After making sure that you have as many of the key people, such as board, employees, volunteers, users, donors and community members, involved in writing your mission statement; what is the best way to proceed? How can you simplify the process and cut the amount of time?

One key to making your mission statement process as quick and simple as possible is…thinking outside of the box. While you want as many key people involved in the process as possible, not all of them need to be present at the same time.

For instance, focus groups or surveys can be utilized to gain the necessary information from users, donors and volunteers. You can write a survey and ask them to fill it out confidentially. Then correlate the responses to see what themes emerge. Alternatively, with users and volunteers, you could have a special session where you ask their input on the mission. A great tool for recording those responses is a flip chart that can be filled and then analyzed later. But even if you use these methods to get a consensus, you may still want to invite a representative from each group to the actual ‘missioning’ meetings.

With community leaders, employees and board members, a useful tool for getting them thinking about the mission statement and to narrow the focus a bit is group emails. A great way to get the conversation started is to ask for two things you do that they feel is vital to the organization. After a few days of bouncing emails back and forth, you may all have a clearer picture of what you ‘really’ do.

As a final part of the process, face-to-face meeting is essential. You hear stories about these expensive ‘visioning retreats’ where senior staff and board go off to some exotic location to write an inspired mission statement that all too often does not even accurately reflect the organization. I am a firm advocate of the opposite.

I believe by meeting where you actually provide your services you will have a better picture of the things that really are most important. If you are a community center, book a room for the day. Then on breaks, get out and see what really is happening. If you are a school, then have it in a classroom. If your charity is mobile, then the solution maybe to go to an area where your users frequent.

Begin the day with reviewing all the work that has already been done, then use elimination to narrow the field. Sometimes it is not even a matter of eliminating a point, but of combining two or more closely related ones into a single comprehensive solution.

Do NOT rush it. If towards the end of the day, you have not come up with something then agree on another meeting date and continue the dialogue through email until then. This is one of the most important things you will ever do. Do it right.

Even if you do have something at the end of the day, do NOT rush it. Write it up in an email and submit it to the group. Then have the board actually take it up for approval at their next meeting. Hopefully, by this point everything will go smoothly because they feel that they and everyone else had full participation in the process. If not…you are going to hate this one…then go back for more meetings.

The good thing about it all…a well written, thoughtful mission statement can last you years before it needs to be reviewed. Isn’t that worth the effort?

With over a quarter of a century of leadership and fundraising experience, Terri is passionate about helping small charities (those with less than 250K income) achieve big results. She is currently completing an e-course on leadership, management and fundraising for charities. By completing the course, charities will acquire all the basic tools and skills to improve their fundraising capacities, including trusts, major donors and corporate partnerships. To find out more about this e-course or to receive monthly newsletters, visit her blog BLISS-Charities.

Article Source