Creating a new Vision Statement

By Ann Austin

Published Friday, October 3, 2008

A few years ago United Way of Freeborn County enlisted board members for a special committee. The Governance Committee is in charge of offering guidance to the board of directors in planning for the future human needs of Freeborn County and what role the United Way will play in meeting these needs.

Last year the Governance Committee worked on a new mission statement with the board: Advancing the common good for Freeborn County through giving, advocating and volunteering.

This mission statement moves our United Way into a whole new realm: Community Impact. It’s a buzz word with the recent Community Impact Grants awarded, but there’s much more to this idea—how do we go about making real change in our communities? Where is our focus going to be?

The focus begins with our mission statement and will be further explored with a vision statement. Yesterday the Governance Committee met to further discuss ideas and concepts for the creation of a new vision statement.

It’s a very exciting process and takes into account all the different ideas and values of a diverse group of people on the Governance Committee and United Way Board of Directors.

There was much discussion about words that will lead us into the next decade; something to inspire and guide the United Way of Freeborn County. Language plays a large role in the development of a vision statement. Words have different meanings to different people—they can have so much power and convey strong emotions in us.

So, for close to half an hour yesterday, we discussed words, just words: Words that could be confusing or misleading, and should be left out and words we’d like to use in the vision statement: words like enrich, engage, community…

A vision statement is something one should be able to understand clearly, believe in strongly and recall instantaneously. It’s a profound concept and leads me to question: If we all were called upon to develop our own personal vision statement, what would we come up with and how might our lives be affected if we were to have it always in the back of our minds?