Introduction
If you are starting an animal organization, one of the first and most essential governance tasks you should undertake is working with your entire team to develop your mission and vision statements. Some may easily dismiss mission and vision statements as merely aspirational, but this is far from true. In fact, they may be two of the most important keystones of governing your animal organization. Deceptively simple and one sentence each, it can be hard to believe that mission and vision statements can have that much of an impact.
But consider the work involved in animal rescueAn organization that helps secure animals from dangerous or unacceptable situations. As organizations, rescues may or may not have dedicated permanent infrastructure for housing animals. and sanctuary. The never-ending collection of daily tasks caregivers must do to provide compassionate care to residents can easily become overwhelming. Administrative staff can quickly become fatigued when receiving endless surrenderThe act of transferring guardianship of an animal to a person or organization, especially via legal contract. requests and the constant need to fundraise and complete other organizational tasks. If board members are not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of your organization, it can be easy for them to become disconnected. In short, immediate needs can quickly overwhelm the dreams and goals you had when you started on your journey to help animals in need. The lack of connection between those goals and your daily work can easily lead to problems with organization-wide fatigue and malaise.
This is precisely why mission and vision statements are so critical. If carefully crafted, with organization-wide input from the ground up, your mission and vision statements can serve as a compass to help you:
- Center the lives of the animals in your care;
- Create a shared community culture and ethic;
- Inspire staff and help them feel they have a say and stake in your work;
- Steer the trajectory of day-to-day caregiving work;
- Help keep your board and administrative staff attuned to your organization’s goals and needs with regard to your caregivers and your residents;
- Guide your organization’s long-term strategic planning by helping both your administrative and caregiving staff set identifiable goals;
- Promote your organization’s theory of change to the outside community;
- Inspire the communities who support you;
- And help you to quickly communicate your aspirations to potential funders and collaborators.
This may sound like a lot of weight to place onto two simple sentences. But read on to learn what mission and vision statements are, how they differ, and how your organization can make them work for you.
What Is A Mission Statement?
A mission statement should be a single sentence with a few aims. The first thing you want to consider in drafting one is what caused you to create your organization. Articulating why your animal rescue and sanctuary organization exists may seem very easy on the surface. We all know that there is a significant need for organizations to fund and support the ongoing rescue and care of animals in need. It could seem straightforward to write a mission statement like “We exist to save the lives of animals.” But this mission statement is overbroad and doesn’t speak to your underlying values or methods. It could hold true for virtually any kind of animal welfarePractices and policies that promote the well-being of nonhuman animals, specifically their health and comfort. or rights organization! It doesn’t make your organization’s unique qualities stand out or help your participants remember your deeper and more nuanced set of shared values.
Because animal sanctuaries share unique and compassionate values regarding how they care for animals as individuals, in drafting your mission statement, consider your philosophy of care and how your organization implements it to achieve its impact. For inspiration and ideas, it may help to review our resource on what defines an animal sanctuary, as well as our resource on what it means for each animal sanctuary resident to be an individual.
At the same time, you want to keep your mission statement to one sentence in length so that all members of your organization can memorize it. Crafting a brief statement that reflects the nuance that you require can be a tricky balancing act! How do you draft a mission statement that clearly communicates what your organization does and how you stand out without making it overlong or over complicated?
Let’s think of a quick example. Imagine a small sanctuary specialized in the care of sheep, named Happy Sheep. Their mission statement might read something like, “We exist to provide a safe sanctuary for sheep in need, in which they can live lives free from exploitationExploitation is characterized by the abuse of a position of physical, psychological, emotional, social, or economic vulnerability to obtain agreement from someone (e.g., humans and nonhuman animals) or something (e.g, land and water) that is unable to reasonably refuse an offer or demand. It is also characterized by excessive self gain at the expense of something or someone else’s labor, well-being, and/or existence. in the care of knowledgable caregivers.” This mission statement addresses who the organization serves, what service they provide, and how they do it succinctly and effectively.
It can also help to look at some organizations familiar to you and their mission statements. You can find examples here and here. We’ll discuss some tips and tricks for drafting mission and vision statements below and give you some hypothetical examples. First, let’s define a vision statement and how it differs from a mission statement!
