Excerpts Series: Telling the Story
Many times when we talk about storytelling, we think about stories that we might write. Stories that we might share on social media or in an email newsletter, something like that. That is important. We definitely want to know how to write a story.
Something to understand as the backdrop of this whole conversation is — you do have a story to tell. Anyone that is doing nonprofit work, anyone that is making impact in the community, in a mission-driven organization, has a story to tell.
When we’re in mission-driven work we spend our energy largely on making sure the work we do is done well. We want to make sure we have programs that are impactful. We want to make sure that the services we are delivering are making a difference and being delivered well. We are very interested in making sure that our mission is and the needs that we are looking to meet in community are all being done well. We spend a lot of time in the work.
What we’re not always good at in the nonprofit sector is telling about the work. What we have to recognize right away is that we have a story to tell. We have a story to tell about the organization. We have a story to tell about the people that are involved with our organization.
One of the things we know is that people respond to stories. Stories are interesting to people. We can have all kinds of data, and we’re going to talk about how to integrate data into our storytelling, but people are not really compelled by data. People aren’t drawn in with a lot of statistics or numbers or statements about data. What people are drawn into is storytelling. They are interested in stories. We have whole industries — the movie industry, the television industry, books — that are all about telling different stories.
When we, as a nonprofit, can recognize that our organization is unique, that we are providing great services to community, that we are doing amazing and impactful things, then we can begin to compile the compelling stories we have to share. It’s these stories that are going to draw people in.
Two main purposes or motivations for storytelling:
To engage our audience. When we talk about fundraising in general, we talk about a continuum of engagement to investment. Engagement means we’re bringing people into who we are and what we do. We’re engaging them into understanding our organization and what we do as an organization. Stories are a major key to doing this. We can talk about methodology or fundraising events and we can talk about one on one donor conversations, but one of the most critical pieces to those methods actually working is having the story that we can tell. When we can develop this skillset, really this art, of storytelling about our organization, we are going to hit this first point of engaging our audience. Whether that’s one person or a room full of people, we’re going to be able to engage them and tell them in a compelling way who we are, what we do and why it matters that we are doing it. That’s what we’re looking at in terms of developing this art of storytelling. Making sure that we can tell the stories well and engaging the audience.
Stories are a great way to give a call to action. What do you want the hearer to do with this story? One of the things we need to think about as we prepare our story is the ending. Before we even verbally tell our story, we should ask ourselves: At the end of our story — I hope our audience does what? I want the response of the person listening to me to be what? We have to figure out, in bringing up the story, developing the story, telling the story — what do we want our audience to do as as result of hearing the story? Do we just want them to have a better understanding of what we do? Do we want them to feel an emotional response to what we’re telling them? Do we want them to respond in a ceratin way? Do we want them to volunteer with us? Give money? Donate items? Do we want them to come to a fundraising event? We want them to do… what? What is the call to action?
When we talk about developing the story, we want to keep in mind: engaging our audience and what our call to action is going to be. How do we want our audience to respond as a result of us telling our story?
Two other areas that are vitally important to storytelling:
Image Management — controlling how others view the organization. Through our stories we want to give others clear insight.
Resource Development — We want to compel people to provide resources. Stories are a great way for us to engage perspective donors. Through story we can engage people at a fundraising event. The whole idea of resource development means engaging others who will give time through volunteerism, give goods or services through in-kind donations or who actually want to give cash so that the mission moves forward. All of those things can happen if we can provide a compelling story that gives them an idea of who we are and what we do and provide an encouraging and instructive call to action, illuminating a clear path for those who want to be engaged to share their resources.
Stories are really critical to these components of a healthy nonprofit.
