We Want to Know Exactly What You're Trying to Accomplish

Read the full commentary The Eight Word Mission Statement from Stanford Social Innovation Review.

As investors in impact, we—the Mulago Foundation—don’t want to wade through a bunch of verbiage about “empowerment,” “capacity-building,” and “sustainability”—we want to know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. We want to cut to the chase, and the tool that works for us is the eight-word mission statement. All we want is this:

A verb, a target population, and an outcome that implies something to measure—and we want in eight words or less. 

....With a good eight-word mission, you can bypass all that input-output-outcomes stuff and cut to the chase with a simple question: “How would I best know if I’m fulfilling my mission?” 

-- Kevin Starr, Mulago Foundation