The Planetary Society

1. Advance our Core Enterprises. For nearly 4 decades, The Planetary Society has been committed to advancing planetary exploration, planetary defense, and the search for life beyond Earth.

2. Grow our Community. We will invest in mission-aligned strategic growth areas to build a community that is increasingly large, empowered, and international.

3. Ensure Organizational Excellence. In all that we do, we strive to be the world’s largest, most respected, most effective citizen space organization.

1. Advance our Core Enterprises of planetary exploration, the search for life beyond Earth, and planetary defense (protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids and comets). Specifically, we work to:
a. Increase discoveries about the worlds of our solar system and beyond by building public support for planetary science and exploration, encouraging decision-makers to prioritize continual progression of human and robotic exploration, and supporting scientific and technological advances in planetary exploration.
b. Elevate the search for life as a space exploration priority by advocating for the exploration of worlds that could harbor life, promoting a broad approach to the search for life in our solar system and beyond, and supporting scientific efforts dedicated to detecting and understanding exoplanets.
c. Decrease the risk of Earth being hit by an asteroid or comet by helping observers find, track, and characterize near-Earth asteroids and comets, supporting the development of asteroid mitigation technology, and collaborating with the professional community and decision-makers to develop international response strategies to defend Earth from an asteroid or comet threat.

2. Grow our Community. Specifically, we aim to:
a. Strengthen our member community by providing a top-quality member experience, connecting our members with each other, and providing meaningful opportunities to have an impact.
b. Increase public knowledge about space by providing accessible space information and expertise that appeals to diverse audiences, creating resources and tools to help citizens educate others, and inspiring young people to develop a passion for space exploration.
c. Increase international participation by providing resources for global outreach, creating programs and activities relevant to international audiences, and cultivating relationships with international partners.

3. Ensure Organizational Excellence
a. Increase capacity by building sustainable, scalable systems, securing diverse, reliable funding to support increased programs and activities, and investing in strategic growth goals of increasing membership, educational reach, and international development.
b. Build reputation by cultivating high-impact relationships to advance our mission, earning recognition for excellence, and providing valuable insights and resources to professional communities, decision-makers, and the media.
c. Improve effectiveness by building a culture of evaluation, investing in organizational resilience, and prioritizing opportunities for citizen action in support of space.

Working together with our members and supporters,
We Advocate: We shape space policy and fight for future exploration by empowering space advocates to take action by providing resources and opportunities, advocating for a NASA budget that supports a robust program of scientifically motivated planetary exploration by humans and robots, and developing and promoting new space policy solutions.

We Innovate: We invest in innovative space science and technology by providing citizens with opportunities to participate in space science and technology projects, improving the quality and quantity of space science and technology projects in which citizens can participate, and providing funding to innovative new science and technology projects.

We Educate: We expand public knowledge about space by creating accessible educational content, helping the scientific community inform the public, and helping citizens educate others.

We Collaborate: We cultivate a worldwide movement for space by engaging our network of global members, volunteers, and partners, and harnessing opportunities to connect experts, decision-makers, influencers, and advocates.

Midway through our strategic framework timeline, The Planetary Society has been making significant progress toward our goals through new initiatives and ongoing improvement. We share regular impact reports on our website at https://www.planetary.org/about/our-impact

Advance Our Core Enterprises
We've advanced space technology development through our LightSail solar sail spacecraft, our biennial Shoemaker Grant program, and our new STEP (Science and Technology Empowered by the Public) Grants. We've advocated for national and international funding for planetary missions. We've shared space exploration milestones and discoveries and provided opportunities for individuals to share their excitement about space.

Grow Our Community
We've been gaining new members and growing our broader community. We redesigned our website and recalibrated our content strategy to be more responsive to the public's questions and user tendencies. We've created dozens of new resources to help individuals observe the night sky, process space images, pick a new telescope, learn about the risks of asteroids and comets. We created a new advocacy program, our annual Day of Action in Washington DC, to provide first-hand experiences to participate in direct space advocacy. And we've hosted events, both in person and virtually, to celebrate milestones.

Ensure Organizational Excellent
Coinciding with our current strategic period, we created a comprehensive fundraising campaign to provide financial resources to support our work. The increased funding has supported new programming to attract and retain members and expand our educational work. Our focus on building a culture of evaluation has lead to new, regular practices of collecting and analyzing data and using our learnings to develop or refine approaches. Our organizational commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) has been shaping changes to internal operations including staffing and compensation, new program development, and new partnerships.