What Is A Vision Statement?
Like a mission statement, a vision statement is ideally a single sentence. However, while mission statements focus on the existing circumstances that your organization seeks to address and the means you have to address them, a vision statement is aspirational. A good vision statement looks forward and should encompass the ideal state that your organization’s mission and values seek to achieve. You should think big. Think about describing the world you’d like to see when your organization accomplishes all of its goals.
Again, this is a bit of a balancing act. While you want to create a vision statement that envisions the world you want to see, you’ll want to avoid an overbroad and vague statement like, “A world where all animals are free.” Again, consider the specific goals your organization is trying to address. If your group is specialized in a particular species or a particular aspect of care, focus on that and the future you’d like to see in this realm. The other side of the balancing act with vision statements is how to make them inclusive while avoiding overbreadth. What do we mean by inclusion in this context? Let’s revisit Happy Sheep, the sheep sanctuary that we mentioned above!
Their mission addresses the who, what, and how of what they do. But when it comes to their vision, they can think bigger! Good vision statements will make space for inclusion in terms of both new audiences and collaborators. So in our Happy Sheep example, they can think about how their work connects to the work of other organizations in their area, like those who might work with goats. They can also think about what kind of language might serve as a beacon to audiences that may not be at all aware of the need for sheep rescue, but might be inspired to support it!
A vision statement that is inclusive of both of these groups might look something like: “We envision a world in which sheep and other small farmed mammals exist free from exploitation, and are seen as companions, not objects.” This vision statement is compelling to and inclusive of the work of other organizations working with small farmed mammals, and also may pique the interest of people who were previously unaware that sheep could be good companions to humans!
If you’d like to see some more examples of vision statements to get your thoughts percolating, you can find some here. One thing to remember is that, ultimately, the effectiveness of both your mission and vision statements will be dependent on the process you have used to develop them. So next, we’ll talk about strategies your organization can employ to develop the strongest mission and vision statements possible!
Tips On Drafting Your Organization’s Mission and Vision Statements
We’ll discuss how you should write mission and vision statements first from a more general lens and then narrow down to a few specific drafting tips. Let’s start with the most important question: that of inclusivity. When it comes to drafting both your organization’s mission and vision statements, inclusivity is vital! You’ll want to think about this both with regard to those within and those outside of your organization.
Give Everyone Inside Your Organization A Meaningful Chance To Be Heard
Including all voices within your organization in your process is critical. Creating mission and vision statements (or revisiting and revising them) must be collaborative and participatory. You need perspectives from all levels within your organization to chime in, including volunteers, caregivers, administrative staff, and board members. This is because, ideally, your mission should serve as a guide star for both day-to-day care and administrative decisions.
When your organization is intended to serve the lives of animals, we highly recommend that you give extra consideration to the voices of caregivers who are with them daily. Too often, founders or administrators take on the task of drafting mission and vision statements and then expect them to filter down to “the lower ranks.” This is not a best practice! You should give each voice within your organization due consideration.
Doing so is critical for centering the lives of your residents in your mission and vision. This can be a challenge because caregivers are often caught up in immediate day-to-day work due to the nature of their jobs. However, you should give them a meaningful opportunity to participate, whether by creating a meeting and discussion space within the day where they are free to voice their feelings and opinions, or by providing them with separate paid time where they can think about this carefully and record their thoughts.
You can effectively solicit input from caregivers by providing them with specific prompts for feedback, with additional room to share other thoughts and feelings. This might look like a list of questions. For example, consider this list as a starting point, which you can customize and adapt as you see fit.
- Why do you feel our organization must exist?
- What problem are we trying to solve?
- What unique values do we hold that we believe will lead to change?
- What are our ultimate goals?
- What does the world we envision look like?
- Please feel free to share any other thoughts you may have on how we present our mission, our vision, and how our organization stands out.
Of course, you will also want to solicit feedback from administrators, from your board, and from your existing funders and supporters! The above list should be shared with these groups as well.
