Telling Better Stories: Fundraising Tips from 12NTC

Your organization is doing great work, but you may not always be telling that story in a way that resonates with potential donors and other supporters.

In It's Not You, It's Your Stories at the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference, Steve Daigneault (VP of eCampaigns at M&R Strategic Services) and Sue Citro (Director of Digital Strategy, Global Programs at The Nature Conservancy) shared their tips for telling better and more effective stories.

Storytelling Isn't Enough – You Have to Tell Good Stories

The most surprising thing Steve Daigneault shared was M+R Strategic Service's tests on the effectiveness of storytelling.

In M+R's tests, telling a personal story didn't actually perform very well versus the more traditional approach of "outlining the institutional approach, accomplishments, and need."

This seems to fly in the face of what we keep hearing about stories: that stories are effective fundraising strategies because they're universal, they create emotional connections, and they promote information retention.

If all of that is true, how come M+R Strategic Services found that personal stories didn't work for fundraising? The key, Daigneault argues, is telling a certain kind of story.

Stories That Compel

Daigneault says there are two kinds of stories: stories that explain and stories that compel action.

In order to compel donors to act (donate), your story needs to do more than just explain – it must make the donor to feel like they are an active participant in the story. Just like reading a Choose-Your-Own Adventure novel, the donor must feel they have an opportunity to change the story's ending.

So how do you figure out what makes a compelling story?

The Nature Conservancy Experience

Sue Citro shared tips from her experience evaluating and updating the Nature Conservancy's fundraising and outreach program. Her suggestions for telling more effective stories included:

• Simplifying the message. Take out big, complicated words. Use images and humor in storytelling.
• Understanding donors' motivations. Read behavioral economics books like Nudge (by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein) and Predictably Irrational (by Dan Ariely). Familiarize yourself with Robert Cialdini's 6 key principles of persuasion.
• Personalizing the donor experience. Think about what Amazon does to personalize your experience and apply those lessons to your fundraising efforts.
• Making everyone at your organization a better storyteller. Get to the heart of what your organization does and why you're proud to be a part of it. At the Nature Conservancy, they locked all the senior leaders in a room and made them find their stories.
• You must let go of your story. Be brave and see what others have to say about your issues and about your organization. In that same vein, an attendee from the Malignant Hyperthermia Association of the United States shared that his organization bundled Flip video cameras (from TechSoup donations) with how-to instructions to allow patients to record and share their stories.
• Make them trip over it. Make it easy for supporters to share their stories with you. The Nature Conservancy built an automatic "tell us your story" question into their online donation process.

Tips and Gut Checks

The session closed with tips and "gut checks" (questions to ask to decide if your story is worth sharing).

Tips for telling better stories:

• Details matter. Rich details make your story feel immediate and credible.
• Use the right "we." The "we" should be your organization and your supporter, not just your organization.
• Create a donor identity. Who is your donor? What makes them special? What do they believe in?
• Make the consequences clear. Explain the consequences for the donor's decision about whether or not to give.

Gut check questions to decide if your story is compelling:

• Would I share this story even if I wasn't fundraising? Is this a story you would tell a friend or family member or someone at a cocktail party, because it's just a really good story you want to share?
• Who's awesome in the story? Is only your organization awesome? Or is there room for the donor to be awesome, too?
• Is there unresolved tension in the story? Leave room for the reader to have a role.

Photo: gfpeck