Before you can stick with a forum and guide it through its journey of achievements, you must first define exactly what you are sticking with and what you hope to achieve. It’s called a mission statement. It describes the purpose of your community’s existence.
By objectively defining what you and your community stand for, a mission statement can serve as a predominant rationale as far as decision making is concerned. In the future, you will want to compare all decisions to this statement before making them. Without a clear, concise mission statement, it is tough to know where you and your community stand.
Very often, community administrators write long and tedious mission statements. These do not serve as useful, inspiring, and very rarely are they logical. The key to writing an effective mission statement is keeping it short and to the point. Ask yourself why you started your forum in the first place. Try answering in one sentence. If you can’t say it in one sentence, you are confused. Take some time to discuss it with your staff members. Revise, revise, revise, until you have come up with something that sounds right and feels right. A successful mission statement:
- Addresses he purpose of your community.
- Explains how you plan on fulfilling this purpose.
- Describes the principals that will guide you in your endeavors.
Google's mission statement is an excellent example.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Writing a good mission statement sounds difficult. It is not difficult. It is, however, not something to be taken lightly, either. This is the sentence that will serve as the light at the end of the tunnel for your community. With a weak light or one that points in the wrong direction, you and your community will end up lost.
