p.1 Nonprofit 911 June 9, 2009 The One-minute Storyteller: Making Emotional Connections with Supporters (and Potential Supporters) with Mark Rovner, Sea Change Strategies Sponsored by Network for Good The MP3 audio transcript can be found at www.fundraising123.org or www.nonprofit911.org Rebecca Higman: Now I am happy to introduce our speaker. Mark Rovner is a frequent writer, speaker, and blogger. He is currently a principal at Sea Change Strategies, which is an integrated marketing and fundraising services firm. Mark is one of the pioneers of using the Internet for fundraising, organizing and strategic communications. Over the past 10 years, he has led communications and marketing efforts on behalf of a host of organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, Amnesty International, and the Christopher Reeve Foundation. And of his many notable accomplishments, Mark led the first ever national study of socially engaged Internet users in 1999, which is still viewed as the benchmark in the field. As I mentioned, we'll be reserving some time at the end for Mark to take your questions, so again that email address is fundraising123@networkforgood.org. And now without further ado, I'm happy to turn the floor over to Mark. Mark Rovner: Thank you all for being here today. I want to talk fairly briefly and leave as much time as possible for Q & A, because my experience with these sessions is they're more useful when you all get to drive the agenda. So we're going to leave a good chunk of time for questions and answers. My goal for this time is to give you some very simple tools that will let you take the stories that you already have. You already have the stories, what I want to do is give you some very simple tools, and some very simple dos and don'ts, for telling those stories, for putting those stories in a form, in a structure that will communicate well to your donors and potential donors. And it's just incredibly interesting to me how much we talk about stories and storytelling compared with how much we do stories and storytelling. It would be like a group of gourmets who talk endlessly about food and never eat. I don't know why that is. We can talk about why that is and why that might be in the Q & A, but I don't want to become one of those people who just talk about it, I want to give you some tools, so I'm going to go forward. One of the reasons I think that we put so much emphasis on stories is they are that important. They are the primary vehicle by which cultures and religions are propagated. We all go to the movies, or watch TV, or read books because stories are a fundamental form of human communication.
p.2 And when an organization develops a story that conveys its brand, a narrative that really tells you everything you need to know about that organization, it catapults the organization into a level of visibility that it wouldn't have otherwise. A couple examples are Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Everyone who thinks about Greenpeace first has that image of - and this is a little story - of the whalers out there trying to kill the whales and the brave Greenpeacers in their Zodiac getting in between the harpoons and the whales. And that story drives the organization by identity. One of the really cool things about stories and one of the reasons I love doing these Nonprofit 911 calls is because there's no advantage to being a big organization. Small organizations can be, and in my experience tend to be, better storytellers than big organizations, because you don't have to deal with the bureaucracies, and the committee meetings and whatnot, at least you shouldn't have to. So it is a tool that is available to anyone who has Internet access and a free Blogger account. Not to say you can't use more tools than that, but that's all you really need. So if you downloaded the sheet that Network for Good passed around yesterday, I'm going to pretty much go down the seven big points that I've listed. You don't have to take copious notes because you'll be able to download the summary sheet if you haven't done so already. Point number one - and I think this is overarching and incredibly important. The goal of a good story, particularly in a fundraising context, is emotional engagement. Emotional. Emotional. It's about getting your donors and potential donors to feel something. There is a brand new field called behavioral economics which is all the rage right now, which is showing how people do not behave rationally. They behave irrationally, and they often behave irrationally in fairly predictable ways. We can go into that later if you're interested, and I can recommend some books. The bottom line of which, and the piece that's relevant to storytelling in a fundraising context, is that in general the right brain - the emotional, intuitive brain - is the decider. In almost all cases, the right makes the decisions and the left brain - the analytical, logical brain - goes out and collects evidence to support that decision. So even a major donor, the likelihood is that they're writing a $100,000 check to you - or someone writing a $10 check to you - based on an emotional impulse. And stories are emotional machines if they are told right. Again, I want to stress we're talking about fundraising here. There's been a great discussion on the Sea Change blog that I will direct you to later, about can stories be less emotional if they're in a policy context, et cetera, et cetera? I suppose the answer is yes, but we're talking about fundraising. And above all else the story needs to be emotionally compelling, and I'm going to give you a few simple tools for that.
