Assessing Mission, Mandates and Values
How to assess mission and values
Your organization's mission statement is a definition of the agency's reason for existence – its true purpose. Your organizational values shape how your agency carries out its mission. Together, they encapsulate who you are, what you hold to be important, why you exist, what you do, and who benefits from it all.
This starting point lays the foundation for everything else and provides some additional benefits as well.
- It lets you know how aware people in the agency are of your agency's core business and purpose.
- It gives you a way to state again who you are and what you are about.
- It provides an opportunity for stakeholders to express a common commitment to the purpose and work of the agency.
- It serves as a reference point when ideas surface and plans for the future begin to take shape. You can always go back to your mission and values to check whether an idea really fits with who you are and what you are primarily about.
To get started find out:
- Does your agency have a written mission statement that accurately captures who you are and what you are about? If so, what is that statement? If not, how will you develop one?
- Are there commonly held values that shape how your mission is carried out? If so, what are those values?
There are different approaches you can take to assess mission, values and mandates. The approach you choose depends on the time you have available for this activity – and how much time you are devoting to strategic planning overall. To assess your current mission statement and values, you could:
- Work it through yourself and then ask others for feedback
- Recruit a small volunteer working group to represent various points of view and work with them
- Conduct information-gathering activities with key stakeholders together in a group
- Hold a focus group with key stakeholders
- Have stakeholders answer a series of key questions, either in the form of a survey or a structured interview
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Key questions for mission and values
Here are some key questions to ask about your mission statement and values. It is not necessary to use all of these questions, but do pick several of the ones that most suit the needs of your organization.
- Who are we?
- Why do we exist? What needs do we meet?
- In general, how do we respond to these needs?
- Who are our key stakeholders and what should they expect from us?
- Does our current mission statement reflect who we are and what we do? If no, what changes should be made to it and why?
- How well are we fulfilling our mission statement, values and mandates?
- What is our agency's reputation with our community and with funders? How do we know?
- What are our agency's strengths in meeting the needs of practitioners, learners and the local community? How do we know?
- What are our agency's beliefs and values re: the programs we offer and our abilities to address particular needs in the literacy community? Are these beliefs and values documented?
- What strengths does our agency have with regard to its mission and values?
- What challenges do we face with regard to our mission and values and what recommendations can you make with regard to these challenges?
For more information on assessing these core issues in your agency, please read this article called “Mission, Vision and Values”: www.charityvillage.com/cv/research/rstrat34.html.
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