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How To Write a Strong Mission Statement
What is a Mission Statement?
A mission statement is an answer to the question, “Why do we exist?”
Mission Statements are clear, concise declarations of your organization’s core purpose. A quality mission statement is concise and motivational, embodying the purpose of the organization in a single sentence. For nonprofits, they often include the primary focus of your organization, who you serve, and the overarching impact you aim to have.
Why is a Mission Statement Important?
Your mission statement helps provide clarity of purpose for your organization (i.e. strategic clarity) and motivation to join your cause. Done well, your mission statement not only communicates the “Why” behind what you do but also helps communicate “Why” people should join you in your mission.
What Makes a Good Mission Statement?
Mission Statements are a crucial part of defining your organization’s identity, and it is worth the time to do it well. We have found that the most powerful Mission Statements fit the following criteria:
Concise:
Your purpose should not have fluff, neither should your Mission Statement. Good Mission Statements are usually less than 20 words.
Clear:
Good Mission Statements clearly communicate your purpose to people both inside and outside your organization, so it needs to be easy to understand. Avoid jargon and industry cliches.
Use “Purpose” Language:
The best Mission Statements communicate “Why” you exist not simply the activities that you do. When we work with clients, we like to use the “We exist to…” format. It’s an easy way to create purpose in your mission statement. A quick Google search for “Mission Statement Examples” will get you a bunch of “to…” statements, and inherent sign they are using the purpose format.
Examples:
Teach for America: “To enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation’s most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence.”
American Red Cross: “To prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors.”
National Endowment for the Arts: “To strengthen the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.”
What and Who Format:
Good Mission Statements will define what you do–think impact not just activity–and who you do it for.
Example: The bicycle company Sixthreezero’s mission is “to provide an innovative bicycle experience (What) to all adventurous souls in the world (For Whom).”
Unique:
Powerful Mission Statements are a unique reflection of the organization they describe. Don’t borrow some other organization’s mission statement to be cool. You’re cool. Make one that is about you.
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How to Craft a Powerful Mission Statement – Eight Powerful Steps
1. Gain Perspective:
A Mission Statement is a unique reflection of an organization’s identity (i.e. Purpose). Identity’s are built from our stories, and crafting a powerful Mission Statement requires that we first step into the shoes of the people who lived that story for our organization. We recommend the follow steps to gain perspective:
1. Interview Stakeholders: Interview a few key individuals who lived those stories or, if they’re already part of your Mission Statement team, give them an opportunity to tell their part of the story.
2. Review and Write Out the Organization’s Story: Listening is powerful, but so is writing the story out. We have found there is tremendous power in writing out the highlights of the stories you heard during the interviews, highlighting common themes or experiences that were woven in multiple stories. Review these as a team before you start crafting your Mission Statement.
Bonus: These stories often also form the framework for marketing stories and “About Us” sections for your website, so take advantage of the opportunity!
2. Craft Your Who:
Who do you exist to serve? Start by brainstorming a bunch of options, and then narrow down to your top few.
3. Craft Your What:
What do you do? Start by listing out all the services or programs that you do. Once you have a complete list, start grouping similar ones together. Then at the end, pick your top 2-3.
4. Craft Your Why:
Why do you do what you do? You just spent a bunch of time talking about what you do and who you do it for. Now, start listing out why you do it. What is the impact you hope to have for the people you serve with the work that you do. Spend some time here, creating another long list of options and then narrow it down to your top 2-3.
5. Combine Your What, Who, and Why into a Single Sentence:
Now, and only now, take your top 2-3 from each category and start combining them into a single sentence.
Play around with this some. Try different combinations from each category, combining answers in different ways to create a variety of sentences.
For many organizations, as they do this step, their What falls away and their left with just their Who and Why. Once you have combined your Why, Who, and (maybe) your What into a single sentence that you believe reflects your purpose you’ve completed your first draft of your Mission Statement!
6. Refine Your Mission Statement:
Look through the Mission Statement you just crafted and look for unnecessary words. Are there any words that you can take out? Are there other words that are absolutely necessary? After you have removed the unnecessary words, you’ll be left with a more concise Mission Statement.
7. Get Feedback and Finalize:
Now that you have a refined Mission Statement, it’s time to try it out and get feedback. Present it to your key stakeholders, volunteers, staff, leaders, and supporters to see what they think (especially helpful if it’s the same people you interviewed in step #1). How does it resonate with them? To put it another way, take your freshly minted Mission Statement out for a spin. We recommend letting a new Mission Statement sit for a month or two to see how it resonates with your team. This provides an opportunity to validate and refine further.
Pro Tip: It’s important to remember to refine your Mission Statement again after any feedback or changes from your first version. Too often a leadership team will craft a clear, concise Mission Statement only to add a bunch of fluff to appease all the feedback. Always filter it back down to only necessary words and aim for a clear, concise single sentence. Remember that the purpose of a Mission Statement is to declare your core purpose, not list out every activity or program you offer!
8. Launch and Publicize:
Once you have let your new Mission Statement marinate for a month or two and have refined it as needed (using a similar process from before!), then it’s time to launch your new, powerful Mission Statement! You can now publicize it to your website, marketing collateral, and grant applications and live it out!
Want to see an example of this process? See our example below!
How to Craft a Powerful Mission Statement (Example)
1. Gain Perspective:
To gain perspective for this Mission Statement the team interviewed the founders of a small tutoring nonprofit about their story.
