Every nonprofit organization is understandably passionate about its mission. Staff members can work for countless hours helping those in need and tell everyone they meet about what they're working on next.

You feel the mission in your bones. But can you express it in a way that a prospective donor or a new community member who is unfamiliar with your organization really understands?

Let's talk about how you can take your mission statement and turn it into an entire communications foundation for your nonprofit.

Using the Mission Statement as a Communications Building Block

There's absolutely nothing wrong with shouting from the rooftops about what your nonprofit does. However, don't forget to look at the work you do from an objective lens so you can explain it to someone who is brand new to your organization.

Let me share a story about a nonprofit I'm working with and how we put all this into action.

When I started working with this organization, they had rebranded under another name and needed to build brand awareness in the community.

While they had an incredibly strong mission statement, they were struggling to find the best way to express everything they do across the organization. They were also trying to launch a fundraising campaign and needed a way to drive home the impact of the work they are doing to prospective donors.

So we let the mission statement drive the strategic plan.

We did a comprehensive analysis of each of their three core programs and the many ways they drive back to their mission statement. We coupled that with a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis that outlined ways to make those programs stand out and established some measurable goals that we could use as the basis of our communications plan.

Then, we used the strategic plan elements to develop their social media strategy. We used the information that ties their mission to their strategic plan and programs to create the basis for the content topics we'd share on social media.

Now that we had that communications foundation built, we were able to create a brochure to introduce one of their key programs to anyone who was brand new to learning about the organization.

With a comprehensive strategic plan and communications strategy, this nonprofit now had a more solid foundation they could use to begin a fundraising plan. Having all of this in place made it far easier for them to talk to donors and connect their goal with the fundraising campaign back to their mission so donors knew exactly what they were funding.

Messaging Alignment Leads to Clear Communications

Every nonprofit needs a mission statement but don't just stop there. Use that mission statement to build out your communications plan in a way that helps you clearly explain the work you do to everyone you meet.

Once you know how to clearly express the work you are doing, it will help your nonprofit build relationships with the people who can help you succeed.