Board Approved June 28, 2O23, Effective July 1, 2023 -June 30, 2026

Executive Summary & Background

NASFAA's 2023-2026 strategic long-range plan (SLRP) represents the association's commitment to creating a mission-driven organization with specific focus areas, resource concentration, and improvement. The strategic plan was meticulously crafted by considering data points and insights gathered from multiple sources. These included membership surveys, usage analysis of our products and services, valuable feedback from dedicated task forces and committees, strategic guidance from the NASFAA Board of Directors, and invaluable input from the NASFAA staff. The Association Governance Committee diligently compiled these diverse perspectives and presented a comprehensive plan to the NASFAA Board of Directors, ensuring that our strategy is grounded in a solid understanding of our members' needs and aspirations while aligning with the organization's overarching goals and vision.

Core Themes & Strategies

Maintaining Fiscal Responsibility and Enhancing Member Value

NASFAA has a long history of fiscally sound management practices and comprehensive and effective fiduciary oversight. NASFAA must continue to build on those successes by ensuring that it is maximizing the impactful use of its resources, streamlining operations, trimming underutilized tools and services, focusing on its core strengths and competencies, being entrepreneurial and continuing to innovate, evolve, and invest in products, services, and tools best to meet the challenges and needs of NASFAA members.

Upholding Ethical Standards and Professional Integrity

Financial aid professionals are placed in positions of trust by students, institutions, and taxpayers. By cultivating a strong foundation of ethical principles and promoting adherence to professional codes of conduct, NASFAA has worked to safeguard the reputation of our profession, instill public trust, and contribute to the overall success and credibility of our profession. Going forward, the national association must continue to foster a culture of ethics and integrity within our profession, ensuring that NASFAA members have access to training, case studies, and thought experiments that explore not only strict compliance with regulations and laws but also safe spaces to explore the ramifications of the gray areas that exist in between rules and regulations that may negatively impact students.

Foster and Support Institutional Innovation in Student Financial Aid

NASFAA will focus on championing innovation in delivering student financial aid at the institutional level, ensuring that members are at the forefront of technological advancements, processes, and best practices. This will be done by identifying and sharing emerging trends and best practices, new technologies, and partnerships in the public and private sectors and building on and establishing new communities of practice, idea exchanges, and collaboration between NASFAA members.

Amplify the Voice of the Financial Aid Administrator in Higher Education

Since our founding in 1966, NASFAA has had a strong presence in Washington, DC and on Capitol Hill. Our strategic objective in this next strategic plan is to not only be heard in Washington, DC, but also to ensure that the perspectives of financial aid administrators are also being heard and valued on campus and within the larger higher education community, particularly in groups representing professional societies and offices outside of the financial aid office. By actively participating in broader discussions and promoting collaboration across various higher education sectors and societies, NASFAA will raise awareness of the critical role financial aid administrators play in shaping student access and success.

Ensure Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging are Part of our Organizational DNA

NASFAA embraces the various voices, perspectives, backgrounds, life stories, and experiences of our members to create and expand a culture of community and belonging within the financial aid profession. The Association will build on past successes and move toward the future by developing programs that allow access to opportunities. NASFAA will adhere fully to its diversity commitment and build a culture of belonging within its leadership, governance, task forces and committees, volunteerism, communities, training cohorts, and all organizational and association activities and programming.

Strengthen Advocacy & Public Policy to Promote Student Access and Success

NASFAA was founded as an advocacy organization, and it continues to be core to our mission today. As the Association moves toward the future, it will engage with lawmakers and stakeholders to foster a legislative and regulatory environment that aligns with the core advocacy principles. As it takes positions on various bills and proposals, NASFAA will strive for nonpartisanship and work to build strong partnerships with policymakers, regulators, and other key stakeholders whenever possible.

Build on Training and Professional Development Opportunities for NASFAA Members

NASFAA training products, and tools are key to our mission and one of the primary reasons financial aid offices join NASFAA. Our strategy is to focus on providing comprehensive training and professional development opportunities that enable financial aid administrators to succeed in their respective roles, stay up to date on constantly changing federal guidance and rules, and improve their skills and knowledge. NASFAA helps members succeed and advance as financial aid professionals, elevates the prestige of the financial aid profession, and paves the road for members to ascend to the highest levels of leadership within higher education. 

Implementation Strategy

In contrast to previous strategic plans, this SLRP emphasizes the overall strategy of the organization, entrusting its planning and implementation to the capable hands of NASFAA staff and the governing body. Annually, NASFAA leadership, including staff and board officers, will convene to assess the association's strategic objectives and develop plans to achieve them with existing resources. If additional resources are required, supplementary plans will be developed and submitted to the finance committee and board of directors for feedback and approval. This approach enables the organization to remain agile while steadfastly pursuing the association's long-range strategic goals. To ensure accountability and progress, the association governance committee will conduct annual reviews of the SLRP and present their findings to the board of directors for evaluation and guidance.