Once you have made sure to give folks a meaningful opportunity to share their input, you will need to consolidate the information you have gathered and identify the common threads and the dissenting opinions. Both are critically important because next, you’ll have to build consensus. One way you can do this is by distilling common threads and dissents into general statements, which you can then share with your team. Allow them time to process these statements and give additional feedback, so you can make sure that you have not missed anything! At this point, you can arrange a group discussion to hammer out the final statements.
While this process may seem like it takes a lot of steps and work, the time you invest in making sure to gather all input, distilling statements, and in reaching a consensus is well worth it. First, it is fundamentally a team-building exercise, which sets a precedent for how to conduct future discussions. Second, it empowers your entire team and helps them to feel invested in your work. In the end, what you will end up with are mission and vision statements in which folks truly feel that they had a say and stake in crafting. This makes it significantly easier for all members of your organization to individually and collectively internalize your mission and vision.
After following this process, your mission and vision statements can serve as a guide star for both day-to-day care decisions as well as administrative decisions. Your team wants to believe in the work that they do; concise, clear, and easy-to-remember mission and vision statements that they had a stake in crafting can help them in many ways. For example, if a staff member comes across a tricky care decision or your board is confronted by an ethical dilemma, they can refer back to your mission and vision to help ground them in their decision-making process, knowing that they had a meaningful role in creating those statements.
Get Input From External Audiences And Stakeholders
As mentioned above, inclusion is essential when creating mission and vision statements. It’s important from an internal lens and when it comes to making a case for your organization to external audiences and supporters. So, once you have worked out your mission and vision statements internally, your next step is to test them with potential external stakeholders.
If you collaborate with other organizations, like shelters, rescues, or other sanctuaries, consider running your mission and vision statements past them for feedback. Existing collaborators are likely going to be a sympathetic audience who can help offer you constructive feedback on your draft statements. Even better, as collaborators, they may be inspired by your work to either draft their own mission and vision statements if they don’t have them or update their existing ones so that they complement yours!
Fundamentally, your mission and vision statements are meant to help you articulate your reason for existence and the goals you hope to accomplish, so connecting with other organizations that may overlap with your work is not just a courtesy but a necessity so that you can make sure that you collaborate in unison and solidarity. No organization can operate in isolationIn medical and health-related circumstances, isolation represents the act or policy of separating an individual with a contagious health condition from other residents in order to prevent the spread of disease. In non-medical circumstances, isolation represents the act of preventing an individual from being near their companions due to forced separation. Forcibly isolating an individual to live alone and apart from their companions can result in boredom, loneliness, anxiety, and distress., even within the relatively small world of animal rescue and sanctuary.
Collaboration is a critical aspect of the work involved in collective liberationCollective liberation recognizes that all systems of oppression are intertwined and acknowledges that working in solidarity with one another to undo all of these oppressive systems is the only way we can achieve a world where everyone, human and nonhuman, is truly free from exploitation and harm., so gathering feedback from groups beyond the rescue and sanctuary world can also be helpful. One example would be, if part of your organization’s mission involves outreachAn activity or campaign to share information with the public or a specific group. Typically used in reference to an organization’s efforts to share their mission. on helping folks switch to veganAn individual that seeks to eliminate the exploitation of and cruelty to nonhuman animals as much as possible, including the abstention from elements of animal exploitation in non-food instances when possible and practicable as well. The term vegan can also be used as an adjective to describe a product, organization, or way of living that seeks to eliminate the exploitation of and cruelty to nonhuman animals as much as possible (e.g., vegan cheese, vegan restaurant, etc.). diets, you might want to contact food justice organizations in your area to see how your planned work fits with theirs. Sincerely seeking feedback from all groups interested in work opposing oppression can be illuminating and movement-building.
Getting Granular: The Nitty Gritty Of Language
Once you have done the work internally and checked in with your external stakeholders, it’s time to formalize your mission and vision statements. Here are some key tips:
- The best mission and vision statements are clear, concise, memorable, unique, and are one sentence each.
- Make them accessible and easily shareable.
- Don’t show off vocabulary or specialized and otherwise esoteric terminology.
- Don’t use buzzwords or try to be cute or trendy.
- Avoid using language that is not comprehensible to a broader audience.
