Is your money and mission aligned?
Mission is primary for social impact organizations. But money is also vitally important. Aligning money with mission is one of the most important, but often overlooked, strategic activities that a social impact organization can engage in.
Social enterprises, nonprofits, B-corps, and other social impact organizations exist to fulfill their core mission whether that be serving people in their neighborhood, addressing a core systemic inequality, caring for the environment, inspiring people through the arts, or any number of other important causes.
Mission is primary. Always start and design activities with mission in mind. But almost all social impact organizations need money to accomplish their mission. Money pays for programs, staff, and direct constituent support. Money helps organizations tell their stories, and generate new funding. Without attending to the business of an organization there will be no money for the mission. Attending to both money and mission is essential for successful social impact to happen.
And the two are intimately and deeply tied to each other. The way an organization generates money can positively or negatively impact its core mission purpose. And the mission activities an organization pursues can generate or cost money. This is especially important as many nonprofit and social impact organizations are increasingly looking to generate earned income and not just fund their mission through donations. Social enterprise, as this is often called, has tremendous promise, but also involves some risk if money and mission are not well aligned.The Money + Mission Alignment Tool from RootedGood is designed to help organizations evaluate their alignment of money and mission in order to do both, better. Gain a deeper understanding of how money and mission intersect in your organization by learning this framework and applying to your context.
You can access this tool (and many others) for free with a Mycelium Network Membership. Join today!
“Wow, what an exceptional resource! We often think of the connection between money and mission as a tug of war. This framework demonstrates that they are interwoven and the tool helps focus leadership energy in the right direction.”
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