Summit Planning Group Awarded Visioning Consultant
Contract
 The
Consultant Search Team is pleased to announce that The Summit Planning
Group, Inc. of Illinois, USA, has been selected to manage a Visioning and
Transformational Change process for the association.Work has already begun
and will be completed by the end of March 2004.
Funding for the endeavor comes from grants from The UPS Foundation and
The St. Paul Companies Foundation.
Dr. John Throop, president of the Summit Planning
group, has extensive experience at the local, regional, national, and
international levels in data collection and facilitation of strategic
planning. He has worked with organizations including the American Red
Cross, Girl Scouts, Prevent Child Abuse America, and the Convocation of
American Churches in Europe on projects involving multi-cultural,
organizational development
issues. He is fluent in French and
Italian and has �some facility in Spanish.�
Throop�s strengths include facilitating and leading
complex visioning and strategic planning processes with large national
organizations and their local affiliates�conducting stakeholder
assessments and focus groups and using sophisticated web-based surveys.
Clients praised his provision
of extensive but easily understandable reports.
Throop holds a doctorate in organizational
development with a focus on religious and nonprofit
organizations. He is also a certified
service provider for an organizational development documentation tool called Virtual CEO
that has been adapted for association assessments.
One of his references stated she has �the highest
regard for his
combination of data gathering and facilitation skills�a
combination not easy to find.� Another called him �bright and
articulate� and added, �He draws out a group, neither
dominating it nor coming in with a preconceived plan.� And,
she stressed, he helps the group assess the cost of proposed
changes to make sure they are viable.
Throop develops and conducts seminars on effective
volunteer management and remarked that he often refers people
to the AVA web site. References stressed Throop�s volunteer work
on local and regional boards and in professional associations, such as
the American Society for Training and Development.
The search process became a long and challenging one
because of the large number of highquality proposals. The search team
received about 60, and nearly 40 of those merited extensive examination
and numerical rating. In fact, the process was extended beyond the
targeted date so
that the analysis could be completed carefully.
� President-Elect Nancy Gaston, CVA
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