Defining Your Mission and Vision
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of responsibilities on your plate – knowing everything your organization is doing is good, but sensing that the pace is unsustainable?
If that sounds familiar, the issue may not be your workload – it may be a lack of clarity around your mission and vision.
“Know what you’re called to do, what your organization is set up to do – and by default you’ll find what you are not called to do and be involved in.”
Your mission and vision define who you are as an organization. They shape how you operate day to day, what you pursue, and ultimately what kind of legacy you leave behind. They don’t just guide strategy – they act as a filter, helping you determine what you say yes to, and just as importantly, what you say no to.
I remember a missionary in Haiti once saying,
“You have to say no to many so that you can say yes to a few.”
Unfortunately, we can’t do everything. Fortunately, God doesn’t call us to.
“If we really have too much to do, there are some items on the agenda which God did not put there. Let us submit the list to Him and ask Him to indicate which items we must delete. There is always time to do the will of God. If we are too busy to do that, we are too busy.”
Elisabeth Elliot
A clearly defined mission and vision will keep you on track.
In short, the Mission defines why you exist and Vision defines where you are going.
Mission: Your mission should answer the following questions:
Why did you start this organization?
What is the big problem you’re looking to solve?
Who do you want to help?
As you work to define your mission, clarity may also come from what you are not called to do. Are there people you don’t feel drawn to serve, geographies outside your desired scope, problems you’re not passionate about solving?
Your mission can’t be so broad to include every need and every idea you might come up with. Founders often have shiny object syndrome.
In my family organization, one of the challenges we faced was that my father felt personally responsible to meet nearly every need he encountered. Our mission statement was so broad that almost anything fit within it.
Over the years, that lack of clarity led us to do many different things across multiple countries. We ran schools, medical clinics, orphanages, and businesses overseas, while also operating youth centers and programs in the US. We supported international education initiatives and ran an intensive internship program that included weekly Bible school-level training.
We accomplished a great deal and helped many people, but at a significant cost. For years, my father and I regularly slept only two to four hours a night. We lived under chronic stress, dealt with ongoing illness, and pushed far beyond healthy limits.
My father developed heart issues in his late forties and later died from a heart attack at 53. In my mid-twenties, I experienced severe burnout that affected my ability to focus and function for several years.
The work was good. The mission was not clear enough.
You owe it to yourself, your family, and those you serve to define your mission and not to try and meet every need in the world.
I had a counselor who used to regularly tell me, “There is only one God, and you’re not him.”
Another coach told me, “Jesus already saved people, stop trying to be a savior, he is much better than you are anyways.”
If you’ve already established an organization – go back and look at what you wrote as your “purpose clause” or “business purpose”.
You should also be able to articulate your mission in very simple and brief terms. There are many exercises you can go through. Once you define your mission, I would recommend that you boil it down to a simplified MISSION STATEMENT.
A study done by Stanford found that an eight-word mission statement is the best. It is long enough to describe why you exist and short enough for people to recite and remember. A short statement like this also gives powerful clarity when we are making decisions. Some examples of short to the point statements are:
“Empowering Haitians through education, jobs, and healthcare.”
“Delivering daily access to fresh, affordable food.”
“Transforming classrooms through care, faith, and innovation.”
“Rescuing victims. Restoring lives. Reforming systems.”
Your mission statement can be different than your marketing tagline. It should still be short and to the point. Not only does it provide clarity to your team, but it also makes it crystal clear to those who you want to partner with. If someone is going to donate to your organization, they are more likely to partner deeply when they know why you exist. Especially if it is tied to their core calling and purpose in life.
You don’t want your mission statement to be something only you can recall and remember, but also that of your staff and partners. You want people to talk about you and what you do. Make it easy for them to share with their friends.
Mission is also incredibly important in your presentations. Whether it is an elevator pitch or an official fundraising presentation, mission should be included. When I talk about the five questions that every organization must answer, the first two questions are “who you are” and “what are you doing” – These can both be answered in part by your mission and vision.
As you work to bring more definition to your mission, consider involving others in the process. Around 12 years into our organization, we decided to rebrand and work on some of our marketing. We liked this idea of an eight-word statement. We put it out to our donors as well. We went to our primary donor audience, program participants, staff, volunteers and asked them – what are the things you see that we do well at? If you were to describe the reason we exist, how would you describe us? These answers became part of our internal brainstorming session.
Once you feel you’ve exhausted all the aspects. Put it into an AI chat and ask it to help you summarize.
Play with it. When we came up with our mission statement it wasn’t a small thing. It took an entire day with the executive team to pull it apart and come up with the final statement we wanted.
When I was building out my Legacy Leadership programs, I went through a 12-month training. Each morning, I had the opportunity to share my mission statement with a peer group. I tried out different variations of my statement to see what felt right. See what resonates and what doesn’t. Find out what sits well with you or rolls off the tongue well. Sometimes you must try it on for bit.
Regardless of whether you have your eight-word statement, it is incredibly important to define why it is that you exist as an organization. A person with no identity is constantly running around trying to be everything to everyone; seeking validation for whatever the person in front of them wants. They don’t know who they are or what they want, so they become something different for everyone. They end up losing themselves. It is the same for an organization, and so much worse too.
Vision: Vision describes where you are going. In the shorter term this would be your 10-year, 3-year, and annual goals. What do you want to accomplish. How do you want to serve the people you’re called to serve.
In addition to mapping out your short to midterm vision and goals. I encourage people to think about their ultimate and wild vision. A few examples of this:
“To eliminate generational poverty in Haiti by creating sustainable access to education, employment, and healthcare in every department of the country.”
“To raise and commission 10,000 faith-filled leaders into spheres of government, business, and education to influence culture with integrity and purpose.”
Once you have identified the directionality of your organization through your large vision, it is time to work on making this large vision actionable. I like to start with a 3-year vision. I find that this is the perfect length of time. It is far enough into the future that people won’t get caught up in the weeds of “what tasks will need to be done.” And it is close enough to today that the average person can envision it and be excited about the possibility of making it happen. I personally love Dan Sullivan’s question: “If we were having this discussion three years from today, and you were looking back over those three years, what has to have happened in your life—both personally and professionally—for you to feel happy with your progress?”
I would encourage you and your team to dream. I often ask, if money or time wasn’t an obstacle, what would you look to accomplish over this 3-year period. Throw it all out there, see what sticks, what resonates. Then, put it through the filter of your mission and vision.
Anything that isn’t part of your overall mission needs to be crossed off.
Anything that isn’t part of accomplishing your BIG vision, cross it off.
Anything that your team doesn’t think it possible, feasible, may need to be transferred to your 10-year vision. That’s ok, just because it doesn’t fit in your three-year plan – if it fits within the path you are taking, don’t discount it entirely.
In establishing your three-year vision, I would encourage you to think about some of the following metrics. You don’t need all this today, but you could use some of the following items to define three-year metrics.
Annual Revenue
Number of Staff
Number of Volunteers
Number of Program Participants
Number of Monthly Donors
Once you have your three-year vision, then we will set annual goals. I’ll write more about this in a future article. You can also reach out for access to my Vision to Action course
For now, just remember – when you focus on too many things at once, you’re less likely to get any of them done.
