Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

Here are the best online resources (advice, how-tos, etc.) I’ve found to date on nonprofit storytelling. I’ll post nonprofit examples later.

From Andy Goodman

Andy has some fabulous advice on how nonprofits can use storytelling.

– Watch Andy’s webinar for ReadyTalk on “Storytelling: Your Most Powerful Communications Tool” or a video of a keynote address he gave to California housing group. The webinar includes the slides; the video doesn’t. The presentation appears to be the same.

– Listen to the mp3 of another presentation he gave on storytelling for good causes.

– From his newsletter, Seven Questions to Sharpen Your Stories and 10 Immutable Laws of Storytelling.

From Katya Andresen

– An mp3 of How to Tell Your Story: Tips for Better Storytelling, Fundraising Success and Media Glory (here’s the transcript) and a much shorter how-to article based on the presentation.

From Nancy Schwartz

– An article called Put Persuasive Storytelling to Work for Your Nonprofit

From the W.K. Kellog Foundation Communications Toolkit

– An article on storytelling with links to additional resources.

This post is part of my participation in Michele Martin’s Blogging4Learning Challenge. I’m blogging to learn more about how nonprofits can use storytelling in nonprofit marketing and communications.

Email newsletters are great tools for nonprofits because they are so much cheaper to produce and distribute than print newsletters. The only problem is that they can be deleted in an instant or trapped forever in spam filters. And even when they are opened, they are often too *yawn* boring to grab the readers’ attention and move them to action.

I’m the special guest for Network for Good’s “Nonprofit 911″ training series next week and I’ll be talking all about e-mail newsletters — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Come get some great tips for your email newsletter during the free conference call on Tuesday, February 26 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Register here.

I finally got my social networking act together and invite you to follow, connect with, and be-friend me online. You’ll find links to my profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook in my blog sidebar and here in this post.

Twitter lets you keep up with what I’m doing throughout the day. If you aren’t familiar with it, the two best descriptions I’ve heard are “it’s like being a fly on the wall in your friends’ lives” and “it’s like one big instant messaging party all day long.” You should also check out the Nonprofit Twitter Pack for more nonprofit sector folks to follow.

LinkedIn lets us share business connections. I also love LinkedIn Answers, a Q&A feature, which has a special section on nonprofits. You’ll find some great sharing going on there.

Facebook lets us share on a more personal level. Because of the personal nature of this profile, please remind me how we know each other when sending friend requests.

See you there!

Here are a few posts from various blogs I read that I think you’ll find interesting and helpful.

Fundraising

If you are writing fundraising copy without a clue, Donor Power Blog has a nice, short, doable list of seven steps to a relevant fundraising offer.

Katya Andresen at Nonprofit Marketing Blog wants to help you avoid doing the “bus stop broadside” where you come off as a creepy or too-needy fundraiser. Another must-read.

I’m totally fascinated by what’s happening with Kiva.org (more donors than they can service) — this Chronicle of Philanthropy transcript of a chat interview with Matt Flannery contains some good bits of advice on online marketing and social networking. Jeff Brooks talks about how to have Kiva’s problems here.

Web 2.0 & Social Networking

Ken Goldstein advocates that small nonprofits explore ways to incorporate Web 2.0 into their marketing, including blogs and video, not just to reach new audiences, but to better communicate with the constituents you already have.

Idealware has another great article out, this time on how to decide whether your nonprofit should use social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. This article will help you decide whether to dive in head first or wiggle your toes in the shallow end. You can also learn why Laura is down on nonprofit podcasting (too much work, too little gain).

Advocacy

If you are just a little bit tired of politicians overlooking the value of the nonprofit sector, check out the V3 Campaign. Its goal is to ask every candidate for public office, from mayors to the presidency, how they intend to support the nonprofit sector.

Most nights I watch the NBC Nightly News and last night I saw two stories with interesting nonprofit marketing angles. They provide two great examples of how to create story hooks that are so enticing that the media simply can’t pass them up.

Lesson #1: If your point isn’t quite compelling enough, it’s OK to elevate a secondary point that is.

The first story was the massive beef recall, the largest in American history, that was based directly on an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States. I used to freelance for the HSUS, so I’m familiar with many of their undercover investigations over the years. They always reveal truly disgusting behavior by human beings against animals — this time forcing sick cows to their feet with electric shocks and bulldozers, since the animals are supposed to be healthy enough to walk on their own to slaughter. As disturbing as this story is, I don’t believe it would have been near the top of the broadcast without this secondary hook: much of the meat went into the National School Lunch Program.

Americans who might otherwise turn a blind eye to exactly how low we humans will go as we turn cows into steaks suddenly get interested when it’s little kids, many of them poor, being served hamburgers made from cows too sick to stand. The HSUS very wisely turned this into more than a story about tortured cows. It became a story about what the federal government is feeding kids at school, and they got massive exposure as a result.

