Mission Style Guide

Central Union Mission has a rich history. Started in 1884 to help homeless Civil War veterans, the Mission transforms to meet the challenging needs of people experiencing homelessness and poverty while remaining faithful to its founding by a central union of DC churches. In writing about the Mission in a press release, brochure or flyer, or when you are filling out forms, you may wish to use the following descrip­tion and Mission Statement.

Mission Statement:

To glorify God by proclaiming the Gospel and meeting the needs of hungry, hurting and homeless individuals and families in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.

About Central Union Mission:

Central Union Mission is a faith-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the oldest private social service agency in Washington, DC. In addition to its emergency shelter, which provides more than 60,000 bed-nights each year, the Mission operates a holistic, Christ-centered transformation and workforce development program for men, provides benefits for veterans, helps people overcome addictions, operates a food and clothing distribution center which provides food for over 5,750 people each month, runs a camp for underprivileged children, and offers a ministry to families and senior citizens. Charity Navigator has rated Central Union Mission as a three star charity, GuideStar awarded Central Union Mission a Platinum Seal for our financial transparency and GreatNonProfits has given Central Union Mission a Top-Rated award.

Mission COVID-19 Update

When you are writing copy for Central Union Mission material, please keep these style preferences in mind. Central Union Mission’s editorial style is engaging and professional. We avoid very formal or institutional sentence constructions. For grammar and punctuation questions, please refer to the AP Stylebook.

Some specific Mission editorial guidelines are:

• Refer to Central Union Mission as “Central Union Mission” or “the Mission.” Do not refer to it as “CUM,” “CU Mission,” “The” Mission (except at the start of a sentence) or other short-cuts.
• Write with an active rather than a passive voice when possible, ex: “She answered the phone” vs. “The phone was answered by her.”
  Use an inclusive tone including readers in (or being entirely responsible for) the Mission’s work.
• The Mission doesn’t have “clients.” Refer to the people we serve as “guests,” “the community,” “program participants” or “workers” (in an employment program),” etc. Don’t use the term “neighbors” interchangeably with “people”; “neighbors” should have some proximity to the Mission. Refer to our donors as “friends,” “prayer warriors,” “partners,” “supporters,” etc.
• Refer to our guests as “people experiencing homelessness” or “people experiencing poverty,” not “the homeless.” Refer to “children,” not “kids.”
• To prevent confusion, avoid Christian slang unless you are confident your audience understands. Do not use religious terms in media releases.
• Do not write that Central Union Mission “needs” something; write that Central Union Mission’s guests need something. Avoid any wording like “urgent” that might imply a lack of planning—unless you are talking about our guests’ urgent needs. The use of “emergency” is reserved for a serious circumstance (like a blizzard); “emergencies” are not normally financial.
• Following the AP Stylebook, we use commas to separate elements in a series, but do not put a comma before the conjunction in a simple series, ex: “The flag is red, white and blue.” (i.e.: we do not use the Oxford comma.)
• Please do not allow URLs and links to be auto-typed in blue underline. We use regular type face for URLs and do not include the “http://www.” (Example: missiondc.org.)
• We use left-justified paragraph style with no indents. We use one space between sentences—not two as in a typewriter—because the font automatically adapts for proper spacing. We use an “em” dash with no spaces for setting phrases apart—like right here. The Word shortcut for an em dash is [CTRL][ALT][-] We use “en” dashes in phone numbers: 202-745-7118.
• We spell out states in text (Maryland) but use USPS abbreviations in an address like 6811 Kenilworth Ave., Riverdale, MD 20737.
• We use a comma in numbers 1,000 and over.
• Mission titles (both jobs and programs) use ampersands—“President & CEO,” “Workplace Development & Education”— but we don’t use ampersands in text.

The Mission colors are Gold, Burgundy and the neutral color Gray. Below are their PANTONE®, CMYK, RGB and Hexadecimal (Web) color values.

	Pantone 117 C CMYK C0 M18 Y100 K15 RGB R222 G180 B8 Hex# c99700
	Pantone 202 C CMYK C0 M100 Y61 K3 RGB R152 G0 B46 Hex# 872334
	PantoneCool Gray 9 C CMYK C0 M0 Y0 K50 RGB R128 G128 B128 Hex# 747578

The primary typeface for the Mission is “Adobe Garamond Pro” Regular and Bold. The typeface “Capitals” is also used in the seal, logo and some marketing material. If preferred, use Capitals only as a title, heading or subheading. Do not use Capitals as body copy (the main text of a piece of writing.) You can also use Adobe Garamond Pro as a title, heading or subheading as long as it is Adobe Garamond Pro Bold or at least two font sizes larger than the body copy if it remains Adobe Garamond Pro Regular or Italic. In some cases Adobe Garamond Pro Bold Italic may be used as a title, heading or subheading. If the typeface Adobe Garamond Pro is not available, you may use the substitute system default font “Garamond.” The style applications mentioned above for Adobe Garamond Pro apply for Garamond except that Garamond does not include a Bold Italic style. “Arial” and “Times New Roman” are also acceptable for use on all material.