The Path to Stakeholder Engagement in 2015: Values and Case Statements

We have completed Part 1 of our 3-part blog series. You should now have inspiring, clear and concise Vision and Mission Statements for your organization. 











We will now focus on two additional documents for the strategic foundation of your nonprofit.  

• Values Statement
• Case Statement

Values Statement

A nonprofit organization should have a statement that details the organization’s core values. The statement should be clearly acknowledged by all members of the organization. Board members and leaders of the organization should easily access the statement to use as a guide when making difficult decisions.

Value-based decision making is common for boards and nonprofit leaders. Issues with compensation, programing and hiring and firing of employees and vendors all have value-based components. It is easy to assume that everyone in the organization has common values. However, this may not be accurate.  Without candid discussion and documentation there may not be a clear understanding of the values that guide the organization. Values Statements alleviate confusion and provide guidance for organizations.

Here are some examples of components of values statements from nonprofit organizations that relate directly or indirectly to inclusiveness or diversity:

1. Commitment to equitable treatment and elimination of discrimination in all its

forms at all organizational levels and throughout all programs.

2. Commitment to diversity in all staff, volunteers, and audiences, including full

participation in programs, policy formulation, and decision-making.

3. Recognition of the rights of all individuals to mutual respect; acceptance of

others without biases based on differences of any kind.

4. Ability to lead and model diversity throughout the organization and to lead

society toward pluralism.

5. Commitment to individual and organizational efforts to build respect, dignity,

fairness, caring, equality, and self-esteem.

6. Diversity – Embrace cross-cultural diversity – Adaptable, anti-racist, embracing

cultural differences, open to new experiences.

7. Respect and value diverse life challenges, creating an environment that is

inclusive of all.

8. Welcome and respect the diversity of our patients, employees, and

physicians.

9. We acknowledge and honor the fundamental value and dignity of all

individuals.

10. We pledge ourselves to creating and maintaining an environment

that respects diverse traditions, heritages, and experiences.

Case Statement

Now that you have completed your Vision Statement, Mission Statement and Values Statement, you are able to complete your most important fundraising document, the Case Statement. Every fundraising campaign has the Case Statement at its center. The Case explains to donors who you are, why they should invest in you and the impact of their investment.

There is an internal version and an external version of the Case Statement. The internal version is longer and has more detail. The internal Case Statement can be 10-20 pages long. It is used as the foundation to create brochures, grants, proposals and press releases. The external Case Statement is drawn from the internal Case and is tailored for a particular audience. The external Case Statement is typically one-two pages in length.

According to Grantspace, your Case Statement should have the following elements:

• How does this organization help people?
• Who do we help?
• What vital services do we offer?
• What is our organization’s track record?
• What are our plans for the future?
• How do we use our money?
• Why do we deserve support?

It should now be clear that drafting these seemingly internal documents will have a significant impact to your nonprofit organization’s external constituencies. This nexus became evident with the introduction of the Case Statement, the document that is central to your fundraising and marketing efforts.  

Part three of this blog series will explore opportunities to leverage your Vision and Mission Statements and your Case Statement to create strategic awareness of your organization.

The Path to Stakeholder Engagement in 2015: Vision and Mission Statements

Every organization and its stakeholders need inspiration and guidance to establish the organization’s vision, mission and values. 

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on building highly effective tools to engage your stakeholders.








Having clear strategic documentation will allow the organization to ensure decisions are:

• Consistent with the vision, mission and values of the organization.
• In alignment with the vision, mission and values of the organization.
• In furtherance of the vision, mission and values of the organization.

The initial drafting of these strategic documents may seem cumbersome to the capacity-constrained nonprofit. However, once created, the templates can be used with minimal changes for years to come.

Various stakeholders will use the nonprofit’s vision, mission and strategic documents:

• Nonprofit leaders: to guide decision-making for the highest impact to the community served.
• Donors: to provide understanding and guidance in investment decisions.
• Volunteers: to provide insight regarding their volunteering commitment.
• Grantors: to increase comfort with the quality of management of the organization.
• IRS:  to verify the organization has been formed for charitable purpose.

