In NPSP, Engagement Plans are used to automate the creation of a set of tasks when a specific goal is identified (e.g., "Major Donor Stewardship"). It is critical to understand the relationship between the Template and the Instance.

The Logic of Decoupling:

The Template: This is the "blueprint" that defines which tasks should be created, who should own them, and what their due dates are relative to the start date.

The Engagement Plan (Instance): When a user applies a template to a Contact or Campaign, the system "explodes" the template and creates actual Task records and an Engagement Plan record.

Persistence: Once those tasks are created, they become independent records. If an admin modifies the original Engagement Plan Template (e.g., adding a new task or changing a deadline), NPSP does not retroactively update existing tasks or plans that were already generated. This is intentional to prevent disrupting ongoing workflows or overwriting manual changes staff may have made to their active tasks.

Result: Any modifications to the template will only be visible on new Engagement Plans created after the change was saved.

To update existing plans, the manager would have to delete the current Engagement Plan and re-apply the updated template, or manually add the new tasks to the current records.