Missions matter, profoundly.

Mission statements matter much less – at least in their traditional form, which should more accurately be called mission paragraphs.

Everyone – board, staff, key volunteers – needs to understand why we do what we do. Everyone needs to be able to decide whether task X contributes to the mission or not.

Everyone needs to be able to articulate the mission – in a way that his or her mother can understand.

Which brings us to the problem with most nonprofit mission statements. Usually they are too long, too complex, and too jargon-laden to communicate effectively.

What most nonprofits really need is a single sentence to summarize what they do – something more like a tagline than a mission paragraph (This Forbes post How to Craft a Powerful Tagline for Your Business speaks equally well to nonprofits.)

The statement needs to be:

• Short
• Simple
• Emotionally compelling

So what do you do when:

• Staff and board members insist on getting every little bit of our good work into the mission statement?
• Different leaders have different ideas about what is important?
• Leaders really don’t agree on the mission itself?

When the mission truly is disputed, I usually can’t help much. I know processes for coming to consensus, but they take time and money that clients often aren’t willing to spend.

More often, what looks like disagreement about the mission is actually disagreement about what to highlight in the mission statement. Then I can help – a lot. Here are five ways I tackle the problem.

1. Focus on the audience.

If I could accomplish only one thing with nonprofit clients, staffers would know in their hearts that their communications are never about us and always about you, the audience. What matters is not what we say about our mission but what you receive and absorb.

2. Get audience input.

To find out whether your messages are getting through to the intended recipients, ask them. Talk to a few real live donors, volunteers, and clients.

3. Work through a process.

A set of facilitated conversations can help staff and board members clarify what to say about the mission. The output from the process is a list of words and phrases that a word expert (me, for example), takes home to turn into a compelling mission statement or tagline.

4. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I keep repeating to clients the key messages – just as we do in effective nonprofit communications. Over and over again I say things like “Simple communicates. Complexity confuses” – even “Less is more” – using examples from other nonprofits’ websites.

5. Lead with the good stuff.

Sometimes clients choose not to be led into developing a compelling mission statement. So then I show them – again using examples from successful nonprofits – that the mission statement doesn’t belong on the home page or front cover anyway. In those spots, we place a great photo with engaging text. The mission paragraph can then go on an About page or the inside back cover.

I have other tactics I’ve run out of room for. Do you have other mission statement challenges not covered here]? Pass them on!