Ep 302 | Getting Specific with Your Vision and Mission for Better Donor Alignment with Dan Johnson

I've started four of my own nonprofits, and your listeners are about to get the secret sauce effectively to my consulting company, so mildly nervous, but, but the the reason is that a new nonprofit succeeds or fails based on the strength of its vision, and also, perhaps more importantly, a nonprofit does what the people in charge of it want it to do based on how strong their vision is, and so over the past two years, very few people want to work on their vision. They're like, ah, that's

corporate mumbo jumbo, whatever. And they don't realize that when they're brand new in particular or they've not delivered a significant impact, they don't have anything to sell if they're not giving the vision, and they don't have anything for people to join or get excited about if they're not getting the vision. And, you know, I've done just vision statements for only vision statements for people before and 5x to their revenue.

So I just, I'm very passionate about this underlooked and over overlooked area of nonprofits, and how getting it right can literally change everything at your org.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern: Yeah, well, you kind of already touched on my first question, which is, I feel you're right. It's like a box we check, like when you're trying to apply for your 501c3, or you're, you know, doing your board structure, and you're kind of creating the structure of your organization. We set this up, and then we kind of forget about it, or executive

leadership shifts, and we kind of forget about it. So how can we kind of, first of all, if we already have it done, how do we kind of keep it front and center for our team so that we ensure that we are kind of sticking to what we've already determined

are these mission and vision statements. So first of all, you actually have to have a useful vision, and this is not something that is particularly popular in our space, and certainly not in the corporate space, because it's it's both hard and it's something people just like to check a box with. But, but what we call it when you have a really good vision is, we call it a transformational vision, because nonprofits, unlike for profits, you have a for profit, you're looking to serve people and

provide them with services for whatever their needs are. But if you're doing a nonprofit, you're targeting an area where people don't have the money necessarily to pay for or have some way they can't really access those for profit services. And you're going in and saying, We can create a transformation in them. Whether you are if you're a community based nonprofit, then you're transforming people's lives. If you are a educational nonprofit, you're changing people's minds, transforming

their minds. If you are a political nonprofit, you are transforming laws, but you have change as your end game. And if people don't know what change you're going for, ie, what is your vision? Then most of the people you're going to get on board are going to be people who know, like and trust. And trust you, as opposed to people who buy into what you're doing. And

you're going to get very different results from that. So if you look at what we what we consider a transformational vision, so what you're what you'll usually hear is you need a mission, and what you'll sometimes hear is you'll need a mission and a vision. We actually think you need five things. And these five things actually also make up your pitch for your organization. These five things are, you need a founding story. People want to know where you came from.

They're not interested in just supporting something because it's cool. They're like, Why did Sammy go crazy when she was having this great marketing company? Why did she go crazy and start a nonprofit instead like what? What went wrong with you? They want to know that. And number two is you need a very overlooked thing, which is your problem statement. You need a

pressing problem that needs to be solved right now. You need a vision statement so you need your what does it look like when we solve this problem for the people we serve, you need your mission, and your mission only has one goal, and it is to tell everybody how your approach is different. So if your mission doesn't do that, mission statements are the most abused

tool in nonprofits. That is the only purpose. They are how we get from A to B. They're the mission we're gonna go take, you know, the Omaha Beach so that we can defeat the Nazis, that that is not the vision of the military. That is the mission that they are currently on. That is what you're doing. And then finally, your values and your mission, your values really distinguish yourself from other organizations. So if you take,

if you. Have these five pieces in place. Here's my founding story, here's the pressing problem, here's my vivid vision, here's my unique mission and values. Now people understand what you're trying to do when you either really don't have a whole lot to show for it yet, or your leadership team thinks you need to be going in a different direction.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern: So good. And as you're saying this, like I use different terminology when I'm talking about your website, but I think very similar, and that when we talk about your homepage layout, we always advise clients on what's the problem you solve. How do you solve that problem, and why are you uniquely qualified to be the person to solve that problem? And also getting super specific, right? Because a lot of the

