Non-compelling nonprofit mission statements are about as common as gray November days in Seattle. Nothing to write home about, and mostly harmless.
Wouldn’t it be nice if mission statements weren’t unreadable, committee-written blobs of jargon, but little jewels that helped motivate donors to care and to give?
Nonprofit Hub has some help for making them more like that, at Nonprofit Mission Statements — Good and Bad Examples. Here are thing elements a mission statement should include:
- A Cause or Who You Serve (What matters? Who is important?)
- An Action (What are you doing?)
- A Result (What change can you see?)
Here are a couple of the examples (there are more, so go see the post):
Good: charity:water
We’re a nonprofit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries.
Not So Good: Springboard for the Arts
Springboard for the Arts is an economic and community development organization for artists and by artists. Our work is about building stronger communities, neighborhoods, and economies, and we believe that artists are an important leverage point in that work. Springboard for the Arts’ mission is to cultivate vibrant communities by connecting artists with the skills, information, and services they need to make a living and a life.
My test for a useful mission statement: Can a donor (who’s not an insider) tell from reading it exactly what will happen if she gives?
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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