Territorial Strategic Plan 2021-2025

In 2021, The Salvation Army Canada and Bermuda Territory established our territorial strategic plan to help us fulfill our vision to be “an innovative partner, mobilized to share hope wherever there is hardship, building communities that are just and know the love of Jesus.”

Our strategic plan is organized into four key pillars, each containing three objectives and several initiatives. The pillars are: Strengthen Spiritual Health, Design for People, Forge Innovative Partnerships and Optimize Mission Impact. 

Strengthen Spiritual Health

Focus on deepening discipleship, spiritual life, and a culture of welcome accross all ministry expressions. Ensure our mission remains Christ-centred, grounded in Salvationist doctrine, and expressed through both faith and service.

Design for People

Strengthen the systems, supports, and leadership development that enable officers, employees, lay leaders, and volunteers to flourish. By investing in people, we build capacity, sustainability, and confidence for long-term mission effectiveness.

Forge Innovative Partnerships

Advance collaboration across the Territory and with external partners to expand mission reach and community impact. Through shared purpose and coordinated action, partnerships strengthen service delivery and public engagement.

Optimize Mission Impact

Align resources, programs, and systems to ensure ministry is effective, sustainable, and accountable. Support clear priorities, data-informed decision-making, and responsible stewardship to maximize mission outcomes.

Since launching the strategic plan in 2021, the initiatives have been actioned to bring the plan to life. As this strategic plan comes to an end and transition to the refreshed plan for the next five years, we reflect on the changes that have been realized so far as we journey to fulfill our vision by 2030.  In 2026, the refreshed strategic plan was launched and will take us through to achieving our vision by 2030.

Achievements as of December 2025

Pillar 1 - Strengthen Spiritual Health

Spiritual health is a critical component of creating places and programs that holistically meet the needs of society. Our outreach is a natural extension of our desire to recognize everyone as made in God’s image and worthy of respect and care. When our values are strong and rooted in biblical principles, we can be a transforming influence in the communities in which we serve.

Objective Progress Update

1.1 Our Christian faith pathways result in robust and authentic discipleship

  • The focused discipleship work leveraged programs such as Alpha, and Love New Canadians. This bought a consistent and welcoming approach to discipleship which flourished across the territory with widespread uptake in these programs. 

  • A reimagined approach to local leadership advisory councils (Pastoral Care Councils) was developed in our corps context. The new administrative tool on the Corps Mission website will help corps leverage the value of these councils.

1.2 Our ministry units are places of holiness and spiritual vibrancy

  • The Corps Mission Department website was updated on Salvationist.ca to serve as the central place where all mission partners can easily access a breadth of useful resources to grow their expertise and ministries.

  • A common language (Christ-centered, others-focused) and approach has been formalized and is being embedded in the resources we create for our websites and through our communications.
1.3 Our communities of faith are flourishing
  • We equipped our officers (clergy) with training and support through the Faith in Community Learning to build deep relationships within community and serve within our communities.

Pillar 2 - Design for People

People are our most valuable resource. Driven by Christian love and principles, we strive to be a welcoming movement with people that are equipped to deliver and support mission within a culture of innovation and accountability.

Objective Progress Update

2.1 Driven by Christian love and principles, we are a welcoming movement for all

  • Being a welcoming movement by deepening our understanding of our clients and staff

  • Work on officer gender equity has been effective at enhancing communication and influencing actions.

2.2 Our HR systems equip people to best deliver and support mission

  • This year has realized a large investment in our people systems, support channels and the expertise we bring to better serve our talent. A new centralized Human Relations service delivery model has been launched. All of our staff can access the central team either by phone or email for enhanced and accessible support.

  • A new system called Workday was implemented to bring transparency and functionality to end users and better management of HR administration.

  • Centres of excellence were established to support our goal of attracting and training talent.

2.3 Our culture encourages innovation that enables a strong, sustainable, growing movement

  • A framework, entitled LEADS, was built to shape and define what leadership looks like across the territory. It is built into our performance management and capability development practices. The programs were built to equip leaders with skills, behaviours, abilities and knowledge to lead in the transformation of our ministries and communities.

  • The Candidates Department (officer/clergy recruitment) is committed to helping individuals realize their potential and call to full-time ministry as Salvation Army officers. The department has developed a new strategy with divisional team members focused on developing candidacy. An active calendar of events will continue to bring people together to explore their calling.

