There’s a page on almost every nonprofit website that is, almost universally, written for the wrong audience. It starts with the founding year. It includes a paragraph about the visionary leader who saw a need in the community. It has a mission statement, possibly also a vision statement, and sometimes a values list. It ends with a staff directory or a board roster.
It is, in almost every case, the page the organization wanted to write—not the page the visitor came to read.
Here’s the thing about the people who land on your About page: they already know something about you, or they wouldn’t be there. They found you somehow. They’re not asking “does this organization exist?” They’re asking something more like: “are these the right people to help me?” Or: “is this organization what I think it is?” Or: “can I trust this?”
Those are very different questions than the ones a founding-year-and-mission-statement page is set up to answer.
What visitors are actually looking for
When someone visits your About page, they’re usually in the middle of a decision. They’re trying to figure out whether you’re the right fit for their situation, their cause, their potential partnership, or their donation dollars. The information they need to make that decision is almost never your founding story.
What they usually want to know: What does this organization actually do, day to day? Who does it serve? What does working with you look like? Why should I believe you can deliver what you’re promising?
The founding story might be relevant context—eventually. But it’s rarely the thing that earns trust or answers the question “is this the right organization for me?” at the moment of decision.
This matters more for community and advocacy organizations than for most. The people you serve are often coming to you in a moment of need—not leisurely browsing to satisfy curiosity. They need to quickly understand whether you can help them. An About page that starts with 1998 and ends with a board list makes them work harder for that answer than they should have to.
The flip: lead with who you serve, not who you are
The reframe is simple in concept, harder in practice: start with the person reading the page, not with your organization.
What does that look like? Instead of “Founded in 2003, [Org Name] was established to address the growing need for legal services among underserved communities in Hartford,” something more like: “We help Connecticut residents navigate immigration, housing, and family law cases—regardless of income or documentation status. We’ve been doing this for over twenty years.”
Same information. Completely different orientation. The first version is written about the organization. The second is written toward the reader.
This applies throughout the page. Instead of a block of text about your leadership team’s credentials, a few sentences about what clients can expect from working with you. Instead of a values list that reads like something from a corporate retreat, a short honest paragraph about how you do your work and why it’s different. Instead of your mission statement verbatim, a plain-language translation of what that mission looks like in practice.
The about page as a trust-building document
One thing the founding story does accomplish, when done well: it builds trust. And trust is legitimately one of the things your About page should be doing.
But trust doesn’t come primarily from history. It comes from specificity, honesty, and human voice. A founder’s brief personal story of why this work matters to them—told in their own words, not institutional language—builds more trust than a formal bio. A genuine acknowledgment of the limitations of your services (who you can and can’t help, what the process actually involves) builds more trust than marketing language that promises everything.
The organizations whose About pages actually work tend to be specific rather than general, personal rather than institutional, and oriented toward the reader rather than toward themselves. They’re written as if a real person is speaking to another real person, not as if a communications committee drafted them by consensus.
A simple test
Here’s a quick diagnostic: read your About page out loud and count how many times you use the word “we” before you use the word “you.” If the ratio is heavily skewed toward “we,” your page is doing what most About pages do—talking about itself.
The goal isn’t to erase your organization’s identity from the page. It’s to weave it into a narrative that’s fundamentally oriented toward the people who are trying to decide whether you’re right for them. That’s a harder page to write. It’s also a much more effective one.
If you’re not sure where your About page stands, or you want help reworking it, I work with organizations on exactly this kind of content strategy—figuring out not just how a page looks, but what it’s actually saying and to whom.