problems we're trying to solve are very big, right? So there's a lot of ways to tackle what you're doing, and so people need to know how you're going about it, to know if they're in alignment with the work that you know. Are you in alignment with the with me as the donor, and my values and what I want to give to and I think so. I love what you're saying, because we talk about this in our marketing in a similar way, kind of using what you're talking about. So in light of that, as we think about

all of these different elements. Some you might feel like you are pretty good at. Some you might feel like you need to kind of fix or refine. So if we're listening this podcast and we're like, okay, you know what, this is a perfect time to really review with our team and review with our board, where we stand on all of those things. Is there one of those elements where we should start first, like, which one is the most big picture? Yeah, so the element you want to start with

first is your problem statement always, all day long. Why and why don't you have one? So, for profits and everybody comes, most people come into the nonprofit space with a for profit mindset, and that's good in a lot of cases, but not understanding the difference between for profits and nonprofits is where a lot of the professionals and the business owners that I work with get burnt out. They wonder, why isn't this working? I've been successful before. What's going

on here? You just don't understand the fundamentals of nonprofits. Nonprofits are designed to solve a problem. That's how you create the transformation you have a problem you need to solve it. But very, but very few of them have actually defined that problem. They solve. Businesses solve problems too, but the key word is problems, because businesses go and seek and solve the problems for the people who are able to pay them and they're able to deliver on that problem.

Businesses pivot all the time. The if you have an organization that's going to pivot all the time, start a for profit, they're way more efficient at doing that. But yeah, when people start a nonprofit, they have a problem in mind that they want to solve. They see, you know, their their brother struggles with PTSD, and they've seen some of his infantry men struggle with PTSD, and they're like, we could do something about this. Why haven't we done something about this? Or, you

know, they struggle with it themselves. Or they've seen something in their community. They have a specific problem they want to solve, but they don't realize social change is hard. Like that. The reason the problem hasn't been solved isn't because nobody tried. There have been hundreds and 1000s of people who've tried to solve this problem before you, and it's going to take you 1020, 30 years to effectively make an impact on this problem.

So you need to pick one and go after it, pick one piece of the pie and go after it, and that's what your problem statement does. So what goes into a problem statement? The first thing that goes into a problem statement is what is the specific problem you're solving, right? So you can define this kind of however you want, but it's basically what's the root of the issue. So if you're saying that we want to help veterans. The problem could be that they have PTSD from war.

The problem could be they're going to war in the first place, and that creates the PTSD. The problem could be that they don't have adequate housing, and that makes the PTSD more intense. All of those are very different, 1020, 30, 100 million dollar organizations based on the problem that you solve. So you need to decide what's the root of this. And the second thing you need to do is actually go talk to people who suffer from this problem, right? So we're working on a vision statement

right now, or a problem statement right now. That is for a non partisan organization like educational organization, and their initial problem statement was like, we want to make this system more exciting. Accessible and or there much problem. Say was like, this system is not accessible enough. It disenfranchises people, and you know, it's leads to bad outcomes. Okay, let's get specific. And how you get specific is talking to people who actually struggle with this.

And so what this system actually does is, and we're talking about a kind of national system, so you might even be able to guess which one it is. When I give you what it actually the problem it actually solves, which is, if I can get my computer to actually load this up, because, believe it or not, I do not remember all of my clients, problem statements. Off the top of my head, I do try. This is one that we came up with our election

Well, I guess it tells the system. Our election system is so broken that one in five Americans believe violence is the answer to our problems. The majority of voices aren't heard. People believe that the candidate who wins doesn't win fairly, and politicians we didn't fairly elect are imposing policies on us we didn't ask for. Those are from stories of people who didn't get the result that they needed out of our election system, right? And the last piece, which is in there,

is, what is that reason to solve it? Now, everybody's been complaining about how awful the election system is, how terrible it is, but if people don't know that, one in five Americans when polled, when asked by someone, do you believe violence is the answer to our problems? Answered yes. Now maybe there's a reason to give to this organization instead of something else. That's what your problem statement should sound like. Sami Bedell-Mulhern: There's so many things to unpack here in a

