How To Improve Your Organization’s Vision
Vision for a nonprofit is the first step in achieving traction as an organization. In his book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, Gino Wickman outlines how to achieve success as an organization. While the origin of these principles were for businesses, since the book’s release, the application has also been adapted for nonprofit organizations. It is important to have a clear and focused plan for what you are attempting to achieve. This is what organization’s know as their vision. A nonprofit’s vision governs the organization’s values and goals and can also be called their strategic objectives. To cast strong vision and apply it requires asking the right questions like what do you value? What are your goals for the future? Additional questions a nonprofit should ask in determining it’s vision include the following:
- Beliefs: What do you believe are the guiding principles that will enable you to achieve what you are planning to accomplish? What areas of focus will you pursue?
- Timeline: What are the things that you want to do in the next 90 days to achieve success? What are the things that you want to achieve over the next 2 years?
- Strategy: What is the plan to accomplish before you achieve the long-term vision? What will help you achieve these long-term objectives?
These categories of questions for vision-casting become the basis for decision making as an organization. As the director of the organization or chairman of the board, thinking with the future in mind will help form a vision that sustains difficult circumstances or shifts in culture. These values are the foundation upon which you will act every day. It is the reason you make the decisions that you do. Those values must be reflected in every person who is hired or who becomes a member of your organization. If people discover they do the opposite of what your organization values, it may be time to eliminate those who are members of the organization.
Vision shows how far in the long run the organization wants to go. It demonstrates what it will look like a decade from now and informs what things will look like in the next 90 days, year, and beyond. It may feel difficult to plan the long-term goals for an organization, however, the leaders that demonstrate the effort to vision cast, have a better chance of accomplishing their goals.
Once vision is set, the organization can then prioritize it’s 90 day, yearly, and three year goals or priorities. It is important to prioritize the goals and set realistic time frames for these goals based on organizational vision. These goal categories can cover such things as gaining more members or gaining new volunteers, fundraising, engaging with the community, and other important issues. Breaking these big priorities into achievable 90 day goals will continue to help advance the vision of the organization while taking the appropriate and small steps that will sustain the organization. Looking at these goals weekly as an organization will keep you on track to be vision-focused and goal-driven.
MyCommunity exists to build relationships and tools that equip organizations so that they can maximize their impact. Our suite of tools is designed to help organizations of all sizes focus on their mission without worrying about the logistics. We understand the importance of building strong relationships, so we provide the necessary tools to maximize impact and make a difference like our easy-to-use platforms MyDonors and MyVolunteers. Likewise, MyNonprofitCoach equips nonprofits with the training they need to be successful. Schedule a demo for any of our solutions here.
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