At a nonprofit where I led marketing, our mission statement was “Creating a Better World by Serving People in Need.”
We believed in it. We felt strongly about it. We felt it in our guts. In short, we lived it every day.
The organization provided several very different social services. Our mission gave all of us a common purpose. No matter which program you worked for, we were all there to serve people in need.
But it wasn’t particularly useful as marketing copy.
“Serving people in need” could describe thousands of nonprofit organizations, some like us and others very different. It didn’t tell a potential donor why they should support us or who, specifically, we served. It didn’t explain a particular program or what made our organization different. And it didn’t tell donors or volunteers what kind of impact they could make by getting involved.
We tried using the mission as our tagline. But on its own, it wasn’t descriptive enough to grab attention or engage supporters. It sounded like a lot of other nonprofit taglines. It left people thinking, “And…?”
Eventually, we realized the problem wasn’t our mission statement.
The problem was us. We were asking it to do a job it wasn’t designed to do.
That experience eventually changed the way I thought about nonprofit branding.
A nonprofit brand has to start with a strong understanding of organizational identity, but understanding who you are is only the beginning. You also have to translate that identity for the people you want to reach.
We Needed to Translate Our Mission
We had to get more specific about what our mission meant to the different people we were trying to reach. A donor, volunteer, community partner and someone looking for services each came to our organization with different needs and different levels of knowledge about our work. We couldn’t expect one broad statement to communicate everything each of them needed to know.
The mission stayed the same. What the audience needed to understand changed.
Your marketing messages have a different job. They need to help a particular audience understand something specific about your organization.
Your mission provides the foundation for your messaging. It doesn’t have to be the message itself.
My team was responsible for communications for several very different social-service programs. Repeating the same organizational mission wasn’t enough to communicate the value of each one. We had to translate the mission into something meaningful for each program and audience.
Why Nonprofits Fall Back on Their Mission Statements
Mission-driven organizations spend a lot of time thinking about mission. They should.
Your mission guides strategy, helps employees understand your organization’s purpose, and gives different parts of the organization something to rally around.
It can also become so familiar internally that we assume it tells people outside the organization more than it actually does.
Real-Life Case Study
Imagine an organization whose mission is to improve the lives of people experiencing homelessness. That tells me something important about the organization’s purpose. But if I’m a potential donor, I probably have more questions.
What does the organization actually do? Does it provide temporary shelter, permanent housing or both? Who does it serve? What changes because of its work?
If I’m looking for help, my questions are different. I may want to know whether I can get a meal tonight, whether there’s a safe place for me to sleep or how I can receive services.
A broad mission statement can’t answer all of those questions. And it shouldn’t have to.
Good Messaging Translates Your Mission
Before deciding what to say, you need to understand the person you’re talking to. Their existing knowledge, priorities and reasons for engaging with your organization should influence which parts of your story you emphasize.
Back to the Case Study
Suppose a community partner is interested in supporting the homeless shelter’s meal program. You could tell them that your mission is to improve the lives of people experiencing homelessness.
That’s true. But you could also help them understand that the shelter serves hot meals every day, how those meals fit into the larger services available to residents, and what their support could make possible.
You’ve made the mission meaningful to them.
This is also why a messaging framework can be so useful. It gives your organization a set of core messages to work from without expecting everyone to repeat the same words in every situation.
Start With What Your Audience Needs to Understand
One of the first questions I ask when I begin a writing or messaging project isn’t, “What do we want to say?”
It’s: Who needs to understand this?
Those questions may sound similar. They’re not.
“What do we want to say?” starts with the organization. It often leads to lists of programs, organizational history, credentials, internal terminology and other information the organization considers important.
“Who needs to understand this?” starts with the person receiving the message.
That shift changes your focus. It puts the audience at the center of the story. It forces you to think about what that person already knows, what matters to them and what they need from your organization.
It also helps you move away from institutional language and communicate in terms people actually use.
Try a Simple Mission-to-Message Exercise
Take a piece of communications your organization uses regularly. It could be your homepage, a donor appeal, a program description, or a presentation for community partners.
Find your mission statement in the copy. If it isn’t there word for word, look for language that closely mirrors it.
Then ask:
- Who is this message for?
- What does that person care about?
- What do they need to understand about our organization?
- Why should our mission matter to them?
Now read the copy again. Does it answer those questions? Or does it mostly describe your organization from your organization’s point of view?
If the message feels broad or generic, you probably don’t need a better mission statement. You may need to do a better job translating your mission for the audience you’re trying to reach.
Your Mission Doesn’t Have to Do Everything
A strong mission statement is valuable. It can give your employees a shared sense of purpose. It can help leaders make decisions. It can connect programs that may look very different from the outside.
It also doesn’t have to be your tagline, homepage headline, donor message, program description, and elevator pitch.
Your mission gives you the foundation.
Your messaging helps different audiences understand what that mission means to them.
Our old mission statement meant something to us because we knew everything that sat behind those words. Our audiences didn’t.
Our job as communicators was to help them understand.
That’s not moving away from your mission. It’s making your mission meaningful to the people you want to reach.
You’re making it easier for other people to understand why it matters.
Want more ideas like this?
I write about brand strategy, messaging, organizational understanding and content for mission-driven organizations in my LinkedIn newsletter, Content Marketing Musings.
I help mission-driven organizations turn what they know about themselves into brand and messaging frameworks that make sense to the people they need to reach. If your organization knows what it does but struggles to explain why it matters to different audiences, let’s talk.
