address a community issue, create a service, change a system or policy, or pursue another goal that requires:
  • Several years to complete. For example, a child and youth initiative might seek to increase the percentage of students who complete high school, a change that may require sustained work over several years.
  • Changes in practices, opportunities, environments, or behavior among many people or organizations. For example, an initiative addressing cardiovascular health might work to increase opportunities for physical activity and the percentage of adults who are physically active.
  • A multifaceted approach. For example, addressing substance use may involve prevention, harm reduction, treatment access, recovery support, community conditions, policy, health care, public safety, and other related systems rather than focusing on only one behavior or service.

How do you create objectives?

Once your organization has decided to develop objectives, how do you go about doing so? Let's look at a process that can help you define and refine objectives for your organization.

Define or reaffirm your vision and mission statements

The first thing you will need to do is review the vision and mission statements your organization has developed. Before determining specific objectives, you should have a clear understanding of the broader vision and mission they are intended to support.

Determine the changes to be made

A central part of writing useful objectives is determining what changes need to occur in order to move toward your mission.

There are many ways to do this, including:

• Review current evidence and promising practices related to the issue. Research may help identify strategies, policies, programs, environmental changes, and other approaches associated with better outcomes. Information may be available through peer-reviewed research, government agencies, professional organizations, universities, libraries, national and local nonprofit organizations, and other credible sources. Evidence should be considered alongside community knowledge, local conditions, implementation experience, and the priorities of people affected by the issue.
• Discuss with community members, practitioners, and others with relevant knowledge what needs to occur. People you may wish to involve include:
  • Members of your organization
  • People and organizations with experience addressing similar issues
  • People and organizations with relevant responsibilities, authority, resources, expertise, relationships, or other capacity to contribute. Depending on the issue, these might include educators, employers, faith communities, government officials, health professionals, community organizations, residents, media professionals, or others.
  • People and communities directly affected by the issue, including people with lived experience and people whose opportunities, environments, services, policies, or everyday circumstances may be affected by the changes being considered.
• Discuss the organizational and logistical requirements needed to address community priorities successfully. While identifying what needs to change in the community or broader system, also consider what your organization needs in order to contribute effectively. Do you need an action plan? Additional funding? Staff? Training? Data systems? New partnerships? Accessibility improvements? Community outreach? These considerations can help you develop useful process objectives.

At this stage, you don't need final answers to every question. The purpose is to develop a broad picture of the changes, conditions, resources, and activities that may be necessary to move toward the desired results.

For example, perhaps your group has decided upon the following mission: "To reduce risk for cardiovascular disease through a community-wide initiative." At this point in your research and community discussions, your organization might identify broad goals such as:

• Increase access to evidence-based tobacco-use prevention and cessation support
• Reduce exposure to tobacco and nicotine products, particularly among young people
• Increase opportunities for safe and accessible physical activity
• Support healthy weight and reduce weight-related health risks using respectful, non-stigmatizing approaches
• Improve access to affordable, nutritious foods and support healthy eating patterns
• Increase access to and use of appropriate preventive care, screening, treatment, and information about cardiovascular risk
• Strengthen the organization's understanding of current cardiovascular-health evidence, community conditions, and health disparities
• Strengthen partnerships with local, state, and national organizations working toward related goals

Collect baseline data on the issues to be addressed

Once your organization has a general idea of what it wants to accomplish, the next step is to identify appropriate baseline data. Baseline data describe the starting conditions against which future change can be compared. Depending on your objectives, baseline measures might describe needs, strengths, behaviors, practices, services, systems, resources, policies, access, attitudes, or community-level outcomes.

Baseline data may include incidence, or the number or rate of new events or cases occurring over a defined period. They may also include prevalence, which describes how common a condition or characteristic is within a population at a particular time or during a defined period.

Baseline information can also measure access, participation, community conditions, service use, organizational practices, policy implementation, perceptions, experiences, strengths, or other factors relevant to the objective. For example, an initiative might measure the percentage of community members who report knowing where to obtain a particular service or the percentage who believe that service is accessible to them.

Why collect baseline data?

Baseline data establish a starting point. Without a credible starting measure, it can be difficult to determine whether the condition you are monitoring changed, by how much, or in what direction. Baseline information can also help an organization understand the scale and distribution of an issue, identify disparities or gaps, set realistic objectives, allocate resources, and explain why action may be warranted.

Later, baseline measures can be compared with follow-up data. For example, an initiative might report that a community pregnancy rate declined by 35% from the baseline period. That finding documents an important change, but the fact that the change occurred after an initiative began does not by itself establish that the initiative caused the decline. Stronger evaluation methods may be needed to understand the initiative's contribution and the role of other community, policy, economic, demographic, or social changes.

How do you collect this information?

