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.