Using AI to Draft Plain-Language Purpose and Impact Statements
Finding words that capture your purpose and impact can feel impossible — especially when your work comes from lived experience, not bureaucracy. AI can’t define your mission, but it can help you shape, shorten and refine the way you explain it.
At some point in an advocacy project or charity journey, someone will ask: “What is your purpose?” “Who do you help?” “What impact do you have?” These questions can feel flattening when your work holds grief, care and complexity. AI can’t take away that tension, but it can help you organise your ideas and test language that feels true to your work.
What We Mean by “Purpose” and “Impact”
Different systems use different words — mission, vision, objects, outcomes — but they all circle similar ideas:
- Purpose: Why your organisation or project exists, and who it exists for.
- Impact: The difference you are trying to make in people’s lives or in systems.
Purpose example: “We exist to support [group] to be safe, included and heard.”
Impact example: “Our work helps [group] experience less harm and more access, by changing how services respond to them.”
Plain-language versions like these are useful in reports, websites and conversations, even if your legal wording later needs to be more formal.
Why These Statements Feel So Hard to Write
Lived experience is complex. Your work might respond to disability, trauma, housing, poverty or multiple systems at once. Reducing all that into one sentence can feel like erasure.
Systems want neat boxes. Forms and grants ask for one “beneficiary group” or “primary objective” — that doesn’t match grassroots realities.
Language can feel loaded. Words like “vulnerable” or “disadvantaged” might be common in funding spaces but feel wrong in your mouth. AI can help you experiment until you find versions that balance truth and clarity without compromise.
Step 1: Start with Your Own Messy Description
Before you invite AI in, write freely about:
- who you care about
- what you’re trying to change
- how you go about it
- what values guide you
This rough text becomes your base material for refining later drafts.
Step 2: Draft “Who We Exist For” in Different Lengths
AI can help you translate your care into clear statements without losing nuance. Try asking:
“Here’s a rough description of who our advocacy project is for. Please write three versions — one sentence, one short paragraph, one slightly longer paragraph — in plain, rights-based language.”
Then edit to reflect your community’s words and reject any language that feels clinical or patronising.
Step 3: Draft a Plain-Language Purpose Statement
Ask AI to suggest several one-sentence purpose statements based on your notes. For example:
- “We exist to support [group] to be heard and included in decisions that affect their lives.”
- “We exist to make [system] safer and more accessible for [group].”
- “We connect [group] with advocacy and resources that respect their knowledge and choices.”
Mix and match until one feels both accurate and comfortable. Keep multiple drafts if needed.
Step 4: Name Your Intended Impact
AI can help you describe the change you want to see without over-promising. You might say:
- “Our work helps [group] feel less alone and more informed when navigating [system].”
- “Our work supports [group] to have more control and say in decisions that affect them.”
- “Our work contributes to systems that are safer, more accessible and more accountable.”
Keep simple versions for public use and slightly expanded ones for reports or grants.
Step 5: Turn Ideas into Objectives
Some forms ask for “objectives.” You can ask AI to turn your purpose and impact into 4–6 goals. Examples:
- Provide accessible, trauma-aware information for [group].
- Offer peer-informed advocacy that builds confidence and rights knowledge.
- Work with services to identify and change exclusionary practices.
- Share lived experience stories to shape policy and systems.
Edit for tone, realism and alignment with your group’s capacity.
Step 6: Translate Between “System” and Community Language
AI can help you adapt your own language for funders or regulators while keeping your values intact. Try:
“Here is our version of our purpose. Please make a clearer version for regulators, but don’t add pitying or deficit language.”
Then double-check every word. Keep both your authentic and “system” versions side by side.
Step 7: Prepare for Legal or Structural Advice
AI can’t write formal legal objects, but it can help you organise before seeking advice. Ask it to summarise your purpose and impact in one page, and generate a list of questions to take to a lawyer or charity advisor.
This helps you use professional time more effectively while keeping your foundation in plain, human language.
Step 8: Check Against Your Values and Community
Before finalising, ask:
- Does this feel honest?
- Would our community recognise themselves in this language?
- Does anything feel patronising or unsafe?
Editing with peers or co-founders helps anchor statements in real relationships rather than polished phrases.
Things to Be Mindful Of
Avoid Overclaiming
Replace “transforming systems” with “contributing to change.” Keep promises realistic and grounded in capacity.
Watch for Deficit Frames
Explicitly ask AI to avoid words like “vulnerable” or “burden.” Focus on barriers and systems, not individual blame.
Protect Privacy
When drafting, use anonymised or composite examples rather than real names or identifying stories.
A Gentle Way to Begin
- Write half a page about who you’re here for and what change you hope for.
- Ask AI to turn it into one purpose sentence, one impact paragraph, and three objectives.
- Review, edit and delete anything that doesn’t feel like your community’s voice.
- Save the parts that resonate in a “Purpose & Impact – Working Draft” document.
Over time, refine that document with your group and advisors. AI helps with the writing, but your purpose lives in people — not in text.
Your purpose is born from experience, not algorithms. AI is just a scribe helping you find clearer words for what already exists: care, conviction, and community change.