There are two broad ways to obtain baseline data:

• You can collect data specifically for your initiative. Depending on the question, methods may include surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, assessments, administrative records, community mapping, service data, or other appropriate approaches.
• You can use existing information. Government agencies, public datasets, schools, health departments, health systems, social service organizations, universities, libraries, community organizations, and other sources may already have relevant data. Check when and how the information was collected, which population it represents, and whether it is current and appropriate for your objective.

Decide what is realistic for your organization to accomplish

Once you know what changes you hope to contribute to and understand the starting conditions, determine what your organization can reasonably seek to accomplish. Do you have the resources, partnerships, authority, time, and capacity needed to address all of the goals you identified? What scale of change is supported by the evidence and community context?

These questions can be difficult, especially for a new initiative. For example, if you are trying to increase childhood immunization coverage, what amount of improvement is realistic within one year, three years, or five years? The answer will depend on the current baseline, barriers to vaccination, available services, community trust, policies, resources, and the strategies you plan to use.

There are rarely simple answers. Examine available research and prior experience, talk with people directly affected by the issue, and consult practitioners, evaluators, community partners, and others who have experience with similar work. Use this information to estimate what level of change is ambitious but credible.

Remember, you are attempting to set objectives that are both achievable and challenging. You may not estimate the ideal target perfectly at first. Monitoring progress and reviewing new evidence can help you revise objectives when circumstances or assumptions change.

Set the objectives for your organization or initiative

With this information in mind, your organization is ready to establish specific measurable objectives. Objectives should describe results that can be tracked over time and should connect clearly with the initiative's mission, baseline conditions, strategies, and intended outcomes.

A caution: Funding agencies, laws, regulations, contracts, or other outside requirements may shape some objectives. Be transparent about those requirements. At the same time, your organization and community partners should consider whether the objectives remain consistent with the mission, community priorities, evidence, and ethical responsibilities of the initiative rather than pursuing a measure simply because funding is attached to it.

Your organization's objectives should:

• Include the types of objectives needed to describe important implementation steps, changes in behaviors or practices, and community-level outcomes. Many initiatives will benefit from objectives in all three areas.
• State specifically how much of what is expected to change by when and, where appropriate, compared with what baseline. For example: "By 2030, reduce the adolescent pregnancy rate by 30% from the 2027 baseline."
• Meet the "SMART + C" criteria. As discussed earlier, objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timed, and Challenging.

Let's look at another example. An adolescent substance-use prevention initiative might develop objectives such as the following after reviewing its baseline data, community priorities, research evidence, and available resources:

Illustrative objectives developed by an adolescent substance-use prevention initiative

By 2030, reduce current tobacco and nicotine-product use among youth ages 12-17 by an amount determined from the initiative's baseline data and evidence-informed target.
By 2030, reduce current alcohol use among youth ages 12-17 by an amount determined from baseline data and the initiative's strategies.
By 2030, reduce current cannabis use among youth ages 12-17 by an amount supported by baseline data, community priorities, and available evidence.
By 2030, increase the percentage of youth who report access to trusted prevention, treatment, mental health, and recovery-support resources.

The point is not to choose the largest percentage possible. Targets should be based on credible baseline information, evidence, community conditions, available resources, and the scale of change the initiative can reasonably influence.

Review the objectives your organization has created

Before finalizing your objectives, review them carefully and consider asking people outside the group that drafted them to provide feedback. Reviewers might include people directly affected by the issue, community partners, implementation staff, relevant subject-matter experts, evaluators, funders when appropriate, and people doing similar work in other communities.

Ask reviewers to consider:

• Does each objective meet the criteria of "SMART + C"?
• Is the list complete? Are important process, practice, systems, access, or outcome objectives missing?
• Are the objectives appropriate, ethical, evidence-informed, and consistent with the organization's mission and community priorities? Could any objective have unintended consequences or generate substantial community concern that should be addressed during planning?

Significant disagreement does not automatically mean an objective should be abandoned. For example, an HIV-prevention initiative might include expanding access to comprehensive syringe services programs for people who use or inject drugs. Such an objective may generate public or political disagreement in some communities, but the organization should assess the evidence, legal and policy context, likely health effects, community concerns, implementation requirements, and communication needs rather than judging the objective solely by whether it is controversial.

Use your objectives to define your organization's strategies

Once your objectives are clear, measurable, and aligned with your mission, you are ready for the next step: developing strategies for achieving them. Objectives identify the changes you are seeking; strategies describe the broad approaches you will use to help bring those changes about.

In Summary

Developing objectives is an important step in strategic planning. Strong objectives translate a broad vision and mission into specific results that can be monitored and evaluated. They should be grounded in community priorities, credible baseline data, available evidence, organizational capacity, and a realistic understanding of the changes the initiative can influence.

Objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timed, and challenging. They may address implementation processes, behaviors or practices, systems and environments, and community-level outcomes. They should also be reviewed over time and revised when new evidence, community feedback, changing conditions, or evaluation findings show that an adjustment is needed.

The next section covers how to develop strategies to achieve the objectives you have set.