p.3 I'll tell you another interesting fact that comes out of research, and it goes to this emotional issue. Someone did a study two or three years ago where they took a bunch of donors and they sent three versions of an appeal. One version of the appeal was a heart wrenching story about a single - I think it was a child. And it ended in an appeal for funds. The second test was with an appeal that told two stories about two different victims in similar situations, and it had an appeal for funds. And then the third version told that first story, but then broadened the focus out and it said, "And this person is one of 43 million people who suffer this way," et cetera, et cetera. Take a minute and guess which one won: the single stand-alone story, the two stories, or the one story with the wider focus. The answer is A. The story that won - I believe by a significant margin - was the simple story about one person and his or her plight, without the larger context being presented. And the reason, it is believed, is because the emotional intensity of connecting with that one person and their story made all the difference. Now the reason I'm harping on this for a good five minutes is because most nonprofit stories fail because of this. Because we all want to be seen as smart, and we all want to be seen as doing our research, and we all want to be seen as really on top of things. So we load our stories with facts, and statistics, and analytics. It's like emotional Novocain, it just undermines the point of what you're doing. So with that, we get into more practical building blocks. And really any good story can be broken down into three key elements. I should tell you, a lot of this is coming from the screenwriting world, although this is all equally valid in other forms of storytelling, such as the context in which we're talking about today. So the three building blocks of any story are character, some of sort of hero or protagonist. Desire - there's something that that hero or protagonist wants or needs. And conflict - there's some of opposition or obstacles or impediments that keeps the character from getting what they want or need. If you think about any movie that you've seen, if you think about any novel that you've read, or short story, or TV show, it can all be boiled down to character, desire, and conflict. I'm going to talk about each of those in a little bit more detail. Character - and this is the person who, in screenwriting or novel writing, is called the protagonist or the hero. It needs to be someone we care about. It should be - and again this is a big mistake that organizations make frequently and you can now avoid forever. It should or a person or a small group of people. It should not be the Humane Society of - and I apologize, I forget which one you are.
p.4 It should be Mary Roe, who works at the Humane Society, and who has been taking in stray cats since she was six years old. It needs to be someone we care about. There's a screenwriting tactic called the "save the cat moment." Because we tend to like people who are good to animals or good to children. And so often to make you like someone early in a movie, you will see them do some sort of good deed. They'll help an old lady across the street. They'll save a cat out of a tree. They'll play with a child. The more you get into the storytelling structure, the more in ruins movies for you, because you seen how they're manipulating you. But that's a story for another day. Other tools that make the character instantly likeable: if they're attractive, if they're funny, if they're victims, especially if their victims of some sort of malady that we can identify with. And if they're not perfect. That perfect goody-two-shoes is someone who is more likely to inspire resentment in your reader or viewer than sympathy. So those are some very simple, very practical devices that professional storytellers use to immediately infuse a character with likeability. Desire. That's the second element. That's what the person wants to gain or lose. In many of our cases, we want to gain a home for a stray dog. We want to gain shelter and food and safety for refugees. We all know what it is we are trying to do. We all know who the people we serve are trying to achieve. So this is a pretty simple aspect of it. Again, you don't want to do this in a macro sense. You don't want to say there are 43 million refugees in the world. You want to talk about one family in Darfur, one Tibetan refugee family in New York, and focus in on their plight and what they are trying to achieve - a better life for their children, an education, or healthcare. And then the third piece... You have got a character. You have got desire. The third piece is conflict. In screenwriting this is called progressive complications. And what is meant by that is a person, or people who are pursuing their goals need to overcome obstacles, each of which is greater than the one before. In classic movie structure, your hero will encounter four major obstacles, each of which is larger than the last. Now you don't need to have four, but this is the heart of the story. What makes a story interesting, what makes a story compelling is not the character or the desire, but it is the path that they need to take to overcome it. Again, a simple, common mistake that is often made, you will have a story, XYZ organization came in. There was a hurricane and the dogs were stranded and they rescued the dogs. The end. You have left out the best part. First of all, you have left out the people who are involved in the rescue. And second of all, it can't have been easy. What did they have to do to get to those dogs? What did they have to do to rescue them?
