Stan Hutton - Nonprofit Kit For Dummies

Volunteers: Embracing diversity begins with identifying volunteers who have stepped up when you had nothing except a dream. These are the dedicated group of individuals who asked how they could help and then rolled up their sleeves to help raise seed funding by manning yard sale tables and county fair exhibit booths. In all types of weather, these folks stood strong in handing out pamphlets and fliers to hundreds of attendees. Yes, bring them to the planning table. Solicit their input! Show them how much you trust their thoughts and service!

Community partners: Identify the organizations that opened their doors to you when you were asking for ideas about gaps in services. Remember the executive directors of the nonprofits who stepped up and offered meeting space, office supplies, copies of policies and procedures, and more. Yes, ask them to come to the planning table and participate in developing your mission and vision statements.

Representatives from the target population you plan to serve: How do you know about a need for your services in the community? Have you spoken to any of your targeted clients or organizations who already serve similar target populations?

Whether you’re working with a newly formed nonprofit or a long-running institution, everyone in your stakeholder’s group needs to agree on the mission and vision statements. We recommend holding a meeting to solicit their input. The biggest advantage to this kind of group activity is achieving full buy-in from everyone involved. After all, you want people to believe in and accept the organization’s mission and vision statements. If they don’t, they likely won’t stick around to help uphold that mission and help you achieve your long-term vision statement (or they won’t do a good job of upholding it while they’re there).

For groups who are working to establish mission and vision statements for a new nonprofit organization, we recommend that you find an outside facilitator to guide the group through the inevitable discussions about priorities and the direction of the new organization. Finding a neutral person who can bring an outsider’s perspective to the group’s deliberations is extremely helpful. A facilitator also takes responsibility for managing the group so that you and your colleagues can be full participants in the meeting. If you aren’t geographically near a nonprofit support organization (a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits with technical assistance), ask other nearby organizations for suggestions.

Bring a few prewritten suggestions to the group meeting. Present them as drafts and ask for feedback. Also, be open-minded to their input and suggested changes to your prewritten suggestions. After an initial discussion among the group, give each member index cards or sticky pads and have all of them write down three ideas they feel strongly about keeping as a part of the mission and vision statements.

After you collect everyone’s written ideas, read them all aloud and — as a group — organize them so that similar ideas are grouped together. These notes should identify the key ideas that belong in your mission and vision statements. Also be sure to ask whether anyone thinks an important idea is missing. If not, you’re ready to assign someone to draft the mission and vision statements.

A group process is essential to identifying the core ideas that belong in the mission and vision statements, but when it comes to putting words on paper, we recommend that you choose two or three of your board members that are the best writers and turn them loose.

We aren’t fans of committee-written prose. We’ve sat in meetings where committees discussed word choices and the placement of commas without apparent end. The result of such efforts is usually murky writing that requires several readings to interpret the meaning. After a draft is on paper, feel free to bring it back to your group for their final thoughts and approval on content, grammar, and word choice.

When finalizing the wording of your statements, the best advice we can offer is to stay away from jargon and flowery rhetoric. Avoid the buzzwords that are popular in your field. In fact, this is good advice for any kind of writing — grant proposals, memos, letters, and other documents. You don’t want your audience scratching their heads and wondering, “What does that mean?”

You’ve brainstormed, drafted, and refined a short mission statement and a longer vision statement that clearly identify your organization’s present and future focus. Congratulations! Now that you’ve put considerable thought and time into this exercise, what will you do with it?

You’ll use your mission statement in practical ways, of course. For instance, you’ll likely

Incorporate its description of the organization’s purpose in your articles of incorporation (see Chapter 5)

Add it to brochures, your website, and other marketing materials (see Chapter 13)

Use it to help complete IRS Form 990 — the tax statement you file in one form or another every year (see Chapter 6)

You’ll also use your vision statement as a guiding written light to keep your eyes on the organization’s future. For instance, you’ll likely use it to

Establish the ideal state that the leaders of your nonprofit organization want to achieve.

Inspire and remind members where you’re going as an organization.

Keep new and existing staff and volunteers focused on what’s ahead.

Motivate yourself and others to work hard today to plant the seeds for tomorrow.

Your mission and vision statements also resemble the pin that holds the needle of a compass. You use them to chart your organization’s direction. Here are some examples:

When you have to make a decision about creating new programs or setting priorities, your mission statement should guide you in whether they’re appropriate for your organization. Remember to ask aloud to your stakeholders: “Will this decision help us achieve our vision statement?”

When your board and staff sit down to create a new three-year plan, they first need to revisit and commit to the mission statement (the present) and vision statement (the future). All other discussions about setting goals and refining programs should be tested for appropriateness against these statements.

When you need to cut your budget and eliminate programs or activities, the mission statement should guide you to protect those programs that are core to your organization’s purpose and vision.

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