MISSION STATEMENT
When put on paper, an elevator speech often makes a darn good mission statement. A mission statement informs an audience about the nature of your agency’s work and motivates a response, which may be to donate funds or volunteer time. The best have a powerful emotional component. In the normal course of writing proposals, grantwriters frequently write or, more accurately, rewrite mission statements. I discussed mission statements in Chapter Four, commenting that too often mission statements are too long, lacking in energy, and uninspiring. They are frequently written by committee, which may explain why they have these common flaws. My advice is this: an agency should seek input from its key stakeholders—board members, staff, ...