I was in Uganda, gathering stories on behalf of a client. At that time, Uganda was Ground Zero of the AIDS epidemic. The disease had devastated parts of the country, killing nearly all adults under 60. The tranquil beauty of the countryside gave the impression of the richness of life. But the reality was the country was as empty and broken as if there’d been a nuclear holocaust.

I was visiting some of the hardest-hit communities. We saw no adult men or women, other than white-haired elderly ones — but there were children everywhere.

Most of my interviews were with older women. They’d ended up caring for their grandchildren after their own children died of AIDS. They typically had a dozen or more grandchildren in their care, all orphans, all with no source of care but grandma — who struggled to feed them all.

In one especially devastated community, an old woman approached me and asked if I was a priest. I told her I was not.

“So minister,” she said, then hurried away. I learned later that the community experience was that the only white people who visited them were clergy. And if I wasn’t a priest, I must be the next best thing, a minister.

A few minutes later, the old woman returned. She was holding a baby. She motioned me to follow her. We walked a few yards, pushing through a thick tropical forest until we emerged in a small clearing. The ground was a square of black soil, raked into steep furrows.

“Reverend bless,” the old woman said, motioning at the ground.

She wanted me to bless the garden plot. To invoke God’s power on the urgently needed crop.

And then, before I could even start to wonder how you bless a garden, she thrust the baby into my arms. “Bless baby,” she said.

I stood there at the edge of the garden plot, sleeping baby in my arms, and wondered what to do. I felt profoundly uncomfortable, terribly inadequate; I wanted to beg off, to explain how I was the wrong guy, to get away.

Fortunately, an insight came to me: I had no choice but to go through with the blessing they sought. I needed to figure it out and just get on with it.

My discomfort was nothing compared to their need for blessings. If I’d refused, it would have been an awkward extrication from an awkward situation — to me. To them, it would have been a crushing disappointment with potentially fatal repercussions. What sort of clergyman would do that to them? Or, as I asked myself, what sort of human being would do that to them?

I learned that day that sometimes the role is bigger than the person playing it. That sometimes doing the necessary thing can feel uncomfortable — but that is no reason back out.

This issue comes up in my work quite often in the form of a nonprofit leader who balks at signing a fundraising message he or she doesn’t like.

The less experienced ones say, “This is just dumb. It’ll never work. I know that because I wouldn’t respond to it.”

The more experienced ones say, “I realize this is how you motivate donors to give. But I don’t talk this way! It makes me uncomfortable.”

The true leaders (experienced or not) say, “I don’t understand this, but I’m willing to sign if that’s what it takes to get people to fund our cause.”

The real leaders get it — a lot quicker than I did: sometimes you have to fake it. You have to bless the baby and the garden. This may not be why you showed up to do the job, and you may feel unequipped to do it — but a role has been given to you, and you need to take it.

I don’t know if my blessings in Uganda had any effect on the garden. Or the baby. No doubt I got it wrong, but to this day I cherish the memory. It was one of those rare moments when the divine gets mixed up in normal life and leaves you changed. I often think about that baby. He’d be a young man by now. I hope he’s having a good, productive, joyful life.

Life is that way. There are times you have to push aside your sense of who you are and what you do in order to perform the role that you’ve been placed in.

So play the role; sign the letter. That’s how you participate and the strange mechanisms of the world. It’s how you transform the world around you. And yourself.

In my Storytelling Masterclass, we explore some of the many layers involved in getting a transforming story from the real world into our donors’ heart and minds. Don’t miss this chance to dig deep into the most challenging facet of fundraising! It’s available for all members of The Fundraisingology Lab.

Like many people, I spent much of my life believing my father was immortal. Then he told me a story that changed that.

When dad was diagnosed with cancer, I knew he was going to beat it. The whole family did. I was worried, of course, and I learned enough about his cancer to realize we couldn’t take it lightly. But my heart and most of my mind were confident he’d overcome it. He was in his 60s. I was in my 40s.

For two years it went well. He had a few rounds of chemo that shrank the tumors and kept him strong and healthy. He continued working as a math professor. He talked about the future. There were places he wanted to travel, and he looked forward to his grandchildren’s milestones. He bought a new car.

Then the cancer roared up like a flame with new fuel. Dad went through an especially aggressive regime of chemotherapy. It left him on his back, gasping and bleeding from his mouth. But it didn’t slow the cancer. Still, we believed he would overcome.

One night, my family went to my parents’ house for dinner after Dad had recovered from that chemo. He looked well, almost back to normal. My faith in a positive outcome grew as we ate and talked.

Then after dinner, Dad cornered me in the kitchen. Nobody else was around. He grabbed me by both shoulders. That wasn’t like him at all. His hands trembled.

“I’m worried about Mom,” he said, his eyes drilling into me. “She really can’t take care of herself. Last night her sleeve caught fire at the stove. I was there, so she wasn’t hurt. But you know how she is. . . .”

He didn’t finish the thought. He let it play out in my imagination. We faced each other in silence for probably a minute.

My mother had a chronic illness. All her life she had an impulsive approach that mostly served her well. But it was becoming dangerous. Dad had been quietly taking on the increasing burden of her care: driving her to appointments, making sure she took her medications, keeping her from falling, from getting lost, from setting herself afire.

It suddenly hit me—hit me almost with physical force—that my optimistic belief about his cancer was out of step with reality. At that instant, I realized that the cancer might take him, and leave my mother to my care.

That was the moment my father became mortal.

All he’d done was paint a quick verbal sketch: my mother, standing at the stove, flames licking up her sleeve, unaware as it climbed her arm. It was as vivid as a movie.

Until then, I’d understood the risk with my head but hadn’t felt it in my gut, or taken it seriously enough to prepare for a future without him. Now I was charged with energy to respond.

That’s the power of story. It can flip the switch in our heads from a vague fact to an unavoidable reality.

My father’s story—the last story he ever told me—was barely a story at all. But it was utterly vivid and heavy with urgency. I began to prepare for life without my father. He died a month later, and I became my mother’s caregiver.

I hope I never tell a story that hurts a donor as much as that story stung. But I do hope to tell stories that deliver as much motivating truth.

My experience is in no way unusual. We all live parts of our lives hiding behind a curtain. Maybe it’s the health of a loved one. Or our own financial situation. Or the appalling fact that children are going hungry. Or that diseases like cancer carry off people far too soon.

We know the facts. We can calculate the statistics. But we know them with our heads, not our hearts. That’s how your cause is for most donors. They’ve been exposed to the facts, probably for decades. You can shovel more and more facts about your issue at them, but you won’t change a thing in their brains, their will, or their muscle to pick up a pen and write a check.

Not until you lift the curtain by telling a story. Until then, they won’t give.

(Excerpted from How to Turn Your Words into Money by Jeff Brooks.)

For more tips like this on how to use storytelling to connect with your donors, join Jeff on his storytelling course, Your Blueprint for Donor-Focused, High-Revenue Fundraising Storytelling that is available for all members of The Fundraisingology Lab.