great way. So I want to start with what you just said in that interviewing and talking to people, and I love that you're using their language in your problem statement, because I think so many organizations are like, we're doing this work. This is what we're doing. We're in our industry. We're using our own industry jargon. We're using terms that make sense to us, especially if you're in, social services, or, like, scientific

type causes, or like, you know, what, what have you. But I love that it is speaking to the words that they use, because now you're not only being specific, but you're making an emotional connection with the people that are hearing that statement absolutely and you're actually speaking to if you're someone who might be a donor. This is why I say the

vision statement is the offer. It's the thing that you have to get right before you go fundraise, is if you're talking to a donor and you're using the blase, normal accessibility and yada yada language, they've heard that before, but if you're talking to a donor who has been someone who was disenfranchised, or maybe their you know, Grandfather was disenfranchised by the voting system, and that's the words that they use, wow.

It's like, you get it. You understand this problem, and you do, frankly, like you understand it a lot better than people who sit on their computer and are just like Google or chatgpt what the problem is, and then go start a nonprofit off of it, you genuinely know more, and the donor can tell,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern: yeah, yes. I also want to, like, just as we start to process this problem piece, and as we're like you said was we're talking to donors and connecting with them, like, what does that do then, for our efficiency and our ability to actually close more deals? Because in the time that we're

in right now, there is so much flux happening. Things are changing on the minute sometimes, and so I feel like we're in this space where we're like, okay, I need to grasp at whatever dollar I can get, and we're kind of losing sight of the work that we're doing, especially when we think about grants that we might be going after, or larger corporate sponsors or people that we're connecting with. So how does having this specific problem statement and really kind of the

big picture that you're painting for us here? How does that actually make us more effective? Or how can we use this as a tool right now to be more effective because we can be more streamlined? There

are two words that I don't want on my headstone. I tried. They they're helpful. You know, it's better to be in the arena than not. But what was the point of. Living this life. And, you know, getting to 7080, years old or 90, you know, they'll have to kill me before my brain turns to mush, because that's, that's not cool. I can't live like that. But 7080, 90, right? And you look back on your life, and you're like, What did I do? How were things different? Because Dan was here. What

changed because Dan was here? And if you look back on that and you struggle to find something, especially if you spent your time in nonprofits which are supposed to change that thing, that's going to be really hard, because you can't undo that. You can't go back 60 years and 50 years and try that again. So the question is, do you actually want to make a change, or do you want to labor inside an organization that is less efficient than a for profit, doing for profit work and

getting paid pennies for it? Those, those are your two options, and the problem statement helps you say this, this is what we want to change. This is, you know, it's domestic violence for women of color. It is whatever it is that problem is what you measure everything by, your, your nonprofit, your, your, I always recommend this gets a little bit in division, but nonprofits are slow, and there's a reason for that, and

it's because they're not serious. And I strongly recommend people have in their vision statement a vision metric. In three years, we will do X, a number, an actual number that holds you accountable. Well, if you don't have a problem that you've identified, that vision metric could be anything. If you have the problem, as you know veterans, PTSD, then your vision metric can be we have helped. Your

vision can sound a lot like this. We have helped. And by 2028 we have helped 200 veterans live lives of confidence, peace and opportunity. Now that's real. Now there's something there. If you don't have the problem identified, you can't do

that. So really, if you don't have a problem statement, and you can't tell me as a nonprofit, the problem that you solve, either figure it out or stop, because you're just gonna annoy yourself at how little you get paid for that your family's not gonna like you because of all the extra hours you're putting in to do this, either you're doing nonprofit work or you're not, and that's why the problem statement's so important.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern: Okay, this is really interesting, because the other thing that I love about that specificity is a lot of times we as nonprofits struggle with our impact statements. Well, that doesn't sound like enough people. We're not serving enough people. We're not doing you know, the numbers don't look great, or they don't look as impressive as they

should be. And so I think by being very specific in that vision statement, with that timeline and and your impact, kind of all in one and having a very specific problem statement. Now, when you're going and talking to donors, it's like, we're laser focused, so you can it builds trust, right? We're laser focused. This is what we're doing. We're we're boots on the ground, doing this specific thing. You know, your

funds are going to this specific thing. And then we as nonprofit fundraisers and leaders need to also understand that that means we're not for everybody, and that that's okay. And I think that's where we get hung up on, is that, well, if somebody tells me No, then we're doing a bad job, and we then need to adjust what we're doing, because board member X said this, or donor X said this, and now we should be doing this, that and the other.

