Week 3 What is Story

The 3 Features of Powerful Fundraising Stories

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A wonderful and exasperating thing about little kids is how much they love to hear stories. Over and over again. When my kids were small, they couldn’t get enough of one particular story…

“Tell the Polyphemus Story!” they’d clamor.

I had lifted some sections of Homer’s Odyssey, lightly censored them for my audience, and packaged them as bedtime stories. My kids’ favorite was Odysseus’ encounter with the one-eyed giant, Polyphemus.

Time after time, sometimes a few times a day, they’d demand the Polyphemus Story. Every time, they seemed genuinely startled when the monster showed up in his cave while the adventurers were snooping around. Time after time, they laughed out loud when Odysseus claimed his name was “Nobody” – leaving Polyphemus to cry to his neighbors for help, “Nobody is hurting me!” when they drove a stake into his eye. (In my version, they “poked him with a stick.”)

My kids didn’t realize it, but those stories were little rehearsals for life. They helped frame the world. I could have warned them that there would come times in life when they met up with a bully, and the only way to fight back would be through cleverness. But I don’t think that would have prepared them. They needed to get the information via story.

Human beings are hardwired for stories. They are the main way we take in the most important information. Facts matter, at least to some people some of the time, but stories are what get our attention and move us to action. Whether we’re thinking big about how we intend to live … or small, like choosing a particular product. Or donating to a cause.

If you want to move more people to give, you’ve got to tell them stories. And that can be hard. The very reason for a nonprofit’s existence is at least in part the size and scope of the problem it was formed to address.

That’s why so many nonprofits tell “stories” like this in their fundraising:

More than 5,000 people in the Greater Springfield area are homeless.

Logically, that seems like a relevant fact. It should matter to a prospective donor by showing them the scope of the issue.

But it’s not memorable. It’s not interesting. Most people will not take it in or let it move them to action.

Worse yet, it’s exactly the wrong information: Because it’s a large number, it’s far more likely to be taken as a reason not to donate: “What’s the point in giving? I’m not going to make a meaningful difference.”

Instead of facts and statistics, you should make the case with a story. Like this:

Bill lives under a bridge….

The story of Bill has a chance to break through. To grab a reader’s attention and to enter their heart. That’s where their decision to give will come from. Giving is primarily an emotion-driven act. When you approach donors with numbers instead of stories, you are on the wrong playing field – it’s like you showed up at the golf course equipped with a baseball mitt and glove.

Just telling a story isn’t by itself the magic ingredient for fundraising success. The story needs to have some fundraising-specific characteristics. Those include three things.

  1. It’s about a problem the donor can solve

People don’t donate because a problem is big. They donate because a problem is solvable.

A solvable situation is not when a lot of people need help. It’s when a small number need help – preferably one.

So instead of a fundraising story that goes like this:

Four thousand. That’s how many Washingtonians will receive the dreaded news today that they’re in a battle with cancer.

You should zoom in closer. Like this:

You probably know someone – someone close (maybe even you yourself) – who has had a doctor say the frightening words, “You have cancer.”

The mental picture of one person with cancer (especially one person you know) is far more compelling than a large population of faceless people, growing by thousands every day. The human mind is programmed to “tune out” vast problems – but it’s also programmed to tune in to stories!

  1. It’s easy to understand without special knowledge

This can be a real challenge for nonprofits. You are expert in your area of world-changing – but you have to learn how to talk about that area in a non-expert way. It’s necessary for success.

Donors are unlikely to be experts. They don’t understand your professional jargon. They aren’t conversant in the science you put to work. The fine points of your way of working are lost on them.

That doesn’t mean they don’t care. They may care a lot. Just not in the detailed expert way you care. That’s why you must simplify, simplify, simplify. Donors don’t need to be educated up to a certain level in order to give. The assumed need that the way you talk about your cause internally leads to fundraising stories like this:

According to Dr. Lucille Pevensie, an oncologist and leading immunotherapy researcher at SCC, experimental therapy under way involving CART cells shows massive potential for cancer patients.

That story is not aimed at donors. A better way to connect would be to start like this:

A new experiment had the doctors gasping with amazement. The patients’ immune systems were “eating up” the tumor cells.

  1. The donor can become part of the story

My favorite thing about fundraising stories is that donors don’t merely read them. Donors can enter them and help change the ending of the story with their donations.

It’s tempting to make a story about your organization and staff and the great work that you’re doing. Like this:

Help our world-class scientists and doctors continue their pursuit of breakthrough cancer research and treatments that will save lives.

That may be how it looks from your vantage point. But when you turn it into a story that invites the donor to be part of it, there’s an important change:

Every dollar you give helps fund breakthrough cancer research and treatments that move us closer to the end of cancer as we know it.

Stories matter in fundraising.

But most of all, fundraising stories are what really make the difference.

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Author

  • Jeff Brooks

    Jeff Brooks is a Fundraisingologist at Moceanic. He has more than 30 years of experience in fundraising, and has worked as a writer and creative director on behalf of top nonprofits around the world, including CARE, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Feeding America, and many others.

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