Pillar 3 - Forge Innovative Partnerships

This pillar intends to create internal processes that support mission, build partnerships to serve mission and to pursue knowledge and understanding of spiritual and social issues to bring solutions and thought leadership in Canada and Bermuda.

Objective Progress Update

3.1 Internal processes support mission

  • A centralized and formalized communications function was created to simplify, streamline and improve communication flow across the territory amongst mission support and delivery teams.

  • Centralization of operational support teams has sparked collaboration across departments creating increased efficiency.

  • Ways to improve collaboration across the frontline delivery teams such as regional integration forums and communities of practices have been introduced successfully across the territory. This builds horizontal connections and improves awareness, cross-collaboration and information flow. Our communities at the centre of our mission as we deliver our services together.

3.2 Strategic partnerships serve mission

  • We have executed on a strategy of best practices in supported engagement that has been validated through the donor target achievements.

  • We have created a simplified way to manage contributions by leveraging dashboards.

  • We have enhanced government engagement and built strategic partnerships, which will also increase donation income.

  • A national Public Affairs strategy was developed, and a national team was established, bringing increased capabilities.

  • The team established enhanced government relationship approaches aligned with The Salvation Army (TSA) priorities to bring TSA to the government tables based on strengthened relationships and increased awareness of our capabilities. The impact has been seen already with all levels of government.

3.3 We pursue knowledge and understanding of spiritual and social issues to develop solutions, ideas and thought leadership

  • An enhanced public research capability was built through the creation of a team of experienced analysts and researchers.

  • This team informs and strengthens our public policy position on social issues.

  • We collaborate with key external partners on key social issues such as food insecurity, poverty, and lack of housing support.

  • We are seen as thought leaders and can respond quickly to public policy and influence government bodies to shape policy.

Pillar 4 - Optimize Mission Impact

This pillar has focused on optimizing our mission impact through the transformational influence our lives of faith have in our communities, ensuring our efforts place us where we are needed most and can be most effective and strengthening our support and our delivery models so we can focus on effective holistic mission.

Objective Progress Update

4.1 Our personal and corporate lives of faith are transforming influences in our communities

  • A Community Compass was designed to assist our corps ministry units in understanding and navigating local needs. Training on assessment and engagement was launched to equip our ministry units with the skills to be a transformational influence in our communities.

4.2 The focusing of ministry efforts places us where we are most needed and can be most effective

  • A performance framework to measure the key impacts our services are delivering, has been established to ensure we are optimizing the efficiency and effectiveness of our services.

  • The social services programs we provide across the territory were assessed to understand our social footprint and define which social programs are considered priority and which are considered supporting services. This will help guide future strategic decisions about the services we provide and where we build partnerships.

  • Leveraging data and measurement tools, our corps were assessed across mission balance and effectiveness in spiritual and community action. This will enable actions to be planned around sustainability and growth.

4.3 Our mission delivery and support models strengthen our ministry expressions' ability to focus on effective, holistic mission impact

  • All operational support functions were centralized into Territorial Headquarters (THQ) while maintaining a geographically serving delivery model to enable enhanced mission effectiveness. (i.e., Property, Finance, Translation, IT, Human Relations, Public Affairs, Public Relations, Development.)

  • The social mission ministry were centralized to be divisionally serving and territorially led. The social mission support team enhanced the way they provide expertise and support across the territory to these social mission ministry units.

  • The information technology roadmap has built the foundation and launched new systems which will be scaled over time. Infrastructure, operational improvements and data management work continues and has built a strong and secure foundation for our data and systems. The modernization of the technology platforms and enhanced capabilities will improve data transparencies for decision making, bring operational efficiencies and streamlined client service, improve security and deliver an integrated technology landscape.

  • The property department has enhanced their processes, built a regionally serving structure to better support ministry units and increased expertise to serve the territory. There are multiple strategies to manage our property investment and leverage partnerships such as Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to the best extent.

Forward Together

The progress achieved from 2021–2025 provides the foundation on which to continue to build and enhance our mission impact. The 2026 refreshed strategic plan will continue with a focus on the four pillars - Strengthen Spiritual Health, Design for People, Forge Innovative Partnerships and Optimize Mission Impact.

The past five years have prepared us well. The next five will propel us Forward Together – Christ-centred and others-focused.