So I love the power that that gives you as a nonprofit leader to really lean into the work that you know you're here to do. It does, it gives you and it gives you power when you walk into those meetings, because you know what you're offering. You know whether you know if this donor is interested in solving this problem. They're with you. If they're not, they're not. It gives every member of your team. You know, how many of you, either your volunteers, everybody talks

about herding cats and all that stuff, right? Or or your your your staff members who are going throughout their day to day, if they know what problem you solve, and not just whatever problem Susan wants to solve this week, they can plan. They can come up with their own ideas. They can go execute without you as a nonprofit leader who obviously has all the time in the world, you know, sitting down and having the one on ones with them and, you know, giving them ideas and telling

them what to do. If everybody knows what the vision is and what you're trying to do, they're not coming up with hair brained ideas. Your donors generally are not coming up with hair brained ideas that you now feel like you have to do because they give you money. Everyone is really clear on this is the world we're creating, and frankly, it just gets you further toward the world you want to create because you started or took over this nonprofit in the first. Nice.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern: Yeah, I love that. Okay, so, I mean, I can geek out on nonprofit fundraising mindset all day long, but I want to come back to Okay. So we've got our problem, problem statement created. We feel good about we've got specificity in our vision statement. You know, the mission

is, kind of being our overall guidance. How often do we then need so if I say my vision statement, like you said, in three years we want to do X, how often am I kind of revisiting these statements, either as a leadership team or as a company as a whole, like, how often do we want to kind of tackle that and make sure we're still on track. I mean, more or less every week. Why? Why? Okay, that's how companies do their P

and L, right? You get your sales team together, and you're talking about where we're at for revenue, for the month or for the week or for the day, for the year, depending on the on the company. But it's usually at least by quarter. Um, and your P and L for a non profit, is that vision metric out of the 200 veterans that we wanted to serve by the next, you know, three years and get to this point, where are we at? Where are, you know, our individual metrics on with the individual veterans?

Where's our fundraising at to get us there. What's our

marketing doing to get us there? It is an actual accountability thing, instead of just everyone's you know feels good when they give to your nonprofit, which is not bad, but it will be amazing, the transformation that you have when you stop thinking of your nonprofit as just a way, a place that people give a bunch of money to when they have it just they're extras, they're garbage, they're, you know, you're a charity, and you start thinking of it as the only kind of

organization that can make this impact. You do that, and that's what your vision really helps you do, is define that you're going to be looking at this every week, every month, your team's going to be constantly talking about you're going to share it with anybody who comes on board. You're going to share it with your donor partners. This is an integral part of who you are, just as much as revenue is an integral part of who a for profit is.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern: My business coach has us, you know, we go through a whole year end planning process together as a group, and we do what she called, well, I mean, I don't know if she made it up, but goal card. So she said, literally will fit, send us a physical goal card in the mail, and we write our whole thing down. But what's different, and she says, like, place it somewhere. But what's really interesting is, lately she said, you know, place it somewhere on your desk, where

you can see it all the time. The time, but every month, you need to move it somewhere else, because it's really easy. So I say this because it's really easy to be like, in a board meeting every or in a staff meeting every single week and be like, Okay, we're going to review our like, our problem statement and our vision. And Are we all good? Okay, yep,

we're good. Like, it can be easy to get kind of complacent with that, but the visual of like moving it around on my wall to different places, or on my desk to different places throughout the year really helps you kind of see it differently, because