p.5 The juice of the story is in the conflict. And by the way, if you have a good villain, that will amp up the fundraising value of your story dramatically. If you have an individual who is the personification of the opposition, who is leading the opposition. In, for example, the global warming area, you have a group of old line oil and gas lobbyists and right wing ideologues who are out there trying to whip people into a frenzy and spending 10's of millions of dollars, and they make a very compelling villain in a fundraising arena. What would be even better to hone in, and we are still in the conflict area, would be to hone in on one particular lobbyist or one particular funder in the anti-global rights arena and the steps that he's taking. Again, the more you personalize, the more emotionally compelling the story becomes. So those are the three elements: character, desire, conflict. A story can be 100 words or it can be 21 hours of TV on television. Every one of those stories can be reduced to character, desire, and conflict. When you are putting the story together, and this sounds sort of, "Duh", easy", your story needs to have a beginning, middle, and an end. In fact, this is the basis for the three act structure, which is common to most movies in Hollywood. It derived itself originally from Aristotle's poetics, which you can download and read if you are so inclined. But I am going to give you the much, much simpler version for what needs to go in the beginning, what needs to go in the middle, and what needs to go in the end of a good story. In the beginning you need basically to do two things. You need to introduce the character and you need to have what, in storytelling, is called the inciting event. Something happens to your protagonist that changes their life. I will tell you, in Disney movies the most common inciting event is killing off a parent. So in finding Nemo or Bambi, mom dies. There are a lot of single parents in Disney movies because you need to do something dramatic to change your protagonist's life so that in order to get their life back into balance, they need to achieve something. So in the beginning, and in a well-structured story this would be roughly one quarter of the story. You introduce a character, you sneak in that "save the cat" moment, or make them attractive, or funny, or whatever vice you are going to use, and then you introduce that inciting event. In our case it is a lost dog turning up. It is an earthquake. It is a refugee crisis. It is a healthcare crisis. That is the inciting event. Then the middle part of the story is where you introduce that conflict, oppositions, the villains, and obstacles that the character has to overcome.
p.6 And in a well-structured story, that is about half the story right there, is overcoming those conflicts and coming up against the next obstacle and overcoming those, and coming up against the next obstacle. The end has two parts. At the end of the middle of the story, your protagonist is overcoming the biggest obstacle that they have, whatever that is; getting a law passed, getting a visa to get into the country to help the refugee, raising $1,000 to get the stray dog the liver surgery he needs to survive. At the end of the middle part it looks like you may not prevail. This is in a story with a happy ending. So in the end of the story your character either achieves his or her goal or doesn't achieve his or her goal, and I am going to argue that you should have a mix of those. Then after the character either succeeds or fails, the protagonist either succeeds or fails, you need to say what the story is about. The reason we are telling the story is because every dog deserves a good home, because your $100 can make a difference in a refugee's life. There needs to be that end point where you are saying, "This is what the story is about." So that is really all it takes to tell a good story - identifying that character, figuring out what he or she wants, and laying out what are the obstacles that they have to overcome to get it, and why am I telling this story? If you put those pieces together, you will have the outline for a great story. I want to identify six things that I thing commonly undermine good storytelling by nonprofits. The first one I think I have harped on enough, which is fear of feeling, fear of emotion. Everyone thinks you're smart and no one cares. It's how smart you are as an organization matters less than how much passion you have. If they are interested in you, obviously you have to make the case that you get the job done, but they are going to connect with you at an emotional level. The second common flaw is what I call bad casting choices. And I think I have harped on this as well. Casting your organization as the hero or the protagonist; it is kind of predictable, and the fact that it is an institution and not a human being makes it much harder to identify with the story. The third flaw, and this goes back to that fundraising test that I talked about earlier, is too wide a focus. It is not a story to talk about the macro of what happened in Rwanda in the early 1990's. That is a story, but it is not a good fundraising story. It is a story about one particular family or one particular individual. So that, for example, when Hotel Rwanda came out some years ago, people could connect with the genocide there in a way they couldn't connect with newspaper articles. The same impact, the same effect happened when The Killing Fields came out. People could all of a sudden understand what had happened in Cambodia in a way they couldn't when it was all very general.
