As others have been addressing in their posts, we have spent the last few weeks drafting and redrafting our mission statement…a process I never imagined would have been quite so difficult. I assumed going into the mission drafting process that since we were all very devoted to building La Ceiba it would be easy to define why we want to form a microfinance program and how we are looking to achieve that goal.

We all had very different ideas on what a mission statement should include. After weeks of going in circles and not making progress, David and I were tasked with forming a couple of mission statements that would then be voted on during our Thursday class period. Even with the two of us the process deemed to be difficult. As I was constructing drafts I considered three factors that needed to be included:

1. Our purpose, 2. Our Business, and 3. Our principles/beliefs.

All of these components needed to be included, yet I felt that it needed to also be a phrase that would be moving. As Dr. Humphrey put it, we want our mission statement to remind us why we do what we do when things are tough and not going smoothly. We want it to motivate us every day.

David and I talked a lot about the difference between the mission, vision, and values statements. We did some research into other non-profits’ mission statments and realized that in most cases the statements are separate from one another. For example, Big Brothers Big Sisters separates out their mission and vision statement but includes them on the same informational page. We noticed, however, that they did not include a values statement. We assume the reasoning behind this is because most of their followers will already understand why their work is important and therefore they do not need to specifically define their values. As La Ceiba, however, we are often asked about the significance of our microfinance work. David and I agreed that whether included in our mission statement or not, our values statement needed to be specifically highlighted.

In the end, David and I drafted a couple of mission statements that were discussed during Thursday’s class. The first was more of a traditional mission statement, short and to the point:

The Mission of La Ceiba is to enable impoverished workers in Honduras to develop microenterprises and buttress their famillies against the indignity of poverty.

The second was a mission and values statement combined:

We believe in a world where hard work allows every individual the opportunity to achieve their inner potential. As a microfinance program that provides financial, social and educational support, La Ceiba empowers struggling Honduran communities to combat the indignity of poverty that has stripped them of this right.

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While it seemed the majority of our members agreed that our mission statement should be more of a mission/values statement, we still debated over the word choice. Specifically, as David addressed in his post there was a very heated discussion over whether to use the term “poverty” or “inequality.” In the end, the concensus seemed to be that inequality better described our mission. While it was a very frustrating last fifteen minutes of discussion, I hung up my Skype call thinking that I am very fortunate to be a part of a group that is so passionate that we spend large periods of time debating the word choice of our statement. In the end, I believe we settled upon a mission that is specific enough to guide our work, yet broad enough to grow as we grow as an organization. Here is our final mission statement:

La Ceiba envisions a world in which every individual can realize their potential through hard work. As a microfinance program that provides financial, social and educational support, La Ceiba empowers struggling Hondurans to overcome the inequalities that have denied them this right.

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La Ceiba has settled upon a mission statement, marking a significant step in its development.  Here it is in full:

La Ceiba envisions a world in which every individual can realize their potential through hard work.  As a microfinance program that provides financial, social and educational support, La Ceiba empowers struggling Hondurans to overcome the inequalities that have denied them this right.

This statement is the single most important one we will articulate.  Legally the mission statement will  dictate everything we do as an organization, and psychologically it will serve as the manifestation of our identity.  While months later it may sink to the back of our minds, it will always serve as a point of reference for any questions we encounter in our development.  Therefore it is important that the statement be focused enough that we can attain our goals, yet flexible enough that we are free to grow in relevant new ways.