In fact, the HSUS contacted school officials directly in 36 states on January 31 warning them about the beef, well before the USDA forced the recall this week. It’s a great case study in public advocacy — directly connecting animal rights and human health — and also great message development. If you are a big meat eater, you may not care how a bunch of sick cows are treated, but it’s hard to ignore children being fed beef that’s much more likely to carry mad cow disease and other contamination.

Lesson #2: A simple, real, personal story drives home a point better than statistics.

Toward the end of the broadcast, we learned about how U.S. government aid is supporting a foster home and school in Uganda that takes in children whose parents have died of AIDS. Many of the children are HIV positive as well, and our aid pays for their anti-viral drugs. It’s a heart-warming story, but the hook that opened and closed the story really drove home the point.

The founder of the foster home had been asked by a prostitute several years earlier for some poison. The prostitute was dying of AIDS and rather than orphan her two small daughters, who would have surely been forced into prostitution themselves, she wanted to kill herself and them.

Instead this woman took the two girls home with her and started the foster home. Today the two girls are healthy young woman, with a bright future ahead of them, because of the generosity of not only this one woman, but also the U.S. government. The story opened and closed with the foster home founder talking specifically about the two girls.

No matter what issue you are discussing, you are much more likely to capture the media’s interest if you can put an actual human face on the story. A so-so story about U.S. aid to Africa becomes riveting when you introduce the painful past and hopeful future of these two real girls.

If you aren’t getting the kind of media coverage you’d like, apply these two lessons to your media pitches and maybe one evening Brian Williams will be talking about your good work.

Chunking your Web and email text is one of the essential online writing skills I’ll be discussing during “Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email,” a webinar on Wednesday, February 20 at 2:00 p.m. ET. Registration is open until 1:30 p.m. and costs just $35.

When people read on paper, they usually start at the beginning and work their way through in a linear fashion from page one to page two to page three, etc. When people read on the Web, however, they start where Google sent them, and that could be anywhere on your website. Once they get there, your website visitors will quickly skim the page, looking for chunks of text and keywords that tell them they are in the right spot.

What is Chunking?

When you chunk text, you break down what may have started as one really long article into smaller, manageable, more easily understood blocks of text.  Your goal should be to create chunks of information that can stand on their own, but that also fit within the larger context of your website.

How Big is the Ideal Chunk?

So how big or small is the perfect chunk of text on a website? You need to find the sweet spot between too little and too much text. If you put too little information on a page, you force your reader to click around for the details, which is annoying. But if your chunks are too big, you make it difficult for your readers to immediately find the key points they are seeking.

For example, you might break down a 2,000 guide into three web pages of 600-700 words each. On each of the web pages, you could then break those 600 words into three blocks of 200 words each, complete with their own subheadings. Many professional online writers would advocate even shorter pages (no more than 500 words) and paragraphs (no more than 100 words).

Adding bulleted lists, writing in short sentences, highlighting keywords, and linking to related articles and details also contribute to successful chunking.

Which Page Has Better Chunking?

What questions would you have if you were interested in adopting a pet? Take a look at these two pages from two humane societies in Colorado and see who answers your questions more quickly.
Adoption Process Page at Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region

Adoption Process Page at the Dumb Friends League/Denver Humane Society

Both pages discuss the pet adoption process, but one does a much better job at chunking the information.

The Pikes Peak page contains over 1,500 words and only seven subheadings. There are no bulleted lists, highlighted keywords, or links to more details to help visitors skim through the page to find the specific answers they are seeking.

In contrast, the Denver Dumb Friends League page contains about 1,000 words and has ten subheadings. The paragraphs are much shorter and you’ll find several bulleted lists and links to details. Think back to those questions you had about adopting a pet and I bet this page answers them more quickly.

The Pikes Peak page also contains the same kind of information, but in buried form that requires actual reading, rather than skimming.

This article written for teachers at Dartmouth who are putting course materials online provides some additional perspectives on chunking.

Bryan Miller at Giving in a Digital World has posted this week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants on how nonprofits can use Web 2.0 tools. You’ll find posts on figuring out whether social networking is right for you, what to do next if you decide that it is, raising money online, and more.

Next week the Carnival travels back to the U.S. for a stop at Perspectives from the Pipeline with Rosetta Thurman. See you there!

This week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is now up at Spare Change, with a focus on nonprofits and marketing. You’ll find lots of thought-provoking posts this week.

Next week, the Carnival goes back overseas for a visit with Bryan Miller in London at Giving in a Digital World. Bryan’s theme will be “Creating and developing online supporter communities through Web 2.0″ If you’ve got something to say on that topic (and it seems  we all do!) be sure to submit your post for Bryan’s consideration.