Choosing Structure and Mission (Foundation Building Best Practice Study Excerpt)

The following section explores key decisions that the creators of foundations must make in establishing their organizations.

Example 1: Defining Mission and Objectives
Esquel Ecuador Foundation
Example 2: Institutionalization of a Founder's Vision
Child Relief and You, India
Example 3: Mission, Vision and Roles
Foundation for the Philippine Environment

What Decisions Need to Be Made about Structure?

Summary Points

Developing vision, mission and objective statements help define the focus of your organization. In building an organization, having a clear focus is essential. The process of defining a vision, mission and objectives can serve to clarify goals and arrive at a niche for the organization. Supporters of the foundation will want to know that the new organization has a clear idea of what it wants to do and does not duplicate existing efforts.
A participatory process of defining the vision, mission and objectives can serve to disseminate your message and garner broad-based support. Missions play a key communication role: they convey to other groups who the foundation is (identity), what it does (purpose) and why it is doing it (values). By including different actors in the process of definition, founders can gain the buy-in of important local and international actors. For example, The Esquel-Ecuador Foundation (FEE) convened a national workshop in Ecuador to disseminate the idea of the foundation and gain feedback from local actors. FEE also carried out a second workshop with national social development organizations, foundations in Latin America and international organizations and foundations. Both activities served to clarify the role of the foundation and to gain national and international support.
A clear vision and mission can demonstrate the level of institutional consolidation of the organization. Articulating and documenting a clear vision, mission and objectives can demonstrate the maturity of the organization. For example, for the first 10 years of the Child Relief and You organization in India, the vision and mission of the foundation were embodied in its founder, Rippan Kapur, and were not written. Once the organization grew and matured there was a need to write vision, mission and objective statements to institutionalize the organization and show that it was an entity independent of its strong founder.

Grantmaking foundations share some or most of the following features: they may be nonprofit, non-governmental, tax-exempt, public service, and have an independent governing board. The governing body may represent the interests of its local constituencies (national or regional), sometimes with international representation. Some have permanent endowed funds.

Defining the Institution

Vision statements are used together with the mission statement to express how the world will be different as a result of the foundation's work. An example of a vision statement is given in the example of the Foundation for the Philippine Environment below. The statement often emanates from the vision of the founders or the leadership of a foundation, and usually includes:

Identification of particular problems looking for long-term solutions
What the solutions might look like A vision statement can serve several purposes:
It is a recruitment and planning tool
It can be used to attract the top-level leadership needed to assure the foundation's success, and to galvanize the interest of donors and volunteers
It can be a step towards articulating a mission statement.

Mission statements are formal statements that provide direction for programs and strategies, and communicate the organization's identity and purpose to broader funding and social constituencies. Mission statements of grantmakers generally include information on the following points:

The social purpose of the foundation
Its values and identity
Its function

Missions sometimes incorporate the role envisioned for the foundation as a social and economic catalyst. Missions often communicate:

What we are
What we do
Why we are doing it
To/with whom (including geographic boundary)
How we are doing it (thematic definition, process, etc.)

The formulation of a mission statement, however, is not always easily accomplished. Mission statements often seek to go beyond the mere explanation of a foundation, and embody the values for which the foundation stands and the dreams and commitment of the founders. The articulation of the purpose of a foundation is an ongoing and evolving process as founders and their advisors define it and express it in early memos and correspondence, in consultative workshops, in concept papers and feasibility studies, and in founding documents. Mission statements are not static documents, but rather they stand at the core of the decision-making process: mission is the point you always come back to, as a Board of Trustees, a CEO, and a staff person.

Objectives

Objectives are statements of more specific goals that the foundation plans to achieve. These goals can be monitored, quantified, measured, and evaluated. In foundation documents, they might accompany or follow closely upon the mission statement and explain what the foundation plans to do to realize its mission or vision. How this will be done is articulated in proposals and annual plans and through descriptions of program strategies. Objectives are often accompanied by strategies, which are statements of a more operational nature that provide an instrument/way to fulfill the stated objectives of the foundation.

Note on Registering a Foundation

There is a statutory body in most countries charged with supervising, and, in some cases, stimulating the philanthropic (often called "charitable") sector. In countries where there is not such an entity, founders may find themselves faced with negotiating with their government to find a "space" for their foundations. For information on ways to register a grantmaking foundation, founders may find a council of NGOs in their country or a center for philanthropy in their region (some are listed in the bibliography).