Client: American Psychological Association (APA)
Challenge: A 125-year-old association with a sprawling, complex governance structure, a fractious membership, and a strategic plan that no longer reflected where psychology needed to go.
Outcome: A strategic plan adopted by nearly 98% of APA’s Council of Representatives — driving 25% membership growth and 25% total revenue growth, including consistent 4.5% annual growth through COVID.
The Situation
The American Psychological Association is one of the most complex membership organizations in the United States. With more than 130,000 members spanning research psychologists, clinical practitioners, educators, and students — representing constituencies whose professional interests frequently diverge — the APA is less a single association than a federation of competing priorities held together by a shared discipline.
That complexity is reflected in its governance. APA’s Council of Representatives is a large, deliberative body with significant authority over major organizational decisions. Its Board of Directors manages operations. Its divisions — 54 of them, each with its own leadership and agenda — represent every subspecialty from clinical psychology to military psychology to the psychology of women. Its state associations add another layer. Getting this organization to agree on anything consequential is a significant undertaking.
By 2018, APA needed a new strategic plan. The existing mission and vision had served their purpose but no longer reflected the scale of the challenges psychology faced — or the opportunities the discipline had to shape public health, technology, policy, and society. CEO Arthur Evans, PhD, and the Board of Directors knew the plan needed to be more than a document. In an organization as complex and politically sensitive as APA, a strategic plan that wasn’t genuinely owned by members, governance, and staff would be filed away and forgotten. The process of building it was as important as the plan itself.
Sequence Consulting was engaged to lead the full strategic planning process — from environmental scan through Council vote.
What We Found
Sequence began with what is, for most associations, the most uncomfortable step in strategic planning: genuinely listening to what members, leaders, and stakeholders actually think — before any drafting begins.
The research program Sequence designed and executed was among the most comprehensive in APA’s history:
Surveys reaching more than 30,000 psychologists. Digital and direct mail surveys engaging members, non-members, international MOU partners, staff, and governance leaders at scale — one of the largest member research programs in APA’s history.
195 leadership interviews. Sequence conducted or facilitated “Leadership Conversations” with Council members, Board chairs, Committee chairs, Division presidents, State and Provincial and Territorial Association leaders, and Past Presidents — ensuring that every major constituency had a voice in shaping the direction before a single goal was drafted.
Five convention focus groups engaging a mix of members and non-members at the APA Annual Convention, supplemented by in-person survey collection.
Extensive feedback sessions with APA’s major governance bodies: BAPPI, BSA, BEA, BPA, the Membership Board, the Finance Committee, and the Science Student Council, among others.
The research produced findings that were, in some cases, uncomfortable. Across constituencies — practitioners and researchers, early-career members and senior leaders, members and non-members — consistent themes emerged about what psychology needed to do better: unify a discipline that too often presented a fractured face to the public and policymakers, translate science into impact more effectively, engage the next generation of psychologists, and use the discipline’s knowledge to address the most pressing challenges facing society.
There was also a clear signal about what had not been working: a mission and vision that spoke more to APA’s aspirations for itself than to the contribution it could make to the world.
The Approach
The plan Sequence developed was built around four strategic goals, each grounded directly in what members and stakeholders had said:
Prepare the discipline and profession of psychology for the future — protecting funding for psychology education, science, and practice; facilitating alignment between research and application; integrating new technologies; and developing the next generation of psychologists.
Strengthen APA’s standing as an authoritative voice for psychology — expanding APA’s position as the premier resource for the field, increasing the impact of advocacy across legislative and regulatory channels, and establishing APA as the definitive source for evidence-based standards and ethical guidance.
Elevate the public’s understanding, regard for, and use of psychology — making psychological science accessible and relevant to the public and policymakers, and positioning APA as the go-to resource for the quality and effectiveness of psychology-related products and services.
Utilize psychology to make a positive impact on critical societal issues — applying psychological science to public health, technology, policy, and the advancement of human rights, fairness, and inclusion.
Alongside the strategic goals, Sequence developed a proposed new mission and vision for APA that reflected what the research had surfaced: a shift from an inward-facing description of the organization to an outward-facing statement of purpose.
The proposed vision — a strong and unified psychology that enhances knowledge and elevates the human condition — addressed one of the most consistent themes in the research: that APA’s greatest opportunity and greatest challenge was to present a unified face to the world rather than reflecting the internal divisions of the discipline.
