Essential Fundraising: Mission and Impact
What is Our Mission?
More importantly, what is Our Impact?
Such simple questions…but should have deeper meaning…something you believe in, something you know is right!
Often, I ask the mission and impact questions of nonprofits – expecting the deeper meaning answer, but often get, “we help poor children get meals, or we help families out of poverty.” An answer I’ve already read on the organization’s website.
The mission is “why” you do what you do, not the means by which you do it.
The mission directs you to do the right things now, and into the future. So it must be clear and must inspire.
Making a DIFFERENCE is the MISSION – the organization’s purpose and reason for being.
Each of the more than 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the US may have a different mission – but transforming lives is always the starting point and ending point.
At the end of the day, the ultimate test will not be the beauty of the mission statement, but the impact of changed lives, communities, and society