Membership

When implementing programs or preparing for change, it is important to provide direction for your component's future. 

The first step on being a mission driven organization is to evaluate the organization’s mission and whether it accurately reflects what the leaders want the organization to accomplish. One way to ensure this happens is for the board to collect feedback from members and community organizations on their perceptions and feelings about the component. This feedback is crucial for evaluating and developing your organization’s mission and vision. This outreach can also result in sharing resources and achieving overlapping goals and educating outside communities on the role of the organization.

Once your organization has an accurate mission and vision, the next step is to develop a strategic plan. The strategic plan is a set of concentrated goals used to accomplish the mission statement and should be the basis of every decision the component makes. Use the strategic planning process as a time to evaluate how your component operates.

• What is the state of the component's finances?
• Are operational procedures working well?
• What type of training and support are volunteers receiving?
• Are there programs the Board should add, stop, or revamp?
• Are their outside organization with which the component should partner?

Clear, mission driven goals should drive the creation of the strategic plan. The strategic plan is then supported by the component's current programs. 

As you work through evaluating programs, monitoring and evaluating how effective programs are at accomplishing their objectives as these objectives should be directly related to the big picture strategic goals of the organization. 

Successful programs continue to be successful when the volunteers involved are motivated and achieving successful results.