Where most nonprofit organizations fall short.
Vision and Mission statements are a dime a dozen. You can auto generate either with a series of inspirational words. You can gauge the validity of vision and mission statements with a simple exercise, ask the organizational leader to write their vision and mission statement from memory. In my experience they are usually around 80% accurate. Take that same exercise to the volunteer board of directors and the success rate drops to less then 30%. In fact, often while leading this exercise volunteer board members will confidently spout off vision and mission statements that are actually counter to the productivity of the organization. The failure of organizational leaders to recall their vision and mission statement is not an indictment on the leader, rather it is an indicator that the vision and mission statement on the organizations masthead does correlate to the actual vision and mission statement of the organization.
Executive directors, staff teams, and boards need to invest in the challenging work of drafting accurate vision and mission statements. BUT, you can not stop with just statements. Measurable impact is the only way to gauge the validity of mission and the audacity of world changing vision. Let’s take a step back, define vision and mission, and then identify a few ways to define mesuarable impact.
VISION
Vision statements communicate the way the world will look if you are successful. Vision statements are big and bold, the state how the world will change because of your organization. These statements should live at the intersection of audacity and specificity.
MISSION
Mission statements define how your organization will accomplish the vision statements. Mission statements include specificity and high level information about your organization.
For example take Nomi Network’s well crafted Vision & Mission
- Our vision is a world without slavery where every woman can know her full potential.
- Our mission is to end human trafficking by creating pathways to safe employment, empowering women and girls to break cycles of slavery in their families and communities.
I have specifically chosen Nomi Networks Vision & Mission becuase I know they fully embody these statements. Further, they have done the heavy lifting of taking these big idea statements to identify mesuarable impact.
If a vision statement is well crafted it will take a lifetime to accomplish. In order to keep your team and investors motivated you need a defined set of impact measures. Impact mesuarables inform the organization and investors of progress toward accomplishing the Vision. Further, impact measurement allows the organization to test the hypothesis of it’s mission statement.
Consider these questions when developing impact measurement:
- Will your organization increase or decrease a statistic in a specific demographic?
- Can you define the personal impact of your organization?
- Do you have an annual organizational growth goal?
- Do you have an annual fundraising goal?
- Do you have an annual giving goal?
- Does your organization have specific requirements about cash reserves?
I am sure you can imagine other questions, the goal is to develop a dashboard to track success. If you succeed you can celebrate; if you fail, even better! Failure to meet measurable impact goals reveals a weakness in your mission statement. The world needs your organization to succeed, but without a target we will never know.
If you need help defining measurably impact 412 project is here to help. You can reach out here to begin a conversation.