Writing or updating mission and vision statements can be a frustrating “design by committee” process. A theory of change can help an organization focus on the right ideas to include in their mission and vision statements.
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Mission, Vision, and Values Examples
Writing a mission, vision, and value statement for your organization is hard. Read our article and resource Revising Mission Statements: What good? For Whom? Then come back and take a look at this collection of mission, vision, and value statements for inspiration. We’ve picked organizations that have interesting mission and vision statements (and included value statements when available). See our comments after each one.
Read more »Leading with Honesty, Humility, and Joy
At Aurora, we work hard to lead with honesty, humility, and joy. Of our three core values, we believe this one offers the most insight to who we strive to be in and through our work. We like it because it lets us be us. It reflects our vision for ourselves as leaders and our vision for how we interact with other nonprofit professionals.
Read more »Practicing Generosity Inside and Out
Practicing generosity is a core value for Aurora. How can a business be generous? We don’t completely know the answer but we know practicing generosity is right because we feel fulfilled when we do it. In this post, we’ll give you greater insight into ways we practice generosity daily and why generosity is so important to us.
Read more »Revising Mission Statements: What good? For whom?
Updating your organization’s mission statement is important, mundane, rewarding, and painful all at the same time. These are the resources we use to help organizations understand, assess, and update their mission statements.
Read more »Four Tips for Leading from the Middle of Your Board
What does leadership look like when you aren’t in charge? We often do this in our professional and personal lives – managing up, down, and sometimes upside-down. This is what it means to “lead from the middle,” and the concept can be useful to board members.
Read more »Big Questions Prevent Big Problems – Effective Survey Design
Surveys are often the first or only evaluation tool used by nonprofits, but poor survey design can produce untrustworthy or irrelevant results. The first step in creating a new survey, or reviewing an old one, is to take a step back and ask four big questions. These questions can prevent big problems down the line. What
Read more »Team-Based Inquiry: Evaluation for the Development and Planning Process
Evaluation is an extremely helpful addition to any strategic, planning, or development process, but it is often left out due to time or money constraints. Not all evaluation processes, however, come at a high cost: Team-Based Inquiry could be a user-friendly way for your team or organization to incorporate evaluation into its development and planning
Read more »Supporting Evaluation: A Guide for the Nonprofit Board of Directors
As leaders in an organization, the board plays an important role in supporting the practice and use of program evaluation. In this article, we discuss the leadership actions that support program evaluation in an organization and how a nonprofit board of directors can contribute. This is the third of three articles on the role of
Read more »Using Program Evaluation: A Guide for the Nonprofit Board of Directors
When engaging with program evaluation, a nonprofit board of directors should not fall into the trap of playing only an oversight role. Board members are highly-skilled volunteers who live half in the organization and half in the community: they add valuable perspective to the results of program evaluation. But, as anyone who has served on
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