Have you advanced your organization’s mission today? Your readers are eager to know about it!
Every outreach or fundraising piece you write needs to speak to your organization’s reason for existing in the first place. That is, each page should remind your readers that you never forget what you set out to do in your community.
Every values-driven organization has a specific mission to make a positive difference in the world. My guess is that you already know what yours is. You may not have memorized your official mission statement, but you are clear on the essence of your organization. Your mission, after all, is a key part of your organization’s brand.
To your readers, your mission (or perhaps some particular aspect of it) is the heart of the matter. They want to hear that it is central to everything you do. They want to know that your work continues to be relevant to their lives and the life of their community, even as times and circumstances change.
There is no shame in reminding yourself of your organization’s mission statement once in a while. Some people I know even plaster it on the wall or make it their screensaver to keep it at the top of the mind and on the tip of the tongue.
Your mission should inspire and motivate support and commitment from those who share your concerns. Your organization’s name alone should cause your mission to spring to mind.
However, if you — and your colleagues — do not revisit your mission statement regularly, and ideally fine-tune or update it on occasion, you can get stuck in out-of-date patterns of branding. This is true for both start-up organizations (whose missions are usually still evolving) and more established groups. For instance, a client organization of mine had focused for decades on the needs of all low-income families, but recent demographic changes in their county compelled them to focus on new immigrants, with the associated cultural and linguistic challenges.
Even more dangerously, if you are not careful to monitor your work in light of your mission, your organization could easily lose its sense of direction. The Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland summarized why you need a strong, relevant mission: “If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
Of course, your readers might not come out and ask, “What is your mission?” Instead, they might want to know what you do (how you benefit your clients and the community), how you do it (products and services featured in your work), and why you exist at all (why you are needed).
Help them out by frequently reminding them of your goals and how you are consistently making progress toward them. You cannot assume that your readers will instantly recall who you are or exactly what you do — and that includes both die-hard supporters/patrons and casual online surfers who may have stumbled across your website. But repetition will certainly help!
Here are some tips for maintaining a focus on mission in your copy… (Read more on the GIFT Exchange blog)
Please join me and the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training (GIFT) on September 13th for my webinar, “Writing to Make a Difference: How to Create Fundraising & Outreach Materials that Get Results.” Click here or give Ryan Li a call at 888-458-8588 X301 to register or for more info.
