My experience working with small or recently formed nonprofit organizations always made me interpret mission and vision as the same monster. Most of the time, due to limited staffing and the ambition to do it all, we would find ourselves reacting and not setting or following a plan. Although we would have a mission to abide by, a strategic plan of what we want to do in the short run and where that will take us in the long run was hardly, if ever discussed. Yesterday’s class made me realize that many nonprofit managers, specially if new, can misinterpret the mission as a general and overall plan, without taking the time to plan what it is the organization should do to arrive at its ultimate goal.
At the most recent organization that I worked with, we had as our mission the goal of increasing Mexican and Mexican-American enrollment within CUNY, but we also had as part of the mission the goal of increasing awareness of the Mexican culture, along with creating an academic binational link between the two countries. Our mission, I always interpret as wordy, but too rigid and broad at the same time. I felt that it didn’t take into account the bureaucracy that meant being an institute within CUNY and also the bureaucracy that aiming to be binational would constitute.
During the three years that I was there, we had no ultimate goal and no strategic planning, of what we hoped to work towards and where we wanted to be in X amount of time. We were trying to do everything that might have fallen under any of those three main points of our mission with limited staff and resources. We would take on projects just to take them, and quantity overtook quality.
I came to realize that the lack of clear direction can wear you out. Working on the fly and with no ultimate goal can make you feel like your work has no purpose. Having and abiding by a strategic plan I see as a more productive and rewarding way to run an organization.