Following up on our post from yesterday about mission as the first principle of nonprofit management, it is a sad fact that many nonprofit organizations do not have their mission front and center in all of their public expressions—website, newsletters, reports—and this lack can be a problem.
It can be a problem if it impacts organizational culture to the point where mission is forgotten or garbled.
As often happens, without the mission front and center, the work can drift from it, and even become ineffective.
It can also become a legal problem, as the foundation for receiving tax exemption is performing the mission as promised in the founding documents; consequently, organizational mission and capacity should be reviewed regularly.
Brinckerhoff (2000) in his best of class book, Mission–Based Management: Leading Your Not-For-Profit in the 21st Century, (a newer edition came out recently) notes:
“If you do not perform your mission, the IRS can take away your tax exempt status under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code….
“Every three years (at the same time that you will be writing your strategic plan…) you need to revisit your mission statement. You need to take the opportunity to get your staff and board input into what your mission should be. In most cases, it will be the same as it is now, only you will have a renewed sense of its urgency as a result of the discussion.” (p. 36)
About
- David H. Lukenbill
- I am a California native, married, we have one daughter and live close to the American River with two cats and all the wild critters we can feed. I am a management consultant to nonprofit organizations and have an Associates of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Sacramento City College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Administration degree, also from the University of San Francisco.