Defining the Mission and Vision Statements
It’s true. If you take ten different planning consultants and ask them to define what a mission and vision statement is, you’ll get eleven different answers.
Bottom line, there are a lot of different mission and vision statement definitions floating around out there.
What’s important, however, is that you and your team share a common definition.
Based on years of working with organizations about what works, I’ve arrived at the following definitions:
Mission Statement – One succinct and somewhat timeless sentence that states what your organization does and for whom.
Vision Statement – One succinct, inspirational, and somewhat timeless sentence that describes what "the world" will look like when your organization succeeds at its mission.
Importantly, there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the mission and vision. You want to be able to say that “if we succeed at our mission, then our vision is more likely to happen.”
Given this interrelationship, you can’t write a mission and vision statement in isolation from each other. They are two parts of a whole.
Note that a key element of each definition is that each statement is only one sentence. One-sentence statements will:
Be easier to remember.
Help you and your team focus on the absolute essentials.
Serve as clear filters for making organizational decisions.
Real-world Examples
In the following table are some real-world examples of mission and vision statements.
In the mission statements, words that are bold describe what the organization does and words in italics describe the subject/persons that are the organization’s focus.
Note how each of the vision statements are pretty lofty and inspirational. In fact, those vision statements could even be the same vision for another organization. That's ok. They’re meant to inspire and capture the ultimate picture – however lofty – of what "the world" will look like when you succeed at your mission.
If you’re looking for practical, focused guidance to leverage your nonprofit strategic planning, check out Mission Met: Proven Strategic Planning Guidance to Help You Build a Financially-Secure and Impactful Nonprofit – to be released October 2021.