Creating your Mission Statement

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"If you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which way 

 you go."
Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland

The all important mission statement is the most foundational business planning you will do for your budding creative reuse center. It will encapsulate your purpose and identity.  It will justify your raison d'etre. It will inform all of your activities and programming. Having a carefully crafted mission statement will have a significant pay-off for the life of your organization. And, at the end of this process, you will know where you're going.

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Building Your Advisory Board

When you decide to move forward to open a creative reuse center, one of your best assets will be your group of trusted advisors. An advisory board is a collection of individuals that you choose based on the strengths they bring to your project. They may be friends, professional colleagues, people you admire in your community or even those you seek out through referrals or on boardnetUSA. 

There is a difference between a board of directors and an advisory board. At this point, unless you already have acquired 501(c)(3) status through the IRS, yours will be an advisory board. Unlike a nonprofit board of directors, they do not have governance or legal responsibility for your project. They are assembled to help you achieve your vision and act as your wise guides. 

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Gameplan for Readiness

Okay, okay. You’ve thought long and hard about it and you’ve concluded that you’re right for creative reuse and creative reuse is right for you. You know that you’re passionate about starting a creative reuse center in your town, you have found some supporters and advocates, and you’ve decided what business model might work best for you. So, you’re ready to dive in, right? Well, almost…

photo courtesy of sxc.hu

Take a few deep breaths and visualize where you are and where you want to go. How are you going to communicate this vision to your community members? You should already have experience with this since you just completed your feasibility study. Think back to when you were talking with potential supporters. Were you able to develop an elevator pitch? That is, a clear and concise but genuine description of what you’re working so hard for? Were there certain phrases or words you used that really caught people’s attention?  

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Is Your Community Ready? Your Personal Feasibility Study

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What would be more mortifying than throwing a party and no one came? All the excellent planning and preparation falls flat if no one is interested in showing up. Generally we have good instincts and imagine that if we find something exciting and compelling, others do too. The problem with that logic is what psychologists call “confirmation bias”. People tend to hear or interpret information that supports their own beliefs. If I believe that creative reuse is the greatest thing ever, I may tend toward interpreting ambivalence as a positive response and even subconsciously screen out conflicting information. While creative reuse is the best thing ever, you need to find out if other people in your community agree.

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