Vision Statements

Vision is the possibility and potential of the organization in the future. When analyzing the vision of the organization, you must answer the crucial question “what impact are you trying to achieve and for whom?” Here you are defining the specific impact you want to make and identifying the community you want to serve.

Caution! Your vision should not be focused on your organization but on the community it serves. We all want to provide the highest quality services to our communities or we would not have made the decision to dedicate our careers to the nonprofit sector. Take a moment and reflect on the true meaning of your vision. Is it merely to make our organization the best at providing services to cope with a need or to eliminate that need completely? Vision is the potential for the future. We don’t want to limit our dreams to the treatment of suffering but aspire to eliminate pain, scarcity and injustice entirely.

It has been said that an effective vision statement reflects the conditions once the organization’s mission has been fulfilled. The elements of an effective vision statement are:

• Future oriented
• Likely to lead to a better future for the organization – that is, it fits the organization’s history and culture
• Reflects the organization’s values
• Sets standards of excellence
• Clarifies the organization’s purpose and direction
• Inspires enthusiasm and commitment
• Reflects the uniqueness of the organization
• Ambitious

Mission Statements

The mission statement is the roadmap to the vision for the organization. It should provide a clear, concise and compelling declaration of a case for the need the organization fills. It states why you exist, what you do and how you do it. According to Bloomerang, a mission statement should have the following elements:

1. Inspire
2. Capture the mission
3. Establish a tone for the future
4. Be easily remembered
5. Set your organization apart
6. Encourage participation
7. Promote
8. Guide daily actions
9. Offer encouragement
10. Stand the test of time

Your first step for 2015 should be to draft your vision and mission statement if you have not already done so. If you have a vision and mission statement that you have not reviewed in the last three years, take this opportunity to re-evaluate it. 

Is your organization still doing what your mission statement says it does?

• Have you made progress?
• Is the initial problem to be solved still a problem?
• Is the focus too broad or too narrow?

Once you have completed your vision and mission statements we can move onto your other strategic documents. We will discuss these documents in Part 2.

Nonprofits and The MOOC Opportunity

The Emergence of the MOOC

2012 saw the emergence of well-financed massive open online courses (MOOCs). These online classes are often provided by prestigious universities, such as Wharton, MIT and Stanford. The curriculum is diverse and expansive and offered at minimal or no cost to the student. MOOCs provide enormous opportunity to the resource constrained nonprofit.

I have taken several courses on the Coursera platform. My classes included a Wharton Marketing course, a Stanford class on Organizational Analysis and a University of Virginia course on New Models of Business in Society, just to name a few. I found the courses to be well-designed, engaging and highly informative.

MOOC’s, Think of the Possibilities

Professional development is an area where MOOCs provide opportunities to nonprofits. Recruiting and retaining employees can be a challenge for cash-strapped nonprofits, even though nonprofit employees are not primarily motivated by money. Consequently, employee engagement is one of the keys to nonprofit workforce satisfaction.

Nonprofits could incorporate MOOCs into professional development by including courses in employee position objectives and aligning professional development courses and objectives with the organization’s mission. Professional development and mission alignment can help nonprofits increase workforce satisfaction and improve employee retention rates. Thus, employee professional development benefits both employees and the organization as a whole.

Robert Connolly highlights his use of MOOCs to augment higher education in There’s a MOOC For That: How My Grad Students Complement Our Curriculum with MOOCs. He referred students to MOOCs that provided higher quality classes or specialty areas not offered by his university.  Nonprofits could use a similar approach to augment needed or desired skills in their nonprofit organizations.

Professional development is only one example of how MOOCs provide opportunities to nonprofits at little or no cost. Claudia W. Scholz describes creative ways nonprofits can utilize MOOCs including;

• Professional development,
• Accomplishing your mission,
• Volunteer and Client training and education, and
• Crowdsourcing and community building.

MOOC Providers Pay Your Way

MOOC providers also see the opportunity for nonprofits to benefit from their platform and are helping nonprofits to better utilize their services. Udemy announced in July of this year a new two-part program providing monetary grants to help social-change agents create their own Udemy courses and affordable access to Udemy classes.

Research MOOC platforms and see if you can advance your mission using online courses.