Picture yourself on an elevator and someone asks, “So what does your nonprofit do?” Nothing is more uncomfortable than trying to retrieve all the unique qualities and accomplishments your organization or ministry possesses between the first and fifth floor. So, before you get caught off-guard the next time you catch an elevator, we have some good news for you.
It’s right under your feet.
We haven’t served a client in decades who hasn’t asked us to produce their elevator speech. Well Dorothy. . . It’s right under your feet. Your Mission Statement, if well written, is your elevator speech.
Your mission statement can be that response and marketing message. It’s letting somebody know what it is that you do. And it’s probably, in most cases, differentiating you from another ministry, church, or nonprofit organization.
But you only have a few floors to recite it so it may be time for a quick rewrite or edit. It needs to be written conversationally and in a length that’s easy to remember and speak. Read it out loud and make note if you stumble on too many ten-dollar words.
Again, your mission statement needs to be short enough for you to memorize it. If your current mission statement is more than 300 characters and spaces, it’s probably too long. That’s our guideline for length as well as making sure it briefly contains:
Who you serve.
What you do.
Where you do it.
How you do it.
Why you do it.
Just a note that “When” isn’t listed here because it designates time and that almost always will date your mission statement, so it’s not advisable. When it comes to your mission – the rule of thumb is to write knowing that “today is the day,” not your vision for the future.
These are the great building blocks for covering a topic, or in this case, a dual mission statement/elevator speech.
Commit it to memory.
Everybody on your team: board members, leadership, staff, volunteers, and, God willing, maybe even donors, should be able to memorize it so that it’s top of mind all the time. It’s your multipurpose tool. It’s the filter that keeps you on mission and not in the weeds of good intentions.
You also need your mission statement/elevator speech to be included as part of your onboarding process with any of the people who come alongside your ministry, like staff, board, or volunteers. They need to memorize it and understand how to use it well as an elevator speech.
And publish it everywhere. On your website it should be accessible through the primary navigation and probably on your homepage. You should also include it on your primary collateral and promotional tools as well.
New leadership tend to switch it up.
More often than not, if you’re going through a leadership transition, especially if it’s an executive director, pastor, principal, or president, don’t be surprised if the new guy or gal revise your organization’s mission. We’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve seen it happen with out clients.
It happens often because new leadership are regularly hired to make a difference. They’ve been sought out to make changes. Through interviews and resumes, they are eventually being hired because of their insight, their maturity, their influence, their experience.
And most people, just out of human nature, are going to want to put, if you will, their fingerprint on the ministry or organization that they’ve been brought into. That’s kind of a natural part of leadership.
But it will dilute your current brand equity.
So just know that the new guy or gal can change your organization’s mission — so don’t be surprised by it. Be prepared for it, and know that there’s a big, trickle-down effect, and a good deal of what you’re doing as an organization on a regular basis will be influenced by it. Especially if you are using it well as your elevator speech.
And if you’re the new leader, before making a mission statement change, be aware that it can, and will, influence your organization’s brand equity.
A good example of a mission statement that also works well as an elevator speech.
World Vision is an international partnership of Christians
whose mission is to follow our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
in working with the poor and oppressed
to promote human transformation, seek justice,
and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God.
It checks all the who, what, where, how, and why boxes and is short enough to memorize easily. Professionally, we don’t know if World Vision uses its mission statement as an elevator speech — but in our opinion, they could.