Marketing Your Nonprofit’s Mission on Your Website: 4 Tips

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Your nonprofit’s mission is the driving force behind your organization’s existence. Your staff, volunteers, beneficiaries, and other internal stakeholders know how important your mission is for guiding your strategies and priorities. But does your nonprofit effectively promote its mission to a wider audience of current and potential external supporters? 

In this guide, we’ll review expert tips for marketing your mission using one of your most powerful digital marketing tools: your nonprofit website. By following these tips, you can better communicate your nonprofit’s purpose, values, and goals to recruit and strengthen support for your mission. 

1. Clarify your mission statement.

Your nonprofit’s mission statement describes the essence of your organization. It’s your opportunity to communicate clearly and directly to stakeholders about your core purpose and driving philosophy. 

To effectively promote your mission to your audience using your website, take the time to ensure your mission statement is clear and that it accurately reflects your nonprofit’s current priorities. Develop a compelling mission statement by following these tips: 

• Prioritize readability. Your mission statement should be concise, easy to understand, and straightforward. If your mission statement is too wordy or complex, consider adjusting it to make it more readable. Explore examples of other nonprofit mission statements, like Top Nonprofits’ roundup, for inspiration as you update your statement. 
• Put your community first. Your mission statement should speak directly to the needs and concerns of the community you’re trying to support. Whether you serve your local community or a national or worldwide audience, your mission statement should give context for the scope of your efforts. For example, charity: water’s mission is “bringing clean and safe water to people around the world.” Clear, straightforward, and simple—that’s the way to go when drafting a mission statement. 
• Communicate any changes to your audience. Send emails and create social media and blog posts to share your new and improved mission statement. Explain why you updated the statement and how you plan to use it to guide future marketing and advocacy efforts. 

If your nonprofit ends up making considerable changes to your mission and mission statement, be sure to follow IRS guidelines to report the changes so you can maintain your tax-exempt status. Disclose any mission and program changes in your annual Form 990. Then, you’re free to leverage your new-and-improved mission statement in your marketing efforts to better connect with your audience. 

2. Use your blog to share mission-related stories. 

Storytelling is a powerful way to spread the word about your nonprofit’s mission because it’s an incredibly memorable and meaningful form of communication. Stories help online audiences connect with your mission emotionally, building stronger ties with your nonprofit. 

Your website’s blog is a natural place to share mission-related stories. It allows you to make the most of multimedia content including text, images, videos, and audio clips to give your stories greater depth. As you share content through your blog, make sure your stories are: 

• Ethical. Many of your stories will come from beneficiaries—those who have been directly affected by your mission. It’s important to gather and share these stories in a way that’s respectful and ethical to avoid causing unnecessary harm to community members. Asking beneficiaries for permission to share their stories should just be the beginning of this process. You should seek to form authentic relationships with those who are sharing their stories, allow them to review and edit their own story, and be transparent about how you plan to use the story in your marketing efforts. 
• Inclusive. Your stories should reflect the diversity of the community you serve. Prioritize gathering stories from a wide range of beneficiaries and stakeholders from different backgrounds. This helps give audience members a broader perspective into who your nonprofit serves. It can also help you form stronger connections with your audience when readers see themselves and their lived experiences reflected in your content. 
• Accessible. Accessible stories are readable and understandable for everyone in your audience, no matter any permanent or temporary accessibility need they may have. When crafting stories, make them accessible by adding alternative text for images and captions for videos and audio stories. In addition, use strong color contrast for text and background colors and consistent navigation. 

Make sure your stories are also tailored to your unique audience. Consider your audience’s demographics and characteristics to determine the types of stories that will appeal to them the most.

For example, let’s say your organization is a healthcare nonprofit focused on funding research to treat pediatric diseases. Your healthcare content marketing strategy should focus on creating stories that appeal to your different audiences, including donors, volunteers, families impacted by childhood illness, and healthcare professionals. 

Create different types of stories tailored to each audience for maximum impact. For instance, you could share a story about a donor who formerly faced a pediatric illness and received support from your nonprofit’s efforts. This could inspire those with a similar story to also become donors. 

3. Strengthen your SEO approach.

A search engine optimization (SEO) strategy helps you promote your mission to a wider audience to increase traffic to your website. With a targeted SEO approach, you can ensure your website’s content appears more prominently on search engine results pages. 

Fortify your SEO efforts by following these best practices: 

• Choose relevant keywords to optimize your content. Keywords are the terms or phrases that searchers type into search engines like Google to find the information they’re looking for. By optimizing your blog posts, information pages, and other website pages for specific keywords, you can attract more visitors to your website who are searching for terms related to your nonprofit’s mission. For example, a nonprofit focused on protecting and restoring wetland habits could create educational blog posts targeting the primary keyword “wetland conservation.”  
• Make your website mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendliness is an SEO ranking factor, meaning that optimizing your website for mobile devices can lead to a positive boost on search results pages. Ensure your website features a responsive design that automatically adapts to mobile devices. Also, use large font sizes and buttons that are easy to see and touch on mobile screens. 
• Track progress with analytics and SEO tools. Tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz can all help monitor and assess your website’s SEO performance. Use these tools to help choose relevant keywords, track SEO rankings, and compare your progress to similar organizations. 

With a robust SEO strategy, you can reach new audiences who are already searching for terms related to your nonprofit’s mission. For best results, ensure your website’s content is comprehensive, educational, and useful. Authentic, well-written content is your best resource in the competition for prime search results real estate. 

4. Share information about how to get involved.

Your nonprofit’s mission isn’t just to inform your audience about the cause you’re fighting for—it’s also to inspire them to become true partners in your efforts. Incorporate compelling calls to action into your website’s layout to motivate website visitors to get involved in your projects and programs. 

Share details about how to get involved with opportunities such as: 

• Events. Invite visitors to learn more about your events and register for opportunities that align with their availability and interests. Offer a robust, updated event calendar with the information and logistics supporters need to determine whether they want to sign up. 
• Monthly giving. Make your monthly giving opportunities more enticing by giving your program a unique name and highlighting the benefits of getting involved. These may include the opportunity to support your mission at a higher level or access exclusive perks like free merchandise and VIP event access. 
• Volunteering. Make volunteer registration a breeze with a mobile-optimized, accessible sign-up form. Allow volunteers to share information about their availability, skills, and interests to find roles that suit them and that they’ll be happy to participate in over the long term. 
• Peer-to-peer fundraising. Highlight opportunities to get involved in peer-to-peer campaigns, whether as fundraisers or donors. Provide a simple peer-to-peer fundraising registration process where supporters can easily make their own campaign pages right from your website. 

Keep your website updated by conducting regular maintenance. Kanopi’s nonprofit website maintenance guide recommends a continuous improvement approach, which involves making small, regular adjustments to your content over time. This allows you to avoid major update projects, which can take months to complete and may strain your budget. 

When it comes to marketing your nonprofit’s mission, your website is a valuable online hub to clarify and promote your activities and goals. When your website has a clear message, you can carry that point of view into your other digital marketing efforts, including your email and social media strategies. Doing so will help create a cohesive marketing approach that puts your values and community first.