Their Story: The two founders of the nonprofit were ex-math teachers who had seen up close the struggles students had later in life when they struggled early in school. The nonprofit was born out of their passion for helping students struggling with math early in school and advocating for teachers who were already overwhelmed in under resourced schools. The parents and students report that participating in the program not only helps raise math scores, but helps build confidence in other areas of life as the students learn they can succeed.
2. Craft Your Who:
To start, the team brainstormed a list of all the people the organization helps or seeks to help. They then narrowed it to the top 2-3, sometimes combining more than one from the brainstorming list into a single Who for their top 2-3 list.
Brainstorming List
- Teachers
- School administrators
- Kids
- 3rd graders
- Parents
- Single Parents
- Para Teachers
- Middle Schoolers
- Kids who are failing math
- 3rd – 5th graders
Top 2-3
- Teachers
- 3rd-5th graders struggling with math
- Parents
3. Craft Your What:
Just as above for Who, the team created a list of all the services and program they provide, and then choose their top 2-3.
Brainstorming List
- After school tutoring at 3 schools
- Math tutoring for grades 3-5
- Publishing tutoring resources
- Parent-Tutor conferences
- Group tutoring sessions
- One-on-one tutoring
- In class tutoring
- Virtual tutoring sessions
- Education advocacy
Top 2-3
- After school math tutoring
- One-on-one tutoring for kids struggling with math
- Education advocacy
4. Craft Your Why:
Now that they’d written out who they serve and what they do to serve them, the team started crafting their Why.
- Why did they do what they did?
- What was the impact they hoped to have?
They started by doing their brainstorming long list, and then narrowing it to their top 2-3 reasons (they also combined or crafted a few new ones in the process).
Brainstorming List
- Help kids struggling with math
- Take a load off of the teachers to help them focus on other kids
- Help parents
- Raise kid’s math scores to passing or better
- Give kids confidence they can do it!
- Help schools raise their test scores to get better funding
- Provide a safe place after school for kids
- Help kids get at least a “B” in math
- Ensure kids don’t fall behind in school and struggle all the way through
- Decrease the drop out rate in high school due to poor grades
Top 2-3
- Ensure no kid fails math
- Give kids confidence they can do it!
- Put elementary school kids on the path for academic success
5. Combine Your Who, What, and Why Into a Single Sentence:
To craft the first few drafts of their Mission Statement, they pulled together their Who, What, and Why into a bunch of single sentences. Like with Steps 2-4, they started with a long brainstorming list, playing around with different combinations. Then, they worked to narrow it down to a top 2-3, occasionally combining options from their initial list into single options on their top 2-3 list. In the end, they had three solid possible Mission Statements.
Brainstorming List
…to ensure no kid fails math by providing after school math tutoring for 3-5 grade students struggling with math.
…to give kids confidence they can do it by providing…
…to give kids confidence they can do it by providing one-on-one tutoring for kids struggling with math
…to put elementary school kids on the path for academic success through educational advocacy and one-on-one tutoring for kids in struggling schools with overwhelmed teachers
…to partner with teachers in giving kids confidence in math and other academic pursuits and life in general through afterschool and one-on-one tutoring.
…to put kids on the path for academic success with afterschool tutoring and support teachers through academic advocacy.
…to help kids build confidence in math, academics, and life!
…to help kids build confidence.
…to put kids on the academic path of confidence.
…to put all kids on a confident path forward.
…to provide dedicated tutoring that helps kids build confidence and grow in their self-confidence to believe they can succeed in school and in life.
Top 2-3
…to put elementary school kids on the path for academic success through educational advocacy and one-on-one tutoring for kids in struggling schools with overwhelmed teachers
…to put kids on the path for academic success with afterschool tutoring and support teachers through academic advocacy.
…to provide tutoring that helps kids build confidence in math, academics, and life and advocate for teachers!
6. Refine Your Mission Statement:
After they had narrowed down their draft Mission Statements, they set about editing it down. For each one, they looked through, discussed as a team, and decided on what words they could cut from their Mission Statement. Importantly, some of the words they eliminated where things they did and cared about, but they didn’t feel like were core to their mission. They were either a subset of it or were something they could stop doing and still be true their mission.
Option #1
- …to put elementary school kids on the path for academic success through educational advocacy and one-on-one tutoring for kids in struggling schools with overwhelmed teachers
Edited Version #1
- …to provide compassionate tutoring that put kids on the path for academic success.
Option #2
- …to put kids on the path for academic success with afterschool tutoring and support teachers through academic advocacy.
Edited Version #1
- …to put kids on the path for academic success through compassionate tutoring and academic advocacy.
Edited Version #2
- …to put kids on the path for academic success and academic advocacy.
Option #3
- …to provide caring tutoring that helps kids build confidence in math, academics, and life and advocate for teachers!
Edited Version #1
- …to help kids build confidence.
Edited Version #2
- …to provide caring tutoring that helps kids build confidence for school and for life!
In the end, they decided to go with for their organization was “…to provide caring tutoring that helps kids build confidence for school and for life!”
7. Get Feedback and Finalize
Once they had their final draft of their Mission Statement, they shared it with staff, their board, and a few key volunteers and participants to get feedback. While it does not always happen this way, in their case, they ended up using the original draft they crafted from their process.
8. Launch and Publicize
After they had refined their new Mission Statement using the feedback from their key stakeholders, they launched their new mission statement!
Mission Statement: We exist to provide caring tutoring that helps kids build confidence for school and for life!
Starting with just their story and following these eight steps, they were able to craft a clear, concise sentence that proclaims their core purpose.