Story, not Summary

Next Tuesday (March 31^st) I’m giving a free webinar on how to “report back” to donors.

Here’s a sneak peak at one of my main points: when you are reporting, share stories, not summaries.

Here’s what I mean.  Any time a nonprofit says something like, “We served 347 people last month,” they’ve shared a summary of all the work they’ve done.

Compare that to when a nonprofit says, “Let me tell you about Gerald, a gentleman we served last month.”  That’s a story.

When a nonprofit says “we helped 347…” to individual donors, they are hiding 347 individual stories of impact behind a summary.   And every one of those 347 could have been a story that caused a moment with a donor.

Individual donors are engaged by and motivated by stories, not summaries:

• Summaries are impactful for people who have the context and time to unpack them.  Share summaries with grantmaking organizations and foundations who are experts in your sector and have all the context and time they need to understand the summary.  (And in your Annual Report, if you want to feature a bunch of summaries on a page or two, no problem.)
• Stories are impactful for any human with just a few seconds, no knowledge required.  Share stories to your individual donors in your email, direct mail and events.

Because if you can make your Fundraising interesting and powerful to any human with a few seconds to spare, and they don’t need to have any knowledge about your organization or sector, you just unlocked your ability to raise a lot more money from a lot more people. 

Report with a story, not a summary.