A strategic plan works best when the people doing the work keep it up to date. The staff member leading a goal knows when an action is done, when a target has moved, and what the latest number is.

Until now, giving someone that ability meant making them an Editor. Editors can change anything in the plan, including the pillars and objectives your board approved. Most of the time that is fine. But as more people take part, the chance of an accidental edit or deletion in the wrong place grows, and training alone doesn’t always prevent it.

We heard this most clearly from the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona as they entered the second year of their strategic plan. Dozens of staff were adding their new strategies, and a few top-level objectives were changed or deleted by mistake. They asked for something between Editor and Viewer, and worked with us to shape it. That is the Contributor role.

What a Contributor Can Do

Contributors can add goals anywhere in the plan, and can edit, score, and add items inside the goals, actions, and tasks they are a champion or team member of. Everything else in the plan is view-only to them.

In practice, that means a Contributor can:

• Add a new goal under any objective
• Update the goals, actions, and tasks they are assigned to
• Post progress updates and record measurements on their metrics
• Comment anywhere in the plan

And a Contributor cannot:

• Change your pillars or objectives
• Edit or delete anyone else’s work
• Reorder the plan

When a Contributor adds a goal, Causey lists them as its champion automatically, so they can keep working on it.

You Decide How Far Down They Can Edit

Every organization divides responsibility a little differently. In your organization settings, you can choose whether Contributors may edit goals and everything below them, only actions and tasks, or only tasks. Your custom labels appear here too, so the options use the same names your team already uses.

Seeing Who Can Edit What

When you switch someone to Contributor, the Members page warns you if they are not assigned to anything yet, so nobody ends up locked out of their own work. Contributors also see a “My items” filter on the plan, which shows only the work they are responsible for.

Why This Matters

Clear ownership is one of the most important parts of strategy execution. When each person can update their own part of the plan, the plan stays current without one person having to collect updates from everyone else. Your leadership team also keeps the structure they agreed on.

The Contributor role is available on Core and Solid plans. Administrators can assign it from the Members page in Settings. To learn more, see our guide on using the Contributor role.