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“How do I craft an elevator pitch for my organisation? All the examples online are really corporate. Can it work for a charity or a CIC?”
"How do I create a brilliant one-liner I can use to introduce my organisation?"
The headlines
The idea of an elevator pitch (lift pitch here in the UK!) is that you can explain your organisation in one or two sentences. Imagine you were in a lift with someone rich or influential- you’d only have a short time to talk to them and grab the opportunity to get their attention, before the doors opened and they walked away.
You run your organisation because you want to change the world and you want to make things better for the people you work with.
But often when we talk about our organisation to people we meet, to funders or in the about section of our website, we focus on nuts and bolts- the activities we run, how many staff we have, the legal structure of our organisation:
“We’re a small charity in Luton and we run weekly workshops in different community centres in different parts of the town…”
Well so do Slimming World but that doesn’t mean you're the same organisation.
What we need to do instead is focus on the transformation our work makes and who it’s for. If people support your organisation or come to you to take part in something it’s because they want something to happen, they want change. It has to be more than turn up, have a nice time and go home again.
So in every place where you talk about your organisation you want one clear message- a one liner or an elevator pitch- about who your work is for, what you offer and the transformation you make.
Four tips for crafting an effective elevator pitch
Focus on the Problem, the Solution, and the Transformation If you’re not sure how to cram everything into one manageable sentence here’s a format you can use: 1. Problem 2. Solution 3. Results.
Start by identifying the people you work with and the problem they’re facing. Then, present your organisation as the solution to that problem, and finish with the results your solution delivers. For example: “Rural communities are facing water shortages due to deforestation (problem). We restore native forests and teach sustainable land management practices (solution) providing reliable water sources for over 10,000 people (transformation).” Or “Residents of the villages in Brampton were devastated when the local shops closed (problem). Our bicycle powered corner shop (solution) provides supplies for local people who don’t have a car and gives residents a chance to meet and chat on delivery days (transformation).
Be Clear and Specific Your one liner should be free of jargon and vague statements. It needs to make sense to the person in the street. Specificity not only makes your pitch easier to understand, it makes it more memorable. “A garden built by community volunteers, saving hundreds of items from landfill” is stronger than “an outdoor communal space which utilises non-recyclable refuse”.
Choose your words wisely A lot of people panic at the idea of reducing their brilliant, complex work down into one sentence. It’s very rare that this is the only information that people can get about what you do- the idea is that it allows them to understand the kind of work you do and makes them want to know more.
Don’t dominate your sentence with a list of ‘things’. You might offer taster workshops, drop in sessions, a four stage training and development programme, industry sharing practice events, and manage the regional partnership steering group, but that’s an internal list. For your elevator pitch it’s about what you offer that makes people’s lives better. Your offer- or in elevator pitch terms, your ‘solution’- in this instance would be training. That then leaves loads of space to include who you work with, what the problem is and the transformation you create. You only have a few words so choose punchy, confident language and try and avoid words that are overused. Do you ‘welcome’ people or do you provide the only safe space they have? Do you ‘empower’ people or do you stand alongside them? Do you ‘support’ people or do you smash barriers to access?
Practice and Refine Your elevator pitch isn’t a one-and-done exercise. It should evolve as your organisation grows and as you gain insights into what connects with your audience. You can test it out in the introductions section of a meeting, or in casual conversations to see how it goes down. Don’t be afraid to tweak it as you go. You might find you end up with a written version and a slightly more chatty version for in person stuff. The more you practise, the easier it will be to deliver it in a high-pressure situation.
Section 3: What Next?
Sticky-note planning tip
Start by writing down the key elements of your organisation’s work—who you serve, what problems you solve, how you solve them, and the results you deliver. Putting your ideas for each of these elements on sticky-notes forces you to be succinct because you can only fit a few words on each sticky-note. But it also means you can then prioritise them, get rid of some and then arrange them in different ways to find something you like.
Once you have your one-liner, use it consistently and use it everywhere.
If you want help with other aspects of running your organisation, join the squad and get a monthly dose of free support.
My programme, Sticky-note Strategy will help you create the elevator pitch for your organisation, among many other things.