How many mission statements and About pages have you read that leave you scratching your head over what an organization actually does?
Over the past few months, I’ve helped a wonderful Canadian nonprofit, Cameras for Girls, with its messaging and website content.
Cameras prepares young African women for professional careers in journalism and photojournalism, two fields that have traditionally been dominated by men.
A native Ugandan whose family fled Idi Amin’s regime, Cameras founder Amina Mohamed started the organization to pay forward the success she found as a photographer and filmmaker in Canada’s film and television industry.
She asked me to look at Cameras’ mission statement; I share this with you with her permission.
This is what Amina sent me:
A charity pursuing gender equality in Africa through photography, storytelling, and business skills for women to become paid journalists and photographers in male-dominated spaces.
Here are some of my notes back to Amina:
A charity: This belongs in your About section. Your mission statement is about your goals and what you do, not who you are.
pursuing: a soft, open-ended verb. Will you ever succeed? We may never know.
paid journalists and photographers: Makes you sound like a trade school for hourly jobs.
male-dominated spaces: Too vague!
I suggested this alternative:
To achieve/attain/advance gender equality in Africa by preparing young women for professional careers in the traditionally male-dominated fields of journalism and photojournalism.
My reasoning:
I gave Amina three options for verbs to replace pursuing. Achieve and attain imply accomplishment; advance is open-ended but implies progress. She chose advance.
preparing: a verb that encompasses the mentoring and support Cameras provides its students, in addition to hard skills.
professional careers: professional = competent and qualified.
the traditionally male-dominated fields of journalism and photojournalism: specific and clear.
Too many organizations today hide behind broad, generic language that makes them sound like everyone else.
Please, oh please, nonprofits, come out from behind your smokescreen of fuzzy blah-blah and show us the important work you do.
As always, thanks for reading!