you can't just tune it out then. And I think it's so important what you just said, and I agree 100% because there's years where I've done the planning process, and then I put my goals away, and I think I'm working on it all year long, and then all of a sudden, I'll pull it out at the end of the year, and I'm like, wow, I really did not and I'm a small team, right? Like I'm in charge of my business. I make all my own choices, and I'll be like, I did not do what? So I think we think that it's

ingrained in our brain. So I love that you said that well, that weekly, and it might feel hard, but like, post it, share it, talk about it, make it. Yeah, I love the idea of putting it in different places, because, like, what does your vision do? It is on your website. It's on the front page of your website, not like as a statement, because that's boring as hell. But like you, you have your vision integrated into your website, because that's the

that's the human action model. Economist lube on Mises, who studied human action, blah, blah, blah academics, he identified that there were three pieces that were required for people to take action, and they are a problem that needs to be solved now. They are a vivid vision of a better state, and they are a path to get from A to B. And you have all of these in your vision. And this is what you need on your website to

convert people. This is what you need in your marketing. Some of your marketing should be focused on talking about the problem. Some of your marketing should be focused on talking about the vision. Some of your marketing should be focused on talking about your mission and why you're different and your values. Like this goes into your marketing. This goes into your onboarding with your volunteers. This goes into everything you do

as an organization. Just think, every time revenue is brought up in a for profit, revision is there in a nonprofit? Sami Bedell-Mulhern: Okay, I want to talk about one. Thing before we kind of wrap this up, because it's such a good I mean, it's such a good conversation as we think about, like you said, onboarding our volunteers. I think staffing is a big issue

for nonprofits. Retention of staff. We know that the development space is losing fundraisers at a rampant rate, and not only that, they're just leaving the industry altogether. So it's not even like they're going somewhere else. So we haven't really talked a lot about value statements yet, and

I know that's part of your framework. But how important are value statements, in addition to everything we've talked about when it comes to attracting the right people and really being intentional with how we hire or who we bring in as volunteers or who we bring in as board members to kind of help support us in this work. Yeah.

So I think value statements can be both very helpful and potentially harmful depending on how you do them. So values are who you are. That's, that's what it is, that's, it's telling it's why it's usually used in a team culture or a staff onboarding, or whatever. It's what are the general principles of this group of people that you're a part of? You have your specific policies, but I really hate it when every action turns into a policy that you can't do now, and you can

front load that by having three core values. If you have 12, nobody knows what they are, three core values, three nonprofit leaders, three core values. And there's a really good article about, I'm trying to remember the name of the top of my head, but basically the difference between values that help you and the values that hurt you is values that help you have a way that the organization upholds those values that can be they can be held accountable to the staff over that so the

difference might be, our value is innovation. We really value, you know, creativity and blah, blah, blah, but the value of innovation, when the organization is doing found something that works and doesn't really want to innovate, and then all the staff come on, they think the value is innovation. The that actually hurts you having it on the wall, because

it's an expectation for these people, right? But if you have our value is innovation, and you have an enforcement statement under it, which is, therefore, we hold innovation summits every quarter for two hours and bring all our staff together and come up with new ideas and where we want to go. One thing that your organization will do throughout the year that is a way you can improve your values and make them actually worthwhile. And then they're just necessary. They're necessary bring anyone

onto your team. They're necessary part of the conversation with any any donor who becomes really large. You need to have that conversation with little donors, not as much, but any donor becomes a significant part of what you do. You need to have that conversation. Anybody who's a part of your organization needs to know what your values are, and that's how you ensure that the culture you want is there when you're not. Sami Bedell-Mulhern: Yeah, well, there's a specificity there, and

there's an accountability there. So I think to your point in how can your value statements help you is that if you're if you don't feel strong enough about that statement that you're going to enforce it, then it has no place as a value statement. Like, I think everybody tends to go to like that. We operate with integrity. Well, okay, great. What does integrity mean? Like, okay, like, what you know, because then if somebody isn't operating within integrity. Like, are you going to let them

go? And who decides that that was or wasn't? And, you know? So I think, like, that's to, you know, to your point, I think that's a great example. And I love giving that specific like, this is what we do, because it also allows you to have conversations. I love that you brought up having that

