7 Steps to Writing a Green Mission Statement
We have six years left to implement climate solutions for the health of the planet and all people everywhere. Now is the time to rise and take action.
An excellent place to start is to write and publicly post your organization’s “Green Mission Statement.”
The Green Business Bureau encourages all businesses to create a “Green Mission Statement.” I agree! I’m eager to help your organization publicly post your commitment to sustainability and the environment.
Here is your step-by-step guide.
What is a Green Mission Statement?
A Green Mission Statement is your organization’s commitment to action on sustainability. It supplements your organization’s overarching mission statement. Put another way, it is your current mission expressed through a sustainable lens.
Coming up with an official statement will hold your organization accountable and engages and inspires people who care about your mission. Ideally, it will express how you will be more environmentally responsible than in the past and get into specifics relevant to your area of work. According to the Green Business Bureau, a good Green Mission Statement should include:
WHY - what you believe
GOALS - what you hope to achieve
CRITERIA - how you will measure success
How to write a Green Mission Statement for your non-profit
Step 1: Bring together a team to write the statement: Ultimately, your Green Mission Statement must be approved and adopted by the organization's leadership, typically the Board of Directors. A representative group of Board members, staff, and constituents who care about your mission can work on proposing a statement for the Board to approve. Here are some guiding questions to answer:
Who among the Board leadership will be involved?
Who else should we include?
Are our constituents included in this discussion?
Who on staff understands these issues firsthand?
Step 2: Start with celebrating: What have you already done? Identify what your organization is already doing to be more sustainable. Your committee can help to document and celebrate the efforts you’ve already accomplished. Noticing what you are doing and making that work visible may also help you identify areas where you can improve.
What have we already done?
What was the positive impact of our actions?
How might we celebrate?
Who should we recognize for their efforts?
Where might we share these success stories?
Step 3: Think ahead: What might the future hold? Take some time to explore how a changed climate over the next 10, 20, or 30 years will impact your organization’s long-term viability and mission impact.
How will the changing climate impact our constituents, donors, and the long-term vitality of our organization’s mission?
What might be the risk if we take no action?
How might we plan now to be better prepared for the future?
Step 4: Make it meaningful: In what ways is the goal of sustainability aligned with our mission, vision, and values? Discuss the organization’s mission, vision, and core values. Explore how sustainability goals and planning for the future align (or don’t) with your organization's mission, vision, and core values. You don’t need to be an environmental organization to care about sustaining a healthy future in your organization’s mission.
In what ways do our mission, vision, and values align with sustainability and concern for a healthy environment?
How might acting more environmentally responsibly help us better serve our organizational mission?
How does inaction hurt our mission, put us at risk, or act against our core values?
Step 5: Get specific: What actions would make the biggest difference? Make an honest assessment of where your organization uses the most carbon. Also, consider sustainability measures you can take that would make the most significant positive impact on your mission or the constituents you serve. Finally, of all the things you could do, which are most aligned with your mission and values?
Which actions will reduce the most carbon?
Which actions would have the most direct positive impact on the constituents we serve?
What steps might we take to save the organization money and make our spaces safer, sustainable, and more comfortable?
Of all the things we could do, which actions would best align with our mission and core values?
Step 6: Get real: What goals will you set? Now is the point where you commit to a specific set of actions. You’ll write your goals and share them publicly. When writing your statement, be sure you are using plain language that anyone can understand.
What will we do, and why?
How would we know if it is working? What would be different?
How would people know if we’ve been true to our word?
Step 7: Post your statement proudly and publicly. Once your statement is approved, post it to your website, discuss it in newsletters, share it with donors and funders, and include reporting in your annual impact report. Engage and involve your constituents, donors, and stakeholders in your actions.
Examples of Sustainability Mission Statements
Here are some examples of possible Sustainability Mission Statements to help inspire you. Some are from real organizations, and others are listed here for inspiration.
We are not throwaway people; we don’t want to live in a throwaway society. Therefore, all of our community programs, meals, and events will strive to reduce as much waste as possible, compost as much as we can, reuse what we can, and recycle what we don’t consume to the best of our ability.
We can do better for our children, the planet, and everyone everywhere. We commit to acting now to reduce our schools’ CO2 emissions, remove fossil fuel from our school’s energy use, and teach our children the skills they need for the future they are facing.
A year from now, we will proudly say, “Our organization will be powered by renewable energy from this day forward.”
We will invest our organization’s endowment in line with our values of peace, justice, equity, and sustainability.
Sustainability and Right Relationship: We make a commitment to sustainability principles in assessing our ongoing operations and new endeavors to ensure that they are in the right relationship with our spiritual, financial, environmental, and human resources. We commit to long-range planning to sustain our facilities and programming.
We will seek products made from recycled materials and eco-friendly energy resources when purchasing products.
All our programs and services will be grounded in sustainability principles.
We will move to clean energy for our offices, and our organization’s new vehicles will be electric to minimize CO2 emissions.
We will offer safe and healthy jobs with fair and competitive wages. We also encourage our employees to go green too. We have created an interest-free loan fund of up to $2,000 per employee for those who want to install heat pumps, move to energy-efficient appliances, or drive EV cars.
We maintain a diverse, participation-based culture that works collaboratively to establish our sustainable commitment for this year, and we will repeat this process every year.
Our Board commits to the following sustainability commitments this year: 1.) Reducing in-person meetings to once a year to reduce our carbon footprint. 2.) Offsetting carbon for the Board members’ travel. 3) Meals paid for by the organization will be vegetarian. 4.) Since our staff works from home, the Board will investigate ways to help staff members live and work more sustainability from home. We will discuss and update our sustainability goals each year.
Our goal is to serve the most vulnerable people in our community, knowing that they are the most negatively impacted by a changed climate. In the coming years, we will be ready to help more people in the hottest, coldest, and stormiest weather. We will do so by . . .
Commit to creating a green mission statement. Don’t get stuck or stalled. Please get in touch with me if you would like my help. I’m passionate about helping organizations take action on the climate, and I would be thrilled to help you. And by all means, please share your proud statement when you have one!