Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

I’ve been reading several books on storytelling, most of which were written for a corporate audience, in search of great advice and tips for nonprofits. I’ll share some of the best stuff during this Wednesday’s webinar, “What Should We Write About? Storytelling Ideas for Nonprofits,” and in future posts here. But for now, here is my quick take on three of these books, in case you’ve been considering a purchase.

As a whole, I haven’t learned much. The majority of the pages in these books are dedicated to (1) convincing the reader of the value of stories in influencing others and (2) helping the corporate reader accept the idea that good stories include emotional elements, even if the corporate landscape is normally devoid of emotion. Since I already believe in the power of good stories, and since I think most of the nonprofit sector doesn’t suffer from the same “business-only straight-face” corporate persona problem, I got very little out of big sections of these books.

“The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative” by Stephen Denning is probably the best of the bunch. It explains eight different types of narratives with explicit information on what elements should be included in each of the different types of stories in order to achieve the stated goal. For example, when using the “Motivate Others to Action” story pattern, you don’t want to include lots of details about the person or place in the story, because what you are actually trying to do is to have your audience members see themselves in the story. If you include too many details, you prevent your audience for placing themselves within it.

I like the way that this book helps readers see the various components of a story and how those can be emphasized or eliminated depending on the goal of the storyteller. I’m going to spend more time with this book to really consider the ways that these various narrative patterns could work in the nonprofit sector. Most of the chapters are not perfect matches for nonprofit marketing, but I think the important kernels are all there. If Denning would write this same book, but for nonprofits, I think it would be a huge asset to the community.

“The Elements of Persuasion: Use Storytelling to Pitch Better, Sell Faster, and Win More Business” by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman advocates following a basic story formula that includes the Passion, Hero, Antagonist, Awareness, and Transformation. They tell lots of interesting and entertaining stories themselves, but the how-to advice is too vague and one-size-fits-all. It’s hard to make the leap from the corporate stories to the nonprofit sector. Still, it’s a pretty quick read and it does include some instruction, so I’d give it a tepid thumbs-up.

“The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling” by Annette Simmons. This book was the least satisfying of the three for me because it really focuses on the broader concepts of why storytelling works without much how-to. It includes tons of meaningful stories, but it’s really short on how to identify your own stories and make them work in specific situations. If you aren’t convinced of the power of stories, this book will convince you. If you are already sold on the idea, it won’t do much else for you.

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.

Claire Meyerhoff

Last month, Claire Meyerhoff called to interview me about nonprofit storytelling for some articles she is working on, and we ended up having an hour-and-a-half chat about how hard it is for so many nonprofits to get press coverage, even though they have such great stories to tell.

We shared all kinds of theories about why this is true, and one of Claire’s points was really on target: Nonprofits need to cut the bull! Blathering on about your wonky mission statement, the infinitely deep root causes of a problem, and the complicated system-wide solutions required just doesn’t work for print reporters who need to think in terms of hundreds of words, not thousands, and TV journalists who can give you only 30 seconds of airtime.

I was so impressed with Claire’s down-to-earth perspective that I asked if she’d be interested in doing a teleseminar with me. Then she told me a bit more about her history and I couldn’t wait to host this event.

If you can spare $20 for some great media training, here’s where you should spend it:

Getting Reporters to Cover Your Nonprofit: How to Tell Your Story So They’ll Tell It Too!

It’s next week’s Nonprofit Marketing Guide teleseminar (in other words, it’s a toll-free conference call) on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern (11:00 a.m. Pacific). Gather ’round the speaker phone — as long as you are all from the same organization, $20 buys training for your whole staff.

Here’s what you should know about Claire, and why I was so eager to introduce her to all of you. Claire is a communications professional who has spent twenty-something years spreading the word with no muss and no fuss. As a news writer in CNN’s Washington bureau, she took complex stories and honed them into :30 worth of copy fit for Judy Woodruff and Wolf Blitzer. She also helped the National Safe Kids Campaign make the CBS Evening News — and I’ll have her share the story about why that wouldn’t have happened if she had done what the “higher ups” wanted her to do.

She has also reported on Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath on XM Radio’s “Red Cross Radio” channel, and she wrote and narrated an award-wining video for Ronald McDonald House of Durham, NC. Simply put, Claire gets nonprofits and on Wednesday, she’ll help you get the media.

I’m calling this a “Hot Seat” interview, which means I’ll spend the first 15-20 minutes of the hour-long call peppering Claire with some good, tough questions. Then it’s your turn. You can submit questions in advance and during the teleseminar via email to ask AT hotseatquestions.com or send them in via AIM to hotseatquestions.

Get the details and register for the teleseminar now.

Using stories in your nonprofit annual report is a great way to bring to life what might otherwise be some stiff writing on your activities and accomplishments. But simply throwing some stories into the text won’t do. You need to be very focused and highly selective about which stories you use and how you tell them in your annual report. Here are my top five tips for using stories in annual reports. For more advice on annual reports, register for my webinar on Thursday, “Writing Your 2007 Nonprofit Annual Report - A Crash Course.”