conversation with bigger board members. Because what we know, or bigger donors, what we know, is that nonprofits have to work a lot harder to build trust, and so if you're the people that are engaged with the organization, don't hold up to those same values, you're going to lose a lot of donors just for that one person, if you take that money, just because you need to take that money, but then something comes out that they're not in alignment with who you are and how you operate. Now we can't

control that all the time. Sometimes we don't know, but doing your due diligence and doing your, you know, having that as best practice, I think, is really smart all around so I'm glad that you brought that up as a statement. I think so many incredible things that you brought up today, and things to think about, tactical things that we can start to think about

with how we approach this. Is there anything else that you would kind of love to bring up as kind of a best practice around this, or maybe something that I didn't ask that you'd love to mention?

I think the the only thing we didn't cover was mission and this is a really easy tweak that anybody can make right now to your mission statement. So do. I'm going to give you a tale of two mission statements. Ready? We feed, we feed food insecure people in the Tampa, Florida area through, you know, pop up grocery store delivery. I'm coming up with this on the fly. Public, grocery store, delivery, delivery to

their houses, and a giveaway, outsider giveaways, great. Okay, that's what most mission statements sound like, and they might have a little vision attached onto the end, so that less people are food insecure. All right, so that's what most mission statements sound like, and let me give you a mission statement that works. We collect, we build relationships between businesses and individuals to deliver, to deliver critical food to those who are left behind by

traditional food sources such as food banks. What's the difference between those two? The difference is your mission should explicitly state why you are unique. Why is your approach to this problem different than anybody else? You feed people, la dee da, you make sure you make in America at least la de da, you make sure that people who can't get to a food bank, people who can't access a traditional food source, have access to food such as seniors, such as people, mobility issues,

whatever. Now we're talking so you can make one quick change to your mission statement and just adjust it so that it clearly states the thing that makes your organization different. It will help you win more grants. It will help you get more attention. It will help your marketing. Sami Bedell-Mulhern: Yeah, I just want to say to listeners that if you're hearing this and you're thinking, Well, I can't

get that specific. I mean, this is just the abundant mindset that I'm always trying to push into everything that specificity allows people to self select out, which is just as important as allowing people to self select in, because your time and your energy is precious, and if they are not the right fit for you, you are going to spend so much time, effort and energy trying To convince them that you are the right organization, versus having five more conversations with people that

are the right person excited and going to give you money. So I love the way that you broke that down. I think it's critically important, and I think now is just the great reminder to sit down and take a look at it and see how you're doing and what that looks like. So Dan, if people want to connect with you, learn more about the ways that you help organizations in this work, and kind of learn more from you. How can they do

that? Yeah, absolutely. So I help business owners and professionals create sustainable nonprofits, and do it using the principles of business, but applied to nonprofits. So you can go to my website, Next Level nonprofits.us. Download the five steps to sustainability so that you actually have a nonprofit that doesn't suck away all of your time and all of your money and creates the impact that you

want it to create. And if you put in the reference code first click, then I will also jump on the phone with you for 15 minutes and give you one tip that you can implement for your organization right away, so you can find that at next level, nonprofits.us thank you so much for listening to this episode, and thank you so much for having me on Sammy.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern: Yeah, it's so great. And you can check out all the links for this episode, the resources and all the ways to connect with Dan at the first click.net/ 302, so Dan, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. So I really want to thank Dan again for joining us today and for sharing

his insights and wisdom, it was such a great conversation. Could probably talk to him all day long about all of the things, but I hope you got some great nuggets, and if you did find something really helpful, or some things, head on over to YouTube at Digital Marketing therapy, and I would love for

you to drop in the comments of this video. What one of your biggest key takeaways was, I'd really love to hear kind of how you're going to use some of these strategies to really think differently about who you're approaching and how you're approaching them to support your organization. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen, and don't be a stranger. Leave

us a review. Tell us what you think about these episodes, and let me know if there's other guests that you think would be great fits for us to talk to here on digital marketing therapy. Thank you so much for listening and taking time out of your day to spend this time with me and I will see you in the next episode.