This is part of a series introducing you to Claxon University, where smart nonprofits go to learn how to use better words to create a better world.
Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Lesson 9: How will get people to understand what you do?
Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Lesson 8: How will you let people know what you want to be known for?
Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Lesson 5: What are your Organizational Goals & Marketing Objectives?
Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Vicki, our Research Director, at the McBryde Gardens
Our Research Director, Vicki, recently returned from a well-deserved vacation in Hawaii. This is a story about what happens when someone who focuses on improving Mission Statements for a living goes on vacation.
While on Kauai, we toured the McBryde Gardens, a research garden of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. The tour guide rattled off their Mission Statement. This is from their website (as I couldn’t remember it and had NO IDEA what she said).
“The mission of the National Tropical Botanical Garden is to enrich life through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education by perpetuating the survival of plants, ecosystems, and cultural knowledge of tropical regions.”
According to readability-score.com this has a NEGATIVE (didn’t know that was a thing) Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score of -8.1 with an average grade level of 22.1.
Then the tour guide said, “We have a long mission statement, but we save plants.”
Now that I remember!
If I was advising them I would augment to “we save topical plants”, as ‘tropical’ distinguishes them from other gardens.
If nonprofits are to put their Mission Statements front and center they should be statements that people can remember and repeat. That’s why we spend so much time working and re-working Mission Statements in Words on a Mission. (Watch this short video and find out why.)
Glad Vicki had a good time in paradise. Sad she had to run into a bad nonprofit Mission Statement even while on vacation!
Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Claxon University’s first course is Words on a Mission. Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post in this series, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Each of the twelve lessons in the course asks a fundamental question a nonprofit needs to answer in order to develop high-impact messaging. In each post, I’ll share what the question is, along with a snippet from the video lecture.
Lesson 1’s question is: Why do you exist?
This 1:03 video gives you an overview of the course and explains why being grounded in your why is so important.
