WELCOME!
STORYTELLING BASICS FOR NON-PROFITS
Presented by Vanessa Chase & Guidestar
Vanessa Chase Fundraising and Communications Strategist www.TheStorytellingNonprofit.com Speaker: Association of fundraising professionals, Council for Advancement and Support of Education, npEngage, BBCON14, Association of Donor Relations Professionals Clients: BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, Hope for the Nations, Wagner Hills Farm Society, A Rocha Canada, Boucher Instuitue of Naturopathic Medicine
Share Your Thoughts
What’s your role at your non-profit?
What are you hoping to learn during today’s webinar?
WHY STORYTELLING
RESULTS
Increase in overall revenue by $150k
Over 200 major gifts prospects identified
Massive improvements to donor relations
TODAY’S AGENDA
Storytelling in the fundraising context
5 step process for collecting and developing stories
How to create a storytelling strategy
The benefits of engaging your community
WHAT IS STORYTELLING
Storytelling is the process of combining facts and narrative in order to communicate a message and an
emotion to a target audience.
WHEN YOU DON’T TELL STORIES
you’re not able to connect in an impactful way
donors don’t understand
they feel unconnected, so they sever ties
donors stop caring
THE DONOR KNOWLEDGE GAP
The Donor The Organization
Stories
STORIES AS SOLUTIONS
Stories help bridge the Donor Knowledge Gap in two key ways:
The Organization they provide context
they emotionally connect your donors to the cause.
5 KEYS TO STORYTELLING
DEFINE YOUR GOAL & CORE MESSAGE KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
CHARACTER & CONFLICT
COLLECTING STORIES
SHARING STORIES
DEFINE YOUR GOAL & CORE MESSAGE
let strategy drive your efforts
identify a goal and a core message
what is the end goal of telling this story?
YOUR CORE MESSAGE
what is the overarching message that you want to convey?
(the reason why someone would
answer the call to action)
DEFINE YOUR GOAL & CORE MESSAGE
University of Toronto
h#p://boundless.utoronto.ca/story/holly-‐zoe-‐ka8a/
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE Create an audience profile
CHARACTER
Client Staff Members Board Members
Volunteers Donors Community Advocates
CONFLICT
conflict is the problem that your character needs to solve
conflict’s solution makes your donors feel like a hero
Cancer Care Connection
COLLECTING STORIES KNOW WHAT THEY NEED
“Tell me a story.” is far too broad, be specific:
“I’m writing our donor stewardship report and I want to be able to share a story about someone from (program name). Ideally,
someone who has had a positive experience in the program and you think has really benefited from it. Do you have any thoughts
about people who might be good to speak to?”
COLLECTING STORIES CREATE TOOLS
Put tools and systems in place to collect stories:
create a story collection form
send out a monthly email
SHARING STORIES USE YOUR STORY STRATEGY
What are you funding priorities?
When will you be communicating/soliciting donors?
What opportunities do you have for
storytelling?
SHARING STORIES Month Campaign/
Funding Priority
Fundraising Tac7c #1
Fundraising Tac7c #2
Donor Stewardship
Other
January
February
March
April
May
STORYTELLING CAN TRANSFORM YOUR NON-‐PROFIT
STORYTELLING CAN TRANSFORM YOUR NON-‐PROFIT
The most important stories are the ones you tell yourself and the ones you tell each other.
QUESTIONS?
