One of the most powerful marketing tools for your organization is a great story.
[TLDR: A compelling story is a powerful marketing tool for nonprofits, but it must be carefully chosen, focused, and widely shared across platforms. To build a storytelling culture, engage staff and volunteers in finding inspiring stories that highlight your mission, ensure they are proofread and repurposed for maximum impact, and download our free Storytelling eBook for more strategies.]
Before you start sharing, ensure you have a story worthy of your time and effort. Remember, once you identify a great story, should never live in just one place. You can write a blog post, then tweak and repurpose that content for Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn, your annual report, a guest blog post, a newsletter, a video—the possibilities are endless.
Find a Story Worth Telling
Stories can inspire, educate, and motivate people to support your cause—if they’re worth sharing. If not, they’ll likely fall flat. Here’s how to find something that will inspire, move, motivate, and draw people to your organization.
1. Identify Compelling Stories
Look for events with magical moments or significant individuals or, volunteers who went above and beyond. The bulk of your stories should be the personal stories of those who benefited from your services. Choose stories that tug at heartstrings, demonstrate your mission, or inspire support. If the story gives you all the feels, you’re on the right track. If it doesn’t move you, it probably won’t move your audience either.
2. Keep the Main Point Front and Center
It’s easy to go off on tangents when storytelling. Stay focused on the main message you want to communicate. Skip the extraneous details and get to the heart of the matter. Write everything out, then have someone else read it. Did they get lost? Was it easy to follow? Listen to their feedback and edit accordingly. Even seasoned writers need an editor. Enlist a friend you trust for honest feedback.
3. Unearth Real-Life Anecdotes
Great anecdotes often need to be uncovered. Talk to volunteers, employees, board members, and the people you serve. Be inquisitive and ask questions. You might create a form on your website or in your newsletter asking your audience to submit stories. Also, think about relevance. How has your organization fared during significant events, like the pandemic? Sometimes focusing on a specific topic can help you find the story you’re looking for.
4. Embed Storytelling in Your Culture
Make storytelling a part of your organization’s culture. Spend 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each staff meeting discussing recent events or favorite moments. Create a Slack channel or private Facebook group where staff and volunteers can post story ideas. When sharing stories becomes second nature, you may end up with more content than you can handle—a great problem to have.
When I was the Executive Director at the Big Brothers Big Sisters affiliate in Lincoln, NE, we started every meeting of the organization with a “Mission Moment. And, I mean every meeting, board, committee, staff, trainings, community meetings, etc. Anytime we had a group of people gathered, we shared as story from our program. This created a culture of storytelling within the organization. Everyone was looking for stories to share and had a memory bank of stories from the program!
5. Double-Check and Proofread
Before pushing anything live, ensure more than one person reviews it. Check for grammatical and spelling errors and ensure the story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Is any information missing? Is it easy to follow? Sometimes, adding extra information to a sidebar or a video can help. And remember, one story can lead to another, so stay alert to new opportunities.
Get Your Nonprofit Storytelling Ebook
Many nonprofits have untold stories because storytelling can feel daunting. It’s NOT! And, it’s so critical, stories need to be the hallmark of your engagement and marketing efforts. That blinking cursor on a blank page can be intimidating. We’re here to help you overcome that fear and become your organization’s best storyteller.
Download our brand new ebook, “Why Storytelling Matters and Five Simple Ways to Get Started”, for insights into why storytelling is so important for your nonprofit, plus ways to make the process less painful and much more fulfilling.
