This paper examines The Human Rights Campaign's strategic statements—vision, mission, and values—which together guide the organization's work toward LGBT equality and civil rights. The analysis reveals that HRC combines its vision and mission into one lengthy statement on its website, making both statements less clear and concise than standard nonprofit best practices recommend. The values statement is located elsewhere and unlabeled. The paper deconstructs these combined statements, identifies each component, evaluates them against established criteria for effective strategic statements, and proposes a streamlined mission statement that consolidates the core organizational commitments into a single, clear sentence.
Any organization that has a strategic plan in place will also have a Vision, Mission, and many times a Values statement. It is these items that guide the company in making decisions on how best to succeed while still carrying out their primary business. Both for-profit and not-for-profit businesses usually have these statements in place. However, most of the time it is a non-profit organization that is heard to truly focus on their basic tenets and values laid out by those three statements.
Most effective statements are easy to understand—one-sentence statements that describe where the organization hopes to go (vision statement) and what they intend to do to get there (mission statement). The vision statement takes it one step further and describes the desired end state. A mission statement clarifies the organization's reason for being and its approach to creating value.
The organization chosen to examine in detail is The Human Rights Campaign. This nonprofit focuses on working with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community to help bring equality to all people regardless of sexual orientation or gender identification. The Human Rights Campaign, or HRC, is the largest civil rights organization that works to achieve this equality through education and fighting for the adoption of LGBT-inclusive policies and practices.
On the HRC's website, they have listed a Mission Statement. However, upon careful reading, one can realize that it combines the Vision and Mission statements into one cohesive set of paragraphs. There does not appear to be an actual values statement listed prominently. However, the entire website seems to carry information on how they work, what they do, and why.
The HRC's mission statement is listed on their website as follows:
"The Human Rights Campaign is organized and will be operated for the promotion of the social welfare of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. By inspiring and engaging individuals and communities, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT people and realize a world that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is organized for the charitable and educational purposes of promoting public education and welfare for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. HRC Foundation envisions a world where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are ensured equality and embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community."
Deconstructing those paragraphs and reorganizing them makes it easy to see what vision, mission, and values statements the organization is actually using. The vision statement is the final sentence of those paragraphs. It simply states: "HRC Foundation envisions a world where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are ensured equality and embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community."
Guidelines for a good vision statement say that it needs to be clear and simple and should avoid elaborate language or jargon. It also needs to be easily explained by those involved in the organization. All of these criteria are met with the vision statement pulled from the larger mission statement listed on HRC's website. The only problem that can be seen here is that it may be confused with the mission statement simply because it is listed under the heading of mission statement. This is a structural issue that needs to be corrected.
The mission statement, by contrast, is the first set of sentences: "The Human Rights Campaign is organized and will be operated for the promotion of the social welfare of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. By inspiring and engaging individuals and communities, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT people and realize a world that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is organized for the charitable and educational purposes of promoting public education and welfare for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community." These words are cumbersome and repeat some of the same intentions a number of times.
A proper mission statement needs many of the same qualities as a vision statement. It needs to be clear, simple, and avoid elaborate language and jargon. The above mission statement falls short in this regard, as it is far more than one simple, concise sentence describing why the organization exists. However, it can be easily explained by others and is not necessarily confused with the vision statement. The mission is clearly recognizable as that of HRC in several different ways. Overall, while it is understandable, it is much longer than it should be.
Some simple adjustments can be made to improve this statement. Consider this revised version:
The Human Rights Campaign is organized as a charitable and educational organization set up to provide public education and welfare for the LGBT community by inspiring and engaging individuals and communities to end discrimination against LGBT people so that everyone can realize a world that achieves fundamental equality for all.
These words take the core commitment of HRC and boil them down into one strong sentence that fully conveys the mission of the organization. It fulfills the one-sentence rule and is clear about the role of the company and what they intend to do.
To find the values statement for HRC, one needs to look at the HRC Foundation page, where it explains that the HRC Foundation improves the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people by working to increase understanding and encourage the adoption of LGBT-inclusive policies and practices. These words specifically describe the core priorities of the organization's culture and what drives this group to action as a whole. This content constitutes the values statement of this organization, even though it is not formally labeled as such.
"Summary of findings and proposed improvements"
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