If your ministry focuses too much on growth, you can lose sight of your mission. Yet, you can allow the day-to-day demands to paralyze you to the point where you neglect growth. A healthy ministry strikes a balance between maintaining a strong mission and growth initiatives.
Growth should never come at the expense of your core values and purpose. Growing too fast can cause communication breakdown, disillusionment, high turnover, litigation, and failure.
Instead, align growth strategies with your mission to foster a mission-centric culture. The proper balance will help you navigate a path of sustainable growth while keeping your mission at the forefront of your ministry.
Define and Refine Your Mission
Your ministry’s mission statement describes your unique value and purpose. A mission statement clarifies why you exist, whom you serve, and how you serve them. Your mission statement should guide all major decisions, including programs to offer, to avoid, and which to exit.
To define and refine your mission so it aligns with your current goals and values:
- Gather feedback and data from key stakeholders.
- Analyze the feedback and identify the strengths, weaknesses, gaps, and opportunities for improvement.
- Brainstorm a new or revised draft.
- Validate and refine your mission with stakeholders.
- Communicate and implement it across your ministry.
It is customary to review your mission statement as part of the strategic planning process. You may need to review your mission as your nonprofit grows, leadership changes, or you accomplish your current mission.
Align Growth Strategies with the Mission
It is not enough to say your ministry is growth-minded, you need to develop growth strategies that support and enhance the mission. A growth strategy is a big-picture roadmap to get your ministry from where it is now to where you want it in the future. This involves all departments and aims to grow your ministry from every aspect.
Growth strategies allow your ministry to increase revenue, acquire new donors, fundraise and market better, and expand your ministries.
Assess Opportunities and Prioritize Growth Initiatives
As you look for growth opportunities, view them through the lens of your mission:
- Make intentional decisions. Remain true to your mission and sustain the data-driven solutions that produce results. Adapt solutions for sustainability.
- Adopt an action-oriented approach. Identify lessons and mistakes from the past to keep you moving forward. Focus on what’s important for the next phase of your ministry.
- What does your ministry structure look like? Don’t get caught up in creating too many layers. Bring the team together and avoid duplication.
- Delete outdated models. Pilot new ideas before investing in them and experiment continuously.
- Accommodate growth at every stage. Use your strategic plan to guide resource allocation and budget expansion for infrastructure and program development. Growth requires additional resources.
To continue growing, focus on impact, measure results, and keep the end goal in mind. Prioritize the initiatives that achieve the mission.
Cultivate a Mission-Centric Culture
To have the impact you desire, you will need more than a mission statement. You will need to develop and foster a culture that focuses on your mission. Only when mission and culture work together will you achieve significant growth.
The best employee engagement strategies work when leadership engages management and management engages with employees.
Make sure your employees understand the mission and communicate expectations with them constantly. Share how the ministry is making a difference as well as its successes and challenges. Recognize team members’ hard work. This will build trust.
Communicate the Mission During Growth
As you grow, continue to communicate your mission so you don’t lose sight of your ministry. Remain transparent throughout during periods of growth and change.
Share progress, accomplishments, challenges, and learnings with your team, from stakeholders to employees, to donors. This will keep everyone engaged and excited. They will better understand their role and impact as they contribute to the overall growth of your ministry.
To convey and support your nonprofit’s mission share:
- Evidence of impact
- Stories of life change
- Data demonstrating effectiveness
- Testimonials from staff and volunteers
Show that you’ll listen, learn, and take action to keep everyone on mission and motivated.
Monitor and Evaluate Mission Alignment
It isn’t enough to plan and implement growth strategies. You must monitor and evaluate progress to ensure your course aligns with your mission. If you neglect to check your progress you will make decisions that: 1) don’t coincide with your mission and 2) could lead to poor or disastrous results.
Focus on five areas as you assess your progress and measure growth initiatives:
- Fundraising
- Operations
- Programs
- Donor Attrition
- Return on Impact
Knowing your outcome metrics as you track progress will help your nonprofit gauge growth and demonstrate to stakeholders how your ministry uses funds to achieve the mission.
Navigate Challenges and Maintaining Mission Integrity
As the saying goes, “It’s not a matter of if, but when.”
Every ministry will experience challenges, and in some cases, setbacks. You need to look at failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Only then will your ministry see the type of results you expect.
Prepare yourself, your team, and your ministry for obstacles that will arise. You may need to evaluate your staffing strategies to ensure you have the capacity to deliver on your growth goals.
Communicate and collaborate as you face challenges and look at possible solutions. Remain focused on your mission and culture as you navigate the challenges.
Empower Employees as Mission Ambassadors
Your leadership can’t make growth happen on their own; you need a coordinated team effort to be successful. Don’t mandate or dictate growth plans and expect them to just implement them. The most engaged employees who will act as mission ambassadors understand not only what you are doing but why.
- Communicate your mission. Focus on what makes your nonprofit unique and give employees concrete examples and stories.
- Ask for ideas and suggestions. Employees bring different perspectives and experiences. Collaborate with them for fresh ideas and insights.
- Provide resources and guidance for employees on how to share the mission with others. Have manuals and training available to help employees buy-in and promote growth.
- Show how much you care for your employees. Acknowledge and celebrate their contributions.
Leverage Partnerships for Mission-Driven Growth
As you design growth plans, explore potential strategic partnerships. You can develop partnerships with other ministries, agencies, and even for-profit companies.
Having strategic partnerships in place will boost your growth with access to a larger audience and more resources. Before you begin looking at partnerships, though, you first need to establish clear goals.
Once you have your goals, look for organizations or ministries you can approach. Consider ones in your local community. Make sure they have a mission and goals that align with yours. Build relationships and share helpful resources. Then create a proposal.to explain why you should work together and how they will benefit from the partnership.
Keep the communication lines open and monitor progress so you get the most from your partnerships.
Balance Short-Term Gains and Long-Term Sustainability
How do you achieve long-term sustainability? You need short-term goals and gains. It is possible to have short-term gains without long-term sustainability. This is the danger you face.
Only when you strike the right balance will your nonprofit grow.
As you lead toward long-term sustainability and to ensure your immediate goals support your mission you need to:
- Set SMART goals
- Assess and reassess your priorities constantly
- Communicate the vision and priorities with your team and stakeholders.
- Align your resources and capabilities
- Track and monitor your progress
You will need to adjust your plans and short-term goals as new information becomes available to stay committed to your long-term mission.
Mission at the Forefront
Mission and growth must co-exist for your ministry to succeed. While you may look for fast or easy growth opportunities, doing so without keeping your mission at the forefront will create issues. Don't compromise your core values.
To achieve sustainable growth lean into your mission, values, and purpose.
By striking a balance between growth and mission-centricity, ministries can fully fund their ministry plans and achieve a strong sense of purpose and impact. Growth planning should always align with your mission. The same values that define your ministry’s identity will allow you to drive expansion and progress.