Here's how you can effectively convey your organization's mission and vision to volunteers and team members.

Break down the mission into its components, identifying specific roles and responsibilities for each individual. Ensure that everyone understands and aligns with the organizational vision and mission, fostering a sense of belonging across all levels. Tailor communication tools and channels according to staff hierarchy, appointing sector champions who will effectively communicate, educate, and promote a culture of self-monitoring regarding their daily contributions toward achieving the vision and mission goals.

Storytelling is an important part of sharing the vision with everybody in the community and helping others internalize the shared vision. This is more so important when you know that not everybody in the community is going to be as passionate about the community as you. So you will have to creatively weave the narrative that will resonate with the different audiences / segments within the community and engage with people actively in the process of this story telling.

Pulling at people’s heartstrings tends to be remembered more than statistics, even a short catchy mission statement. My own preference is to weave all three, that is have and share a catchy mission statement, paint a picture via a heart string pulling example story and share just a few stats. E.g. our mission is to feed the hungry. My story might be about a family that had no good in their apartment, had only a box of crackers in the past two days who got enough groceries from us for three meals a day for a week for one adult and two kids and even mention wrap around services we connected them to ending with a few stats on numbers served in a month, and breakdown of elderly and kids with a call to action e.g. your gift of $25 will …

Very importantly, you know and embrace the org values, publicize them widely internally and externally, make embracing them part if regular supervision and annual evaluations. Be sure to he the role model of the values. Have this as standing agenda item in team meetings.

Implement weekly check-ins to discuss project alignment, monthly workshops for brainstorming and problem-solving, and quarterly socials to build relationships and share successes. Additionally, hold open forums for idea sharing and feedback, and spotlight different roles to highlight their contributions to the mission. These activities foster continuous alignment, collective reflection, and a cohesive team dedicated to the organisation's goals.

If you believe that you can broadcast a message and expect the community to understand and embrace that message, you are totally wrong there. The message may be important to you but not necessarily to all of them. So you will have to actively engage with the community regularly and the underlying theme of the messaging should be included throughout all your engagements with the community.

And be sure to acknowledge such behaviors in team members, paid and volunteer and encourage team members to shout out others. If someone is failing to honor values or seems to be embracing conflicting values, call them out respectfully and privately.

This training should be a priority in new employee and volunteer orientation. It should be part of your annual mandatory trainings. It should be a recurring part of team meetings and supervisory meetings.

Everything you do in the organisation should reflect the vision (the world you wish to create with your work) and the mission (what you are doing to get to that world). Regular reference to the vision and the aligned organisational values, through communication tools (newsletters / training / recognition processes)will embed these ideas into the culture of the workplace. The staff (unpaid and paid) critically need to see how this is lived through behaviour and so often it is not, and when this happens, a disconnection from the vision, and a confusion of the mission can occur.