The Nonprofit Elevator Speech

Britt Bravo — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:52:52 -0500

[img_assist|fid=149|thumb=1|alt=Elevator|caption=image via the boy who loved vellum]

Contributing Editor, Britt Bravo, also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good & NetSquared. I'm always amazed that nonprofits don't put more resources into their fundraising and volunteer recruitment budgets for marketing and publicity. Most times they don't have a choice because funders don't like to fund administrative costs and it's true, more funding should go to providing services than to making xeroxes, but hello, a little marketing and pr can go a long way to bring in new donors and volunteers who can bring in more resources for the organization.

That's why I appreciate Kivi Leroux Miller's Nonprofit Communications blog. She has tips for creating email newsletters, training bloggers to cover your events, and the one every nonprofit board member and staff person should read, how to write your elevator speech:

Don't just repeat your mission statement. Mission statements are often "pie in the sky" or full of buzzwords that don't actually say what you do.

Tell us what you do and who you do it for. Donors want to know how their support makes a difference on the ground.

Share a quantitative result. How many people did you help last year? How many acres did you save? Whatever it is you measure, throw in a stat about your accomplishments.

Provide some perspective. Put your work in context, in one sentence. Why is what you do so important? What's the scale of the problem?

Spell out the opportunity. Complete this sentence: "With some additional resources, we could . . ."

image via the boy who loved vellum

Britt Bravo
Nonprofit & NGO Contributing Editor
Have Fun * Do Good
NetSquared

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The Nonprofit Elevator Speech