As former nonprofit people, we understand how easy it is to take an organization’s vision and mission for granted. Beyond reciting some version of them when introducing yourself, you might not think much about the words. You’re busy doing the work, so surely it aligns with your vision and mission… right?
Not always. But before we go further, here’s how Onside Partners defines these terms:
Vision: An inspirational, ambitious description of the world when your organization and its allies are successful
Mission: A concise statement of how your organization contributes to creating that world
While facilitating strategic planning processes over the years, we’ve interviewed hundreds of nonprofit staff, board members, and external partners and asked them to state the organization’s vision and mission in their own words. That last part is important, because it’s not a memorization test – it’s how they understand what this organization does and to what ends. It’s common to find that not everyone is on the same page about vision or mission or both, especially at the outset of a new initiative or in organizations that haven’t gone through a strategic reflection process in a while.
Even when there is alignment about organizational purpose, another common finding is that the nonprofit’s work is not fully in line with the mission. This can look like taking on work to fill a budget hole or because it’s the pet project of a board member. Neither of these examples are inherently bad, but in in the social sector, where burnout and overwhelm are far too endemic, mission and work mismatch can have harmful consequences.
If we find misalignment during an organizational assessment, it’s usually the first thing we tackle. Helping an organization find the right words to describe the vision and mission in a way that everyone can understand provides an important foundation for subsequent decisions throughout the rest of strategic planning, such as what work to prioritize going forward. We often find that getting the mission and vision just right is an iterative process that we continue to revisit while we build out a theory of change. (No spoilers – but that’s what we’re talking about next!)