Again, inclusivity is key. Think about the various audiences external to your organization who will be reading your mission and vision statements. Think about what is comprehensible and appealing to them. Once you’ve done this, it’s time to write!
Consider the following tips for formatting mission and vision statements:
- In general, although there is no fixed rule for a mission statement, one good formula is something like this: “Our mission is to ____(what)_____ for ___(who)______ by ___(how)______.”
- Similarly, one possible formula for a vision statement is considering a format like: “A world in which…” or “We envision…”
In our sources below, we have a few links that offer you an array of mission and vision statements to review for inspiration. Remember that while certain formulas work generally, you should not be afraid to set your organization apart and stand out from the crowd. Just make sure that your mission and vision statements include your internal team’s feedback and reflect the feedback you have received from external reviewers!
Why Are They Important? Putting Mission, Vision And Value Statements Into Practice
Because we know that it can be hard sometimes to translate theory into practice, it may be helpful to consider two hypotheticals of how different teams worked together to develop mission and vision statements, how they used them to help in different kinds of decisionmaking, and how one team changed their mission and vision over time.
How Mission And Vision Statements Can Guide Administrative Decisionmaking: The Tough Chicks Hypothetical
Organizations can encounter all kinds of thorny issues when it comes to administrative matters, and fundraising can present some unique challenges! Let’s look at how one organization’s hard work on their mission and vision statements paid off in navigating one ethical dilemma related to fundraising:
In the state of Winnemac, there are several rescuers and microsanctuariesMicrosanctuaries are small scale communities of human and nonhuman (generally “unconventional or farmed”) animal companions, who live together in a chosen shared lifestyle and in commitment to ending the oppression of all beings. Microsanctuaries adhere to the notion that no nonhuman member of the community should “serve a purpose.” Microsanctuaries can exist in any context: rural, suburban, or urban. A microsanctuary can consist of as small a community as one animal and one human caregiver. For more information on microsanctuary please refer to the Microsanctuary Resource Center. who work together when it comes to the rescue, ongoing care, and long-term placement of domesticatedAdapted over time (as by selective breeding) from a wild or natural state to life in close association with and to the benefit of humans birds in need. One thing that they have noted is that there are many schools in the city of Zenith that engage in hatchery projects.
Another problem they have noted is that birds from classroom hatcheries are often disabled. For example, they have often accepted surrendered chicks who are spraddle-legged or have other disabilities like perosis.
There are a few sanctuaries in the area with whom these rescuers work closely, but disabled birds are often very care-intensive, which can put a strain on sanctuary capacity. Therefore, a network of caregivers and microsanctuaries decide that they want to start their own organization, which will specialize in the care of non-ambulatory birds. They call themselves “The Tough Chicks.”
The Tough Chicks get together to discuss their mission and vision statements and decide to distribute the list of questions mentioned above to each group member to take home and mull over and then share their responses anonymously. Once they get and consolidate all the responses from the group, the collective answers look like this:
- Why do you feel our organization must exist?
There is a huge demand for caring homes for survivors of hatching projects, especially those who are disabled.
- What is the problem we are trying to solve?
Hatching projects contribute significantly to the problem of breeding unwanted disabled birds, which has caused a huge need for homes.
- What unique values do we hold that we believe will lead to change?
We believe that disabled birds can live high-quality lives and deserve to do so. We believe learning from such individuals can help change minds about the lives of birds generally.
- What are our ultimate goals?
We’d like to advocate for alternatives to hatchery projects and ensure there are sufficient homes for survivors in need.
- What does the world we envision look like?
We want a world without hatching projects, and where any disabled birds in need can find a home.
- Please feel free to share any other thoughts you may have on how we present our mission, our vision, and how our organization stands out.
Our organization is special because of its focus on assuring a high quality of care and enriching lives for disabled birds, and because we keep them in microsanctuaryA microsanctuary is a small scale community of human and nonhuman (generally “unconventional or farmed”) animal companions, who live together in a chosen shared lifestyle and in commitment to ending the oppression of all beings. Microsanctuaries adhere to the notion that no nonhuman member of the community should “serve a purpose.” Microsanctuaries can exist in any context: rural, suburban, or urban. A microsanctuary can consist of as small a community as one animal and one human caregiver. For more information on microsanctuary please refer to the Microsanctuary Resource Center. contexts where they can receive the daily individualized attention that they require.
