Editor’s note: This guest post is written by non-profit consultant Amy Carol Wolff. In it, she argues for more straight-forward communication between social sector organizations and their stakeholders about the impact they achieve.

The social sector has gotten stuck. We have confused energy and vision with meaningless mission statements and empty slogans featuring words like “eradication”, “sustainability”, and “collaboration”. We promise our donors and investors that we have found the way to end pollution, disease, hunger, and social injustice. We paint these grandiose pictures akin to that of the millennium development goals (MDGs), and then we wonder why our donors are beginning to ask us where their money is going.

People are still poor. The slave trade is still thriving. Children are still hungry. Carbon dioxide emissions remain excessive. All realities that leave us with a question of, “Have we actually done anything at all?”

Yes, we have. We have developed ready-to-use-therapeutic-food to address issues of malnutrition. We have provided millions of dollars in loans to foster entrepreneurship in the developing world. We have used SMS technology to connect people to healthcare and food. We have even set up voluntary carbon markets to hone and incentivize environment-friendly processes. Those of us vested in the work of social development have been innovative and have implemented solid programs with tangible deliverables that have saved lives, developed community leadership, and created safe refuges for countless species.

We are doing good work. But we are growing increasingly lazy in the way that we tell our stories. In fact, I’ll take it one step further – we are lying. People are asking for measurements of success and many of us do not have them – at least, not the ones we promised. The upcoming generation, the famous Millennials, demands to see impact if they are going to donate, and more of the recent social impact investors are expecting organizations to prove they are actually achieving their goals.

It really is not going to matter whether we preach a sermon on eradicating poverty. It is going to matter that through our work we increased a community’s income by 20%. It is going to matter that we perfected a revenue-generating model that allows for the maintenance of the wells that we fund-raise for.  It is going to matter that through our work, 27 women were rescued and protected from the sex trade in the last month due to the donated amount. The marriage of what we do, how we do it, and why we do it, needs to be our focus and message.

And for those of us who are donating, we have some work to do as well.

A professor of mine points out that business plans must “be realistic”. When he reviews business plans that promise the entire world is their market, out comes the red pen and the editing begins. A wise investor knows the age-old saying, “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” She won’t invest in a business that promises the world.

This is why we have to seek out organizations that can demonstrate how they are solving important social issues. Investors that do not require evaluations are doing the community a disservice.  If we hand organizations a check, we are saying that we believe in the work they do.  You wouldn’t buy into a product that promised you abs of steel without ever having to leave your couch (at least, I hope you wouldn’t). Why would you believe an organization that promises to eradicate poverty by 2015?

Using buzz words instead of using creative and honest ways to convey the work we are doing is disrespectful to the people and communities we serve. If you do in fact choose to promise to eradicate poverty, I challenge you to do this in front of an audience of children in the slums of Kenya.  If you choose to promise to stop the international sex trade, do it while looking into the eyes of the young rape victims in your own city.  And if you choose to promise a future for all children, I dare you to do so while sitting with a mother who knows that the AIDS that claimed her husband’s life will soon claim hers. They will all ask how. And they deserve a clearly defined answer.

(Photo by Vanguard1219)