At New Hope, the center I served at for several years, you had to be ready to recite the mission statement at a moment’s notice. This is because the Director of Advancement would jump out around corners or knock-and-enter with a camera in her hand, demanding you recite the mission statement.
Arguably, she had been given too much power in the center’s goal of everyone learning the mission statement. I know this because I was her, and my coworkers were mildly traumatized. But you know what? Everyone learned the mission statement.
Although the video evidence of this time is funny, the reason behind us all learning the mission statement is significantly more important. It’s because a mission statement, as I’m sure you know, informs how you operate on every level, including your marketing plan and strategies.
A good mission statement tells everyone why the organization exists and whom it serves. It keeps you from mission creep, gives you targets to shoot for, and provides a foundation for evaluating your efforts. A mission statement also informs your marketing goals, reveals your target audience, makes marketing decisions easier, guides messaging, and helps you measure success.
Your mission statement informs your organizational goals, e.g. raising $500,000, having 40% of your unique clients be abortion-minded, or launching a medical program. These goals, in turn, determine the targets for your marketing efforts. (And just so we’re on the same page: marketing is everything an organization does to reach a potential supporter or client.)
Putting It into Practice: From Mission to Marketing Goals
Example mission statement
To empower women and families facing unexpected pregnancies by providing compassionate care, practical resources, and life-affirming support so they can make informed decisions and build hopeful futures.
Goal 1: Donor-focused marketing
Increase annual fundraising revenue from $400,000 to $500,000 by the end of the fiscal year to introduce a new fatherhood program.
Marketing strategiesIncrease donor engagement through quarterly email appeals, church partnerships, center tours, and targeted outreach to prospective monthly supporters.
Goal 2: Client-focused marketing
Increase the number of unique abortion-minded and abortion-vulnerable clients served by 20% over the next 12 months.
Marketing strategiesStrengthen Google Ads campaigns, improve local search visibility, and develop targeted digital messaging to reach women actively searching for pregnancy options and support.
Connecting the dots
Both goals support the same mission, but they require different audiences, messaging, and marketing strategies. The donor goal focuses on generating the financial support needed to sustain and expand services, while the client goal focuses on reaching more women who need those services. By establishing measurable goals and tracking progress against previous years, a pregnancy help organization can determine whether its marketing efforts are truly advancing its mission.
If you want to raise $500,000 over the fiscal year, your donor marketing strategies need to put you in front of men and women who will attend your events, come in for a tour, or pour into your ministry. If you want to increase the number of abortion-minded clients coming through your doors, your marketing efforts, like Google Ads, need to put you in front of her.
Your mission shapes your audience
Beyond informing your organizational goals, your mission statement determines, in part, your target audience. After all, you have a limited budget and a limited mission scope. Both demand that you fine-tune your targeting to get the best results!
If you’re trying to raise $100,000 more than you did last year, you’ll need to strengthen your supporter-facing marketing efforts accordingly, e.g. increasing your church liaisons, center tours, and donor-segmented emails.
If you’re trying to reach abortion-minded women, you need to know who she is. Based on your center’s client data and community research, you might find that your target audience is primarily women ages 18–28, White or Hispanic, of lower socioeconomic status, with a high school education or some college, and Christian but not actively attending church.
Your mission makes decisions easier
One of my favorite things about a mission statement is how it makes certain decisions easier. If you’re trying to reach the abortion-minded woman described above, you need to be where she is already looking or spending time.
If you have the chance to run ads at the YMCA or a local coffee shop, determine a) if your target audience is in either place, and b) if it’s the best use of your money. If you have $500 a month to spend on digital advertising, look at your options and determine which effort will most effectively put you in front of your target audience, even if it means choosing just one digital tactic.
Your mission helps you measure success
I could go on for a while about how your mission statement is the foundation of your organizational and marketing efforts, but you’re busy! (Honestly, I am busy too, and I’ve got to get back to this to-do list.) So let’s hit just one more: your mission statement helps you evaluate the success of your marketing efforts.
Granted, this takes a little elbow grease on the front end. If you’re trying to increase fundraising, you need to know what you’ve raised in previous years through the various avenues (appeals, monthly donors, banquet, legacy giving, etc.) and then set challenge goals.
The same is true for your client-focused goals. If you want to see more unique clients receiving pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, or Earn While You Learn services, you need to know your baseline. How many did you see each month of the past year? How many for the year?
When you start a new marketing effort, establish your baseline and compare results after three, six, and nine months, taking into account other new efforts you’re launching. You can also compare those results to historical numbers.
Whether you’re operating as an Executive Director with about 15 too many hats on your head, working with an internal advancement team member, or partnering with a marketing group, your mission statement, organizational goals, and baseline data give you the framework to evaluate whether your marketing efforts are moving you in the right direction.
Start with what you have
Hopefully, you don’t feel like my coworkers did when I’d jump out from around the corner: shaken and alarmed.
Chances are you already have a mission statement. If that’s the case, you’re already halfway there! Now you just need to make sure you’re getting the most out of it. That’s where the real fun and payoff come from.
And if you need a laugh? Feel free to take a page out of my book by making your team learn the mission statement under duress.