Make the Story Immediately Relevant. A touching story about a little girl’s struggle to overcome a rare disease is heart-warming, but it’s nothing more than that if I don’t understand how this child is connected to your organization and specifically to the accomplishments. I’m reading your annual report to understand what you achieved last year. That little girl’s story needs to help me understand what your organization did. Ideally by the end of the first paragraph, and definitely by the end of the second, make it clear to me the role your organization played in helping this child. It’s what journalists call the “nut graph.”

Put Stories in Context. Stories about a single person are great for many reasons, but we also need to understand the larger context. How many other children have been helped by your support program, beyond the one you are telling us about in detail?

Cut the Fluffy Details. If you spend an hour interviewing someone, it can be really tough to hone in on which details matter most. But you need to include only the details that support why you are telling this particular story in the first place. We do not need a life history. We don’t need to know about all the other players in the story. Look at every detail and quote you provide and ask yourself if it reinforces or detracts from that nut graph.

Keep It Short. Let’s face it — people are more likely to skim your report than to read it, which means short, tight writing is much better than long essays. It’s also very unlikely that each story you tell is going to connect with all of your readers in the same way. That’s why I would rather spend 200 words on one person, 200 on another, and 100 words pulling it all together in a 500-word section than spending the whole 500 words talking about one person.

Let the Subject Approve the Copy. You are telling someone’s personal story as a way to promote your organization’s accomplishments. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the person agrees that you played the role you say you did. By allowing the story’s subject to approve the final copy, you ensure that both your organization and the individual will stand behind the claims you are making about your successes.

I’ll keep my eyes open for good storytelling in annual reports and let you know when I see some strong examples. If you find some, please share by leaving a comment on this post.

Are the copy and images in your nonprofit marketing materials drugging readers into ignoring you and your issue entirely? It’s a process called narcotization.

Here’s how it works. People were shown pictures of gum disease. One group saw photos of a mouth just a little rotten. The second saw photos of moderately rotten gums. The third saw horribly blackened mouths. The impact on dental care? Group one did what they always had. Group two did somewhat more flossing and brushing. Group three gave up entirely and stopped taking care of their gums and teeth. The idea is that if you think a problem is inevitable and overwhelming, you shut down and stop trying to fix it.

I read this example in Chuck Palahniuk’s book of essays called Stranger than Fiction while on vacation recently. In an essay called, “Dear Mr. Levin,” Palahniuk describes narcotization and then goes on to show how author Ira Levin beat the process by charming people into thinking about complex and difficult social problems through his incredible storytelling, way before the issues were a mainstream concern. Rosemary’s Baby, published in 1967, is about abortion rights. The Stepford Wives, published in 1972, is about the backlash against feminism. Sliver, published in 1991, is about electronic voyeurism.

These varying levels of information and our responses to them reminded me of the research that shows a powerful story about one person works better in fundraising than stories about multiple people. I talked about this recently in 10 Ways to Use Storytelling in Your Nonprofit.

Here’s how I see the connection between the two. Using a bunch of statistics about your issue is like showing a mouth that’s just a little rotten. It doesn’t motivate people to change at all. Showing them the suffering of large groups of people is like the blackened mouth. It’s just too much to take and people throw up their hands and don’t see how a donation to you will make a difference. But talking about a single person’s plight is like the moderately rotten gums. It’s bad enough to motivate people to want to help, but not so bad that they feel helpless.

So what can nonprofit communicators learn from Mr. Levin? Palahniuk says he uses metaphors that slowly reveal the issues and solutions without blatantly hitting us over the head with them. He uses humor to charm and worst-case scenarios to scare (Against a woman’s right to choose? Well, what would you do if you were pregnant with the Devil’s baby??) Says Palaniuk of Levin: “You created a fable to get our attention and inoculate us against the fear by creating a metaphor, a character that models the wrong behavior . . . That method gives the reader the moment of realization, the emotional moment of ‘ah-hah!’ And teaching experts say that unless we have that moment of chaos, followed by the emotional release of realization, nothing will be remembered.”

We may not be capable of writing some of the best-selling suspense novels of all time, but we can certainly apply some of these concepts in nonprofit communications. Bring your potential supporters along through your story. Build up to that “ah-hah” moment. Show that one donor what he can do to help, without making him feel helpless. Use anecdotes to let your volunteers learn from the mistakes and successes of others.

As I was looking over annual reports from environmental groups this week, I noticed that both Environmental Defense (ED) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) claimed that they were largely responsible for getting California’s law on global warming passed.

Now, I really have no idea who did what or how much, and I am sure that both organizations played vital roles. The fact that I am pitting them against each other in this post would probably send them both into a tizzy, since I suspect they work closely as partners on many issues and wouldn’t want to be viewed as competitors.

But let’s get real. Annual reports are largely about wooing donors and these two organizations do compete for funding. So who did the better job in taking claim for this ground-breaking legislation?

Environmental Defense — and here’s why.