p.7 So keeping your focus as narrow as possible is important. Numbers and data - deadly. Aunty Goodman, who is one of my gurus and a fabulous source and a fabulous trainer on storytelling for non-profits, says no more than one number in a story. I think one is more than sufficient. And if you can have no numbers, that would be better still. The fifth common flaw is only having happy endings. The grim reality of fundraising is it's pretty hard to raise money on successes. You want to raise money around an active threat that is done or can help address. So you can at times present them with an unfinished story. But if you basically tell them you win every time and the problem is under control - A: it is not very authentic, and B: you are actually not making the best possible case for fundraising. And then finally the last common flaw I want to highlight is the lack of a moral, the lack of that "What is this story all about? Why are you telling me this story?" bit at the very end?" Often that is clear, but sometimes it is a little vague and confusing. So what I would like to do is stop there. I am assuming some questions have come in. I want to hear what those are. And also, if people have great stories of their own or have seen great stories, let's hear about those as well. Rebecca? Rebecca: The first question comes from Caroline, and I think her question probably relates to a lot of us on the phone. She says, "Our organization focuses on studying and learning about populations of animals. We do not treat individuals like a shelter would, and we do not "save" species on the brink, at least not in a direct way. Because of this, we have trouble putting a compelling face on our story. Any ideas on how we can turn conservation science, a largely anonymously endeavor, into something captivating?" Mark: Yeah. Tell the story of a researcher, of how they decided to become a wildlife researcher. My guess is that they hiked in the woods with their dad when they were little, or had some sort of nature experience when they were a child, or kept turtles in the terrarium, or had some sort of early experience that motivated them to become a wildlife researcher. Give it a human face. If you don't name the animals that you study, and most good wildlife researchers don't, I suspect, then tell the story about the people. The other thing you can do, if you can think of a particular instance, and I can think of some example of this, of some sort of experience doing field science. There was a movie that got terrible reviews a long time ago. It was a John Belushi movie called "Continental Divide", and the hero of it was an eagle researcher. She talks about eagles mating in a way that is just utterly poetic. There was a book that came out a few years ago called "The Devil's Teeth", which was the story of white shark researchers in the Farallon Islands. I think the people who do
p.8 wildlife biology are, A, interesting, and B, inevitably encounter difficulties and obstacles, disease, foreign countries, etc that make for good narratives. I hope that was helpful. Rebecca: We have one from Eden. Eden's first question is, "How do I reengage a donor who had a bad experience in the past with my organization? For example, the development officer dropped the ball or a staff member abruptly dismissed this person from a program. How do we reengage someone via storytelling?" Mark: Well first of all, that is a great story in and of itself, right? You have a great obstacle there which is a disgruntled donor. I don't know if you want to do storytelling with them as much as you just want to give them time and attention. Often the most disgruntled donors can become the most passionate donors if you just address their needs. So storytelling is not the only tool in your toolbox. You need to have a number of tools in your toolbox as a good fundraiser. And the tool I would take out of the toolbox in the case of a disgruntled donor, first and foremost, is listening. And then you have got a great story of how you turned a donor around. Rebecca: Eden actually had a second question. She said, "How do I 'slant' our story here. For instance, we are currently in an interim leadership and have a lot of inner conflict within our organization. How do I make sure that the donors don't think that this will affect the use of their donation?" Mark: Eden is not throwing out the easy questions today, is she? Don't assume that your donors know about the conflict. Don't highlight the conflict. I am assuming it is not affecting, or seriously affecting, your operation. I certainly hope not. I would keep the storytelling focused on the work, on what you are accomplishing, on the people you are serving. Often times it makes a better story to make the people you are serving the hero, the protagonist, instead of a staff member. So tell the story of someone in the community that you serve, or maybe hardships that they had to overcome, and then cast your organization as a supporting role rather than in a lead role. I think I may have sidestepped that question, but I think that is the best I can do. Rebecca: I think it will work. Let's see. We have a lot of great questions coming in. This one comes from Stew, and Stew says, "How do you engage people/general public who may not be affected by a specific disease, unless you have a friend, family, or coworker than may or may not have a personal connection?" Mark: Well, this is where storytelling can really shine. That is an extremely difficult thing, particularly the disease oriented groups, to connect with people who haven't been personally touched with the disease. What I would do there is I would really focus a lot on the character part of the story. I would tell the story of someone who is just emotionally compelling. A brave child is sort of a good example, or a celebrity often works.