The proposed mission — to promote the advancement, communication, and application of psychological science and knowledge to benefit society and improve lives — replaced a narrower statement with one that positioned psychology’s contribution to the world, not APA’s role as an institution.
The socialization strategy was as important as the plan.
In an organization as complex as APA, a strategic plan that arrives at Council for a vote without extensive prior engagement is almost certain to fail. Sequence designed and managed a deliberate socialization process: public webinars open to Council members, board and committee members, division leaders and their members, and state leaders; a public comment period; structured Board talking points; and a governance navigation strategy that anticipated the questions, concerns, and objections most likely to emerge in the Council debate.
The process ran from May 2018 through February 2019 — nine months of research, drafting, refinement, consultation, and preparation — culminating in the Council vote.
The Result
The Council of Representatives adopted the strategic plan with nearly 98% of votes in favor — one of the largest margins in recent APA history and a striking result for an organization where major initiatives routinely generate division, controversy, and protracted debate.
The margin wasn’t an accident. The plan that came to Council wasn’t a surprise to anyone in the room. It had been shaped by more than 30,000 psychologists through surveys, 195 leadership conversations, multiple governance feedback sessions, public webinars, and a comment period. Virtually every major constituency had been heard. The vote reflected not just approval of the strategy, but ownership of the process that produced it.
What followed was equally remarkable.
Membership grew 25% — the largest surge APA had seen in years, with a sustained 4.5% annual increase as the strategy was implemented.
Total revenue grew 25%, including consistent 4.5% annual growth through the COVID-19 pandemic. That last detail is the one that most surprises other association leaders. While most organizations saw revenue contract sharply in 2020 and 2021 — events cancelled, dues deferred, budgets cut — APA’s revenue kept growing. A strategic plan that had built genuine organizational alignment, clarified priorities, and created a shared sense of direction gave the organization the resilience to navigate disruption without losing momentum.
That’s what a strategic plan that people actually own can do.
“Our strategic planning with Sequence was incredibly successful. They gave us great confidence that where we ended up was the right place for the organization.”
— Arthur Evans, PhD, CEO, American Psychological Association
What This Means for Your Association
The most common reason association strategic plans don’t deliver results isn’t poor strategy. It’s poor process. Plans developed by small groups of leaders, without genuine member input, without honest assessment of what’s not working, and without a deliberate adoption strategy, produce documents that feel disconnected from the real organization. They’re approved and filed. Leaders change. The plan is forgotten.
What made APA’s plan different was that the process was designed from the beginning to produce not just a document but genuine organizational alignment. The 195 leadership interviews weren’t just data collection — they were relationship building with the people who would need to champion the plan in their constituencies. The public comment period wasn’t just due diligence — it was a signal to the entire membership that their voices had shaped the outcome. The socialization strategy wasn’t just communication — it was governance navigation in an organization where sophisticated political awareness was essential to a successful vote.
Three principles from the APA engagement that apply to any complex association:
Research before drafting — always. The instinct in most strategic planning is to move quickly to strategy. Sequence consistently finds that the most important investment is in understanding what members, non-members, and stakeholders actually think before any strategic direction is proposed. At APA, that research produced findings that surprised even experienced leadership — and those surprises were the most important inputs to the plan.
The process is the product. In a complex, politically sensitive association, how a plan is developed matters as much as what it says. A plan that members feel was built with them — that reflects their language, their priorities, and their concerns — will be owned and implemented. A plan that arrives from above will be tolerated at best.
Adoption is a strategy, not an afterthought. Getting a complex governance body to vote yes on a major strategic direction requires deliberate preparation: knowing which constituencies need what kind of engagement, anticipating the objections before they’re raised, building the internal champions who can carry the message in rooms you aren’t in. At APA, the socialization strategy started months before the Council vote — and it made the difference.
If your association is approaching a strategic planning cycle, the question worth asking isn’t “what should our strategy be?” It’s “do we have a process that will produce a plan people actually own?” Those are very different questions — and the answer to the second one largely determines whether the answer to the first one matters.
About Sequence Consulting Sequence Consulting works exclusively with professional and trade associations to grow membership, strengthen revenue, and clarify strategy. Founded in 2001 by Chris Vaughan, PhD and Lisa Vaughan, Sequence brings the rigor of Big Strategy consulting to mission-driven organizations. Trusted by 12 of the top 20 U.S. associations.
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