The Marine Mammal Center’s Strategic Planning Framework

As a leader in ocean health, The Marine Mammal Center has grown significantly to address the threats our ocean and planet face. When the Center opened in 1975, our work focused on marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation, and our efforts soon expanded to include research and education.

Animal welfare remains at the core of our mission – we continue to respond to marine mammals in distress and provide them with life-saving care, but our mission now extends beyond that. While much of this work is about giving individual patients the care they need for the best possible chance at life, it is also about populations as a whole, and the health of our ocean and humans alike. This approach is called One Health: the interdependency of human, animal, and environmental health and sustainability.

As our work expands and evolves, we must align and prioritize our efforts with an overarching trajectory to continue making the biggest possible impact. This has been the driving force for developing the strategic planning framework. 

The diagram below is our strategic planning framework structure, which shows how our efforts ladder up to our mission, vision and values. The bottom two layers, our goals and strategic priorities, are the stepping stones that allow us to accomplish our mission and vision.

Updated Mission Statement

Through this process, we made a small but notable change to our mission.

Old Mission: The Marine Mammal Center advances global ocean conservation through marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation, scientific research, and education.

New Mission: The Marine Mammal Center advances ocean health through marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation, research, and education. 

This better reflects our Theory of Change, which is highlighted below, specifically moving from global ocean conservation to ocean health, and removing “scientific” before “research”. Ocean health better clarifies our intent and explanation for how we rely on individual animals to help us protect the ocean. We also acknowledge that there are many ways to conduct impactful research. Removing the word “scientific” creates inclusion for more research communities and processes.

Our vision remains the same: We are guided and inspired by a shared vision of a healthy ocean for marine mammals and humans alike.

Theory of Change

Part of the strategic planning framework structure is the Theory of Change, which is an organization’s best hypothesis for how the change it intends to achieve is likely to happen. It outlines our unique approach to accomplishing our mission. At the Center, we use the Theory of Change to connect the breadth of our mission from individual animals to ocean health. See the diagram below.

For example, when we saw an increased rate of cancer in our California sea lion patients, we investigated and discovered that it was partly linked to DDT pollution. Sea lions are eating the same DDT-contaminated fish that is in our homes, which raises concerns about the potential impact on human health. By advocating for DDT pollution to be thoroughly investigated and addressed, we’re not only helping individual sea lions but also the wider ocean ecosystem and human health.

Organization-Wide Goals

Under the Theory of Change is our seven-year strategic directive, four-year strategic priorities, and annual organizational, departmental and individual employee goals. These ensure that our dynamic organization is aligned and can see how individual’s work ladders up to the mission and vision.

Our strategic planning framework, including our updated mission statement and Theory of Change, reflects our growth as an organization throughout the last 50 years. It also provides the foundation and focus for our future work, allowing us to have the biggest possible impact. This is essential because our ocean is in trouble and it is more important than ever to protect the marine ecosystems that are vital to the health of all life on Earth.