Sateda commissioned Sailfin to facilitate a trustee workshop and strategic review to develop a refreshed organisational strategy for 2026–2029. The project helped trustees and senior leaders make clear choices, align around priorities, and leave with a strategy that could be communicated, governed, and implemented.

Sateda works with women and children affected by violence and abuse. The strategic review needed to balance operational reality, survivor-centred practice, a changing funding landscape, and the governance responsibilities of the board.

What the charity needed

• A clear, shared direction for the next strategy period, with priorities that could be explained simply and used effectively to make operational decisions.
• A process that was credible to trustees and grounded in staff experience and stakeholder insight from the women and children that they support.
• A board-level workshop that could surface trade-offs and land decisions, not just generate themes.
• Confidence that the final output would be usable for governance, funding conversations, and internal planning.

Outputs

• Designed and facilitated a board away day focused on direction, priorities, and decision points.
• Structured the process around discovery, co-design, synthesis, and refinement, so listening led to clear decisions.
• Used structured discovery inputs to ground discussion: document review, comparator review, and an external environment scan.
• Made trade-offs explicit through facilitated options work, clarifying what mattered most, what could wait, and what required further analysis.
• Produced a board-ready strategy pack capturing the rationale for decisions, assumptions, risks, and the next-step choices to resolve.
• A refreshed strategy for 2026–2029 with clear priorities and narrative.
• A transparent audit trail for how decisions were reached, supporting board assurance.
• A practical plan for next steps and implementation sequencing.
• A clear follow-on action on brand guidance, recognising that strategy language needed to reflect the realities of the people Sateda supports.

Why trustee workshops are important

• It balanced inclusive listening with decision-focused synthesis, so the process did not stall at “themes”.
• It treated the board away day as a decision-making moment with preparation and follow-through, not a standalone event.
• Outputs were written for governance use as well as communications, improving clarity for trustees, staff, and stakeholders.