p.9 Really put a lot of energy into creating a person that you care about, and then present some of the obstacles that they are overcoming. And if you do a really good job of creating that emotionally compelling character, that can substitute to some extent for having a personal experience for that disease. Rebecca: We had a couple of people write in, Anne and Lee for instance, who have a question about the "only happy endings" flaw you mentioned. Anne's question was, "One of your common flaws was 'only happy endings', but I am really concerned that people become overwhelmed with too much grim reality and threats that seems overwhelming. How do we find the appropriate balance?" Mark: It is balance. It is definitely a balance, and all of one or all of the other is going to get you into trouble. And in fact, with one organization we worked with, one of the bits of feedback we heard is we are not hearing enough happy endings. I wish I could give you a ratio, 1:3 happy to sad, but this is where the art of communications...this is where you earn your pay. It is not all of one or all of the other. You might start at 50/50. By the way, you don't need to tell 100 stories. If you can come up with two or three really good stories about your organization, you are way ahead of the pack. Let's say you tell four and two have good outcomes and two have bad outcomes. The ones that have bad outcomes have bad outcomes that could have been good had there been more public commitment, more money, more something around the issue. You don't want to tell a story that has a bad outcome that doesn't have a moral to it, or that couldn't have been fixed but for something. I hope that makes sense. Rebecca: "One of the problems my clients has is accessing funding to finance storytelling initiatives. The foundations and donors haven't yet caught up to this need. Can you provide any guidance about how to finance storytelling or how to make the business case for storytelling efforts when it is not a budget line item?" Mark: Yes and no. There is Story Core. I think there may be an organization called Story Link. The best thing I can tell you to do is go to our blog, which is at cchangestrategies.com/blog, and then search on story, because I have called those out over the months as I have found them. I also did a long post on storytelling which actually led to this call today that has 18 comments from really smart, really thoughtful people who work in the storytelling arena. I would urge you to follow their links as well. I think there are entities out there that are more hands on about helping with storytelling, but certainly not enough. Rebecca: We have a couple of questions about the length of a story. We will do this as a two-parter. For instance, Pat would like to know, "How long do you recommend a story should be, maybe if you have an example of a word count if you wanted to put something as a newspaper or a magazine story?"
p.10 Mark: It could be as short as 30 words if it is a really great story. It could be as long as 400 or 500. We have done storytelling workshops with our clients and their stories typically come in right around 400, 500 words. They can be really beautiful and really compelling. As I talk I am trying to pull up a great story that someone shared with us that is, I think, about 20 words. Here it is. "Game nearly over. Rain pouring. No timeouts remain. A seven year old says, "Coach, I gotta go pee." I say, "No timeouts. Go in your pants." He does. We win." So there is a story that meets all the criteria and could certainly fit within a Tweet. There is a very famous six words story that Earnest Hemingway once presented that goes like this: "For sale. Baby Shoes. Never used." Rebecca: Aww. Mark: Exactly. The elements are all there too, except they are implied in. I would say for our purposes, for fundraising, 200-300 words. Give yourself enough time to really make the character three dimensional. Give him or her their "save the cat" moment, unless you are in the business of saving cats, in which case that would be implied! And really tease out the obstacles a little bit. I personally find that takes at least 300-400 words. Rebecca: Lauren's follow-up to that is in terms of the length of the story, but this is a bit more strategic. "Do you have any recommendations on how to make all those points compelling if you are telling it in a shorter format? Most of us aren't going to write six word stories, but how do you make it compelling when it is on a small scale?" Mark: The two easiest ways to make a story compelling are to make the character someone we care about and to make the stakes really high. If I want to get my car washed today and I encounter obstacles getting to the carwash, nobody cares, because the stakes are not very high. Or if I am a complete jerk and I have the wining lottery ticket and I only have two hours to cash it in, nobody cares because I am a complete jerk. So what you want to do, if you really want to compress the most emotional energy in the fewest words, is have life or death stakes and someone we really care about, and they are going to follow the story. Rebecca: We have had a lot of questions coming in actually regarding privacy. So for instance, there might be HIPPA parameters or other privacy issues dealing in the medical field. So let's see. I wanted one that was worded nicely. I guess we will leave it kind of basic of, "How can you get around privacy issues when telling a story? Is it ethical just to change names? Should you make one up that is fictional? How can you maintain the integrity of the folks you are highlighting without necessarily breaking any laws or violating any privacy?" Mark: OK. I am not giving legal advice, so write that down in your notebook.
