How to Write a Mission Statement for a Nonprofit

A mission statement clarifies your organization's reason for existing. A mission statement, along with incorporation as a nonprofit, are entry criteria to be eligible for grants. Here are some tips for writing a mission statement and getting it accepted by your organization.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Internet access

1. Go to Web sites of organizations similar to yours, and paste their mission statements into word processing software. For example, for our organization, we took inspiration from the mission statements of The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

2. Meet with your organization, or a subset of it, to develop a consensus regarding what you want to accomplish, and how. Have the document with other organizations' mission statements available as examples.

3. Draft a mission statement, either during this meeting or afterward.

4. Take the draft mission statement back to the group for revision.

5. Make a formal decision, enter the approved mission statement in the minutes, and publish it. If your organization has a Web site, publish it there.

Tips & Warnings

• Mission statements are typically only a sentence or two in length. They are typically focused enough to clearly communicate the organization's goals but broad enough to provide room to maneuver.
• In the nonprofit world, an organization's mission statement is an entry criterion for grants -- the organization must have a mission statement, and the mission statement must match the donor organization's mission.