Over twenty-three years ago, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations was founded to give post-secondary students an effective, responsive and adaptive voice in federal politics. At the organization’s core was a commitment to ensuring that elected student leaders would remain central to the decision-making processes of the organization. That is why every year a new group of student leaders take control organization, and CASA must respond to meet both their needs and the needs of post-secondary students at large.
While remaining responsive and adaptable is key to CASA’s operations, it is also crucial that the organization initiate and execute long-term plans and achieve long-term objectives. CASA has a responsibility to improve post-secondary education for today’s students and for tomorrow’s. To achieve this, it is critical that CASA strives for an organizational culture that thinks strategically, measures its progress and effectiveness, and engages in self-reflection for continuous improvement and innovation. Through this process, each generation of CASA’s membership, Board of Directors, Executive Director and staff can assess, reflect, develop and improve the organization.
The strategic plan seeks to unify CASA’s membership around broad objectives, strategic goals and metrics to track progress toward those objectives. These are organized under organizational pillars. Organizational pillars are the core competencies of CASA, as identified by the membership. They reflect broad areas of focus and resource allocation for the organization. Each pillar has core objectives, which are the articulation of the member’s expectations over the term of the plan. Internally, CASA’s Board of Directors and Executive Director will develop and track metrics for each core objective.
Five distinct organizational pillars were identified during the 2018 strategic plan review process. They are:
- Policy and Research
- Membership
- Public Relations
- Advocacy
- Governance