1) They tell a better story. They describe how negotiations nearly collapsed and how their attorney “met Schwarzenegger outside the tent where the governor smokes cigars and cuts deals, and told him what was needed . . .” You can see The Governator in your head, and for anyone who knows anything about legislating, you know this is exactly how things work. It’s feels authentic, and it shows how ED has the right kind of access.

For all I know, NRDC was right there too, but they don’t say that. They talk more generically about getting lots of different interest groups in the state to support the bill. This is great work too, but it’s not nearly as compelling as ED’s story.

2) They include a great testimonial. “Environmental Defense played a pivotal role in drafting the bill and securing broad support that was critical to its passage.” — Fabian Nunez, Speaker of the California Assembly. Who better to quote on your legislative effectiveness than the Speaker of the Assembly? NRDC mentions working with the speaker and other bill authors, but that’s not nearly as good as a testimonial.

In its report, NRDC says, “It was NRDC’s reputation as honest brokers of science and the law that helped push the bill past the tipping point.” That’s great, but it would have been so much better if it came out of someone else’s mouth.

3) They give credit to NRDC by name. When special interests tried to thwart the legislation, “Environmental Defense joined with the Natural Resources Defense Council to fight back. We led an unprecedented coalition . . .”

NRDC only refers generically to working with “its partners.” Again, the ED article feels more authentic, because it includes the specific details. To be fair, NRDC does cite other partners by name, like the American Lung Association and PG&E, but note that these are not other environmental groups. Unless you read these two reports side-by-side, you wouldn’t catch this distinction. But the fact the ED names another environmental group as a leader demonstrates ED’s own confidence in its work.

I’d love to hear what you think. Here are the specific pages I’m talking about: NRDC’s Global Warming Pages | ED’s Global Warming Pages. You can get the full reports on their websites: NRDC | ED Read the pages and leave a comment on this post with your take.

This specific comparison aside, I think both groups do a good job with their annual reports. I’m preparing to publish a series of annual report reviews on NonprofitAnnualReports.net to help nonprofits better understand ways to improve their own annual reports. Both reports will be included in the reviews I’ll share later in September. FYI, subscribers to my free “Annual Reports Insider” e-newsletter will be the first to hear about these reviews, so subscribe if you want to read them sooner than later.

Storytelling is all the rage in the marketing world these days, because it works. Examples are everywhere in commercial advertising. Samuel Adams commercials feature real employees and customers talking about beer. Those Geico commercials (not the ones with the gecko or the cavemen) feature customers and celebrities telling real stories. The UPS ad executive at the white board is telling real stories.

“Stories” is the sixth pillar of effectively communicating your ideas, according to “Made to Stick” — which is, by the way, a fabulous book that every nonprofit communicator should own. (I may be the last blogger on the planet who got a review copy to actually mention the book, but that’s because I wanted to wait a few months after reading it to see if, well, it would stick with me. It did. You should buy it.)

Recent research into what works in fundraising appeals shows that a powerful story about a single individual moves donors more than general information or even stories about more than one person.
So how can you inject storytelling into your day-to-day communications? Here are ten specific examples of ways nonprofits can use stories.

1) Include a story about a real person in every speech you give. Talking to potential volunteers? Tell a story or two about a real volunteer and the difference she is making in the lives of others.

2) Turn a story into a how-to article for your newsletter. Using the first person (”How I . . .”), have someone on your staff, a board member, or a volunteer explain how to do something, based on his own experience in learning how to do it.

3) Include testimonials in your event marketing. Ask people who attended your workshop to provide testimonials about how they personally used what they learned at the event in their own work.

4) Single out one person you are helping in your next fundraising appeal letter. Instead of talking broadly about the need for low-cost childcare in your community, talk about the plight of just one single mom.

5) Use serial storytelling on a campaign blog. Hook in readers with frequent updates about a particular person, animal, or item. Environmental and humane groups use this tactic effectively all the time (e.g. tracking a particular whale’s journey — “Will he evade the evil whale hunters?” — or a dog that has been badly abused, but is now on the mend after being rescued — “Will she live? And walk again?”).

6) Give each board member at least one good story to use, and have them practice telling it. Your board members should be advocating for your organization at all times. Give them real stories they can use that will put your organization in a good light with potential donors, volunteers, community decision-makers, etc. Make time on your next board meeting agenda to learn the stories and to practice telling them.

7) Lead your next press release with a story. The media loves real stories, so use them as angles in your press releases. If you can make the real person in the story available for interviews, that’s even better.

Incorporate a story into a training session. Who do you train? Volunteers, new staff, community members, others in your field? Incorporate a good story into your next training session.

9) Add stories to your annual report. They can take the form of personal profiles, first-person accounts, or short testimonials, but include stories about real people in your annual report to reinforce the narrative about your accomplishments and activities.

10) Rotate stories on your website home page. Collect stories about specific people related to your organization and rotate them on your home page.

I plan to talk much more about storytelling on this blog. But until I get all those posts written, check out the quick primer on nonprofit storytelling by Nancy at Getting Attention.