The group members meet again to review these responses and consolidate them into mission and vision statements. After much discussion and deliberation, they come up with the following:
Mission: Our mission is to protect the lives of disabled birds by advocating against classroom hatching projects, and by providing homes to disabled survivors in microsanctuaries that provide them with individualized care and educate the public about their lives.
Vision: We envision a world where hatching projects do not exist because birds are not seen as objects to be discarded, and where disabled birds are seen as individuals who are worthy of loving care and enriching lives.
The Tough Chicks are pleased with these formulations and set about their work. Among other things, they begin reaching out to school districts in Zenith, offering educational alternatives to chick-hatching projects. They also create videos about the lives of their residents that educate the larger public about the impacts of hatching projects.
After about a year of operations, The Tough Chicks receive an interesting message. It is an offer of substantial funding for their operation but mentions that the offer comes with a special request. After following up, The Tough Chicks realize that the offer is coming from a farmer in the area who sells “classroom hatchery kits” to local schools. In essence, he offers them a yearly recurring gift of $5,000 for the medical expenses of their residents, if they will agree to stop their advocacy against classroom hatching projects.
On the one hand, a yearly recurring gift of this amount would significantly help The Tough Chicks with their substantial veterinary expenses. But on the other – the farmer’s request sits with them poorly. The group gets together to discuss the matter. After their meeting, they decide that the farmer’s request directly contradicts both their mission and their vision. The donation would certainly be helpful in supporting the ongoing care of their residents. But stopping their advocacy against what they view as one of the fundamental causes of the problem they were organized to solve would only result in the ongoing breeding of birds, and in harmThe infliction of mental, emotional, and/or physical pain, suffering, or loss. Harm can occur intentionally or unintentionally and directly or indirectly. Someone can intentionally cause direct harm (e.g., punitively cutting a sheep's skin while shearing them) or unintentionally cause direct harm (e.g., your hand slips while shearing a sheep, causing an accidental wound on their skin). Likewise, someone can intentionally cause indirect harm (e.g., selling socks made from a sanctuary resident's wool and encouraging folks who purchase them to buy more products made from the wool of farmed sheep) or unintentionally cause indirect harm (e.g., selling socks made from a sanctuary resident's wool, which inadvertently perpetuates the idea that it is ok to commodify sheep for their wool).. As a result, they decide they cannot accept the recurring donation with the condition that he proposes.
In this case, The Tough Chicks’ mission and vision were really helpful in helping them navigate a tricky organizational question. Without the guidance of their mission and vision statements, making a decision like this could have been much more difficult! The lesson that you can take from The Tough Chicks is that it can be beneficial to develop a decision-making test for your organization that includes reference to your vision and mission. If any particular decision does not mesh with the values expressed in your mission and vision, it doesn’t happen.
How Mission And Vision Statements Can Guide Day-To-Day Decisionmaking And How You Can Change Them: Chins Up Hypothetical
In the city of Zenith, the capital of the state of Winnemac, there is a real crisis with small mammals needing homes. Chins Up is a small nonprofit that has operated as a chinchilla rescue for around five years. They formed due to a seizure of over a hundred chinchillas from a hoarding situation. Because of the public nature of this case, they received a substantial amount of funding and public support.
Chins Up has cared for the survivors ever since, slowly and safely placing them in homes that they educated on chinchilla care. At the time that they formed their organization, due to the urgency of the seizure situation, they did not draft mission and vision statements. Since then, some of their members came up with the following for their federal and state nonprofit filings:
Mission: We exist to provide homes and lifelong care for the survivors of the Zenith chinchilla hoarding case.
Vision: We envision safe forever homes for all chinchillas, where they will appropriate lifelong care.
Chinchillas are not common companions in the area, and Chins Up has not received many additional requests for help since the seizure. They have also been very successful in finding new homes for survivors and have a comfortable buffer of funding to support the ongoing care for those who remain in their custody.