The most challenging aspect of writing the mission statement was coming to consensus.  After two weeks of not progressing very far, Dr. Humphrey tasked Megan and me with the responsibility of drafting a preliminary mission statement to be modified and confirmed by the team on the following class.  The task was difficult even for two people, but we managed to come up with something that would be slightly tweaked and accepted at last.  In both drafting and finalizing the mission it helped to adopt a systematic methodology that would cover all the bases:

1. What is the purpose of the mission statement? Before you tackle what you want to say in the mission statement, first tackle what you believe the mission statement means in itself.  Will the mission articulate our goal, our vision for the future, or both?  Will the mission statement mention the values that guide our leadership?  Not all mission statements are the same in this regard.  Once your board agrees upon the purpose of the mission statement, its contents should become much more obvious.
2. What is the purpose of the organization? Regardless of how you define the mission statement, it must in some way articulate the purpose of the organization.  What gap do you see your organization filling?
3. What do you deem critical to success? Your purpose should be driven by at least one overarching goal.  By what means will your organization fill the social gap it has identified?
4. What do you see as fundamental to your identity? Your purpose is driven by your identity, which may include the values you deem necessary to guide your operations.
5. How will you communicate your mission? Your statements of purpose can be written in whole or in parts.  Will you conjoin your purpose, vision and values all in one statement; or will you divide them into separate, respective statements?  Both methods will fulfill the same goal in different ways.  The manner in which you articulate the mission will depend upon which one you see as more fitting to its rhetorical purpose.  I recommend writing the mission both ways, then selecting the one that delivers the tone you are looking for.  La Ceiba, for example, agreed that it could not feasibly isolate its purpose from its values or vision and therefore conjoined them into a single statement.

Poverty or Inequality?

In the last fifteen minutes of class, as the mission was just a proposal away from acceptance, one word threw the entire discussion into a heated passion.  Was it the poverty or the inequality that we strive to help struggling Hondurans to overcome?  For the past two weeks we were set on eradicating poverty.  But Rachel suggested that perhaps there was something more to it; that while the indignity of poverty weighed down these people from prospering there was a glass ceiling physically denying them the ability to even attempt.

I was not immediately sold on the idea, nor was Dr. Humphrey who, as the chief economist in the room, rightly defended the case for targeting the word “poverty.”  But rather quickly we began to see a paradox: does poverty beget inequality, or does inequality beget poverty?  Can you explain the propensity for women to be comparatively underpaid on economic terms, or is there something more purely social or psychological at work?  Dr. Humphrey upheld the assumption that those with economic power would overcome such social constraints.  But the crux of the argument lay in the fact that we are dealing with economic development, and those social constraints prevent many people from attaining the economic power to overcome them.  Prosperity yields power, yet power is a requisite of prosperity; therefore prosperity cannot be attained by the powerless.

La Ceiba witnesses a situation of powerlessness—poverty—in which people lack the most basic means of social and economic advancement.  Banks will not grant these people the initial capital they need to start a business; they are considered a risk if only because they lack collateral.  In this case, yes, poverty is the root of the problem.  But what caused the poverty to exist in the first place?  Most of those people were either born into poverty or thrown into it when Hurricane Mitch destroyed everything they knew; they had no say in the condition in which they live, and they have no say in changing it.  That they have no say in changing their lives is a result of the economic system that their society adheres to, not of poverty in and of itself.

Were there any institutions to enable the poor to prosper, then poverty would not be a problem.  But those do not naturally exist in a capitalist economy, which functions marvelously for those with even a smidgen of economic power but completely fails for those either with nothing or with no way to feasibly utilize what they own.  As an American economics class, we believe in the power of capitalism. But my sense is that we are skeptical of its capacity to deliver to the poor.  That is why La Ceiba exists: to lend to those to whom none else dare.  That is how La Ceiba helps struggling Hondurans to overcome the inequality, not just the poverty.  And that is what we settled on.

In the end…

An ideal mission statement would capture the purpose of the organization it serves as collectively perceived by its authors.  But nobody can communicate their thoughts perfectly, and there is no guarantee that everyone will share exactly the same thoughts anyway.  Therefore no mission statement can ever be assumed to be ideal

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.  What we can strive for instead is consensus, a state in which all stakeholders can accept a proposal.  There has been some give and take on all our parts, but La Ceiba has come more or less to a consensus on how it ought to articulate its purpose.  The end result is a product of our collective effort, a statement that will remain a fixed mark of our heritage while we sway, stumble and stride—as humans do—toward our goals.