for your nonprofit’s existence is basic to creating your mission statement. Why should your nonprofit exist?
For example, you may know that you love cats and dogs and have always wanted to work with them, but that isn’t the same thing as identifying a nonprofit organization’s reason for existing. The mission statement for a fictitious humane society might be written this way:
Friends of Animals provides temporary shelter and medical care for homeless puppies, dogs, kittens, and cats until responsible, loving homes can be found.
This sentence doesn’t describe the shelter’s facilities or how it recruits and trains volunteers, but it does clearly state which animals it serves and that it doesn’t intend to foster them as long as they live but rather to place them in good homes. And if someone visited Friends of Animals with a ferret, a pony, or a tarantula, its staff would know to refer that person to another shelter.
Specifying who will be served by the nonprofit
After you and the governing board have determined the nonprofit’s purpose, the primary beneficiaries of its services are documented and included in the mission statement. Their needs — whether they’re kittens or refugees — make your mission compelling and achievable. Defining who will benefit from your nonprofit helps to focus your organizational activities and is an essential ingredient in the mission statement.
Some organizations have a more general audience than others. If your nonprofit’s focus is preserving historic buildings, the beneficiary of this activity may be current and future residents of a city, a county, or even a state. It may also be the workers you train in the crafts needed to complete the building restorations.
Explaining how you’ll accomplish your mission
After you know your organization’s mission and its beneficiaries, the next step is deciding how to make it happen. Mission statements usually highlight a phrase describing the methods your nonprofit will use to accomplish its purpose. Think about the activities and programs you’ll provide to fulfill your mission. Take a look at these examples:
To indicate how it will accomplish its mission, the Friends of Animals’ mission statement may say, “Our mission will be accomplished by veterinary professionals and dedicated volunteers who provide temporary shelter for homeless animals.”
The mission of a human-services nonprofit organization may state, “Our mission will be accomplished by providing juvenile offender reentry recidivism counseling-and-support services for minority probationers exiting the Nassau County Juvenile Detention Center.”
Incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into your mission statement
What does it mean to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (or DEI) into your mission statement? Let’s look at who’s involved and how to add language that is direct and memorable.
Step 1: It takes a village! Involve the founder and/or executive director and the governing board in articulating a brief but striking DEI statement.
Step 2: Remember that adding DEI to your mission statement is core to the organization’s values and the way it will conduct business (programs and services).
Step 3: Use positive words like inclusive, celebrate, grow, freedom, experience, and commitment or committed.
Now let’s revisit this mission statement and start adding the DEI language:
Our mission is to provide juvenile offender reentry recidivism counseling-and-support services for minority probationers exiting the Nassau County Juvenile Detention Center by ensuring that our programs are inclusive to all and committed to celebrating diversity, equity, and inclusion for youth and their families during detention and post-detention.
As you can see, not all the parts of DEI have to be included. However, the parts you do include must have an impact on your service population.
DETECTING A WEAK MISSION STATEMENT
Here’s an example of a vague, unclear mission statement:
The Good Food Society works to maximize impact of the utilization of nutritious food groups to beneficially help people in need by proclaiming the good benefits of balanced nutrition.
You probably get the idea that this organization wants people to have better eating habits so that they can enjoy better health. But can it realistically help all people everywhere? Also, try reciting this statement to someone you’re trying to convince to contribute to your organization. Can you say tongue-tied?
Long, multisyllabic words don’t make a mission or vision statement more impressive. If anything, they have the opposite effect. In place of the preceding statement, try this type of wording for your mission statement:
Believing in the value of good nutrition, the Good Food Society aims to improve public health by providing information about the benefits of a balanced diet to parents of school-age children through public education programs.
Imagining Your Future with a Vision Statement
Simply put, a vision statement is your dream — your broadly described aspiration for what your organization can do. Vision statements can describe a future desired condition as a result of the organization’s activities, but they’re more typically applied to the organization itself. Usually, the statement includes phrases like “the best” or “recognized as a leader.”
Table 4-1 provides an example of this future-visioning process.
Capturing your vision statement
A vision statement can be long or short. We recommend that you assemble a group of internal stakeholders (founder, board members, staff, and volunteers). Start by spelling out the basic components in a vision statement. Here are the most important aspects a vision statement should convey (or communicate) to the public at-large, including your stakeholders:
Project what your nonprofit organization will do over the next five years.
Write in future tense.
Provide