In their fifth year of operations, a chinchilla arrives at Zenith’s municipal shelter. The shelter reaches out to Chins Up to ask for help with placement. Chins Up recognizes that this request does not fall within the purview of their mission statement. However, they do believe that accepting the chinchilla will promote their vision. Because they have the capacity to take another chinchilla, they agree to help.
When their volunteer, Annie, arrives at the shelter to pull the chinchilla, she starts talking with the shelter staff. Annie learns that while chinchillas are rarely brought to the shelter, there has been a huge influx of rabbitsUnless explicitly mentioned, we are referring to domesticated rabbit breeds, not wild rabbits, who may have unique needs not covered by this resource. since it is just after Easter. Many of the members of Chins Up also have rabbitUnless explicitly mentioned, we are referring to domesticated rabbit breeds, not wild rabbits, who may have unique needs not covered by this resource. companions, and they have some knowledge of rabbit care. Annie herself is a huge fan of rabbits and has two bonded pairs living in her home in addition to her chinchilla residents.
Annie recognizes that there is a gap when it comes to foster and permanent homes for rabbits that isn’t being fully met by existing organizations. There simply aren’t enough homes or foster placements for all the rabbits in need. She approaches the other members of Chins Up to talk about this.
After a group discussion, and after organizers offer members the opportunity to contribute both to the discussion and to submit their input in writing, Chins Up’s members collectively realize that they have the abilities and capacity to help assist with the homing and care of rabbits in need. Therefore they decide that it may be time to revisit their mission and vision statements.
They hold additional meetings to get input from all their members and offer the opportunity for folks to submit their feedback in writing. After consolidating all this feedback, they find that collectively, their feelings about their mission and vision have changed. They feel that they would like to contribute to the work being done on behalf of rabbits in need as well. Recognizing that their existing mission and vision statements are too narrow to accommodate this new purpose, they then collectively revise their mission and vision statements as follows:
New Mission: We exist to provide harbor to chinchillas and rabbits in need of foster and permanent homes in Zenith by providing them with lifelong care and knowledgable homes, and to educate the public about the needs of these animals.
New Vision: We envision a world in which all chinchillas and rabbits in Zenith have forever homes in which they will receive appropriate lifelong care.
After doing this, Chins Up runs these statements past both the Zenith municipal shelter and the local rabbit rescue, The Rabbitat. Both organizations are thrilled to learn about this change in Chins Up’s direction and they work out logistics together so that they can communicate quickly and effectively about rabbits and chinchillas in need. They also decide to share other resources. For example, The Rabbitat also invites Chins Up to their tabling events since Chins Up hasn’t conducted public outreach in this way in the past.
Chins Up’s relatively narrow mission and vision statements, drafted by a few members of the group, served their purposes well for several years. However, over time it became apparent that their members were capable of a broader mission and vision and that revision would also serve the larger community well. In this case, involving a wider array of members in revising their mission and vision statements, as well as consulting with the larger community, ended in a collaboration that will serve animals even better!
Conclusion
Strong mission and vision statements drafted as inclusively as possible can positively impact every area of the work that your animal organization undertakes, from rescue, to caregiving, to ongoing organizational development. The more of an organization-wide collaborative and supportive space you can create to promote meaningful participation, the stronger you can make these statements. With strong consensus, all members of your team can feel that they have a “stake” in your organization. This is not only affirming for your team but will lead to better results for the animals, and a more effective organization and movement overall!
SOURCES:
Weighing The Costs And Benefits Of Nonprofit Status | The Open Sanctuary Project
What Does Philosophy Of Care Mean At The Open Sanctuary Project? | The Open Sanctuary Project
What Defines An Animal Sanctuary? | The Open Sanctuary Project
Chick Hatching Project Alternative Lesson Plan For Sanctuaries | The Open Sanctuary Project
A Guide To Effective Tabling For Animal Sanctuaries | The Open Sanctuary Project
Mission And Vision Statements | The Bridgespan Group
22 Great Nonprofit Mission Statements (2022) | Donorbox
50 Example Nonprofit Mission Statements | Top Nonprofits
What Is A Vision Statement? Why Nonprofits Need Them | Nonprofit Hub
