Iskcon Strategic Planning

GBC Strategic Planning Journey

Srila Prabhupada wanted the GBC to lead ISKCON through good governance and to establish global policies. He also wanted ISKCON to expand,thrive, be well rooted, and toserve the needs of its devotees and the public alike.

But like many organizations, ISKCON has spent a fair amount of time over the years reacting to rather than anticipating the demands of its own growth. This has created a cycle of mild to severe crisis management, which has left us, as a global movement, in survival mode, with little energy to do much more than cope with our day to day needs and problems. In many areas of the world we have lost the dynamic energy the movement had during the 1970s and much of the '80s. It's easy to give reasons for the decline –and they'd likely all be true from one angle or another. But there's something else that's true, too: All the ups and downs ISKCON has experienced since Srila Prabhupada's departure have been pretty much inevitable –normal, even –for organizations, spiritual or otherwise, that are growing up.

For the past eight years, the GBC Strategic Planning Team (SPT) has been helping the GBC explore the ways in which ISKCON needs to grow up into the vibrant movement Srila Prabhupada wanted it to be, and then developing strategies to support that growth. Our theme? "More devotees, happier devotees".

Systematically Changing ISKCON's Future

Bhaktivijnana Swami, a GBC leader and preacher in Russia and Israel, also serves on the SPN’s Succession Committee. Maharaja expresses his appreciation of the strategic planning process, personally witnessing how the culture of strategic planning has dramatically changed the work of the GBC, allowing it to put energy into addressing important issues relevant for the whole Society and its direction for the future, particularly in the area of succession.