p.11 Two or three things. I think exactly what you laid out; you can do a composite story and you can say this story is made up of elements of things that have affected real people. And then it essentially is fiction that can raise a greater truth. You can get permission from the people to use their stories. There are many organizations who have a "tell me your story" link right on there home page or on their website. You are not going to get a well developed story that way. You are not going to get a good character, compelling desire, and emotionally engaging conflict, but you may get enough hints from that person that you can go back to them, talk to them, and tease out the larger story and then get their permission. Our experience is a huge number of people are very content to have their story told if they think there is some greater value that is going to be served. So just be very up front. "Your story is going to help us raise money we need to serve people like you." You are going to get a lot of yes's. Rebecca: Here is a great question about the narrator of the story. It comes from Cathleen. Cathleen asks, "What would you say about having the person tell their own story as compared to someone telling their story for them? Do you recommend bringing those helped or served by non-profits to tell their story at events or a similar forum? Mark: Oh my God yes! But I still want to elaborate. I think that's a best case scenario. Having them tell the story is much better than you telling the story if they tell a good story. Rebecca: We have a question about the villain. This question comes from Yvette and she says, "We have trouble naming our villains, for example, the New York City Board of Education. We can be effective tapping the villain as ignorant or allowing the children to grow up with no future, but is that too esoteric?" Mark: Sometimes it's all we have. When we're not in the middle of a global warming legislative heightened congress, you know often the villain is apathy. And again I'm going to go back to what I said earlier. If you have protagonists that you care about and really high stakes, then it takes some of the pressure off, having a really hate-able villain. I will say though: If you have some bureaucracy you're up against and you've got the guts to do it, and sometimes it's not just guts sometimes it's just strategic smarts, if you can get away with it, single out the person on the board of education who is the biggest impediment. If you ever have to work with them again that might not be a great thing, but it will make for a better story. Rebecca: All right, let's see, we have a question from Amy and Amy says, "I would love further insight about how to choose a story when you have a wide range of programs. How do we not bring it back to the larger context? My fear is that people won't know what we do." Mark: Again, I'm going to go back to the point I made earlier that stories are a tool in the tool kit, they are a terribly important tool but... First of all, someone, let's say the stories on your home page. They already know enough about what you do that they've
p.12 come to your home page, so you're not talking to a random stranger. The story should be the emotional expression of what you do, but there should still be some tag line or description, and there's going to be an "About us" section. The story should get them excited enough, energized enough about what you do that they will then go and they will then start collecting the sacks, and they will start learning more and more. So my glib answer to which story you should tell is: The one that has the most emotional power, the one that meets those criteria of a compelling character, a high stakes desire, and furious obstacles. Rebecca: Let's see, we have a question from Lee, just in reference to what you mentioned before, "Do you have any recommendations for books about behavioral economics?" Mark: Yes, there are three or four of the two that I've looked at recently that I like. One is called, "Predictably Irrational, "very simple, straightforward, great stories. The other is called, "Nudge." Oh and also Katya Andresen's favorite which is called, I believe, "Influence," by Cialdini. Because Katya would kill me if I didn't recommend it, it's an important book. Rebecca: [laughs] She's nodding form the next office so you got it right. Mark: [laughs] Rebecca: Excellent. Let's see, this is a question from Audrey, "Our organization is telling the stories of our fellows, high school graduates selected to work as apprentices in developing countries during bridge-year before college. How can we guide them to tell their own stories in such a way that there is stylistic consistency? We believe it's better for them to tell their own stories, which I know you already touched on, than for our staff to invent a story about them or for them." Mark: I don't think you need stylistic consistency, I think you need emotionally engaging stories. You might want to keep them at a certain length. One of the things that makes story telling so hard, and you can help your fellows here, is if people aren't given the structure, they're not given the rules. So if you use the checklist that Network for Good has prepared for you, or the outline of the talk I gave, and give them a structure to follow, you're going to get a better story and they're going to look enough alike that people are going to get it that they're coming from the same organization. But let me add one thing. One thing that makes a story emotionally satisfying is a certain amount of integrity, a certain amount of authenticity. So if one of your fellows is really funny, let them be funny. And if one of your fellows is a little more on the serious side, let that show through too. And I think having a variety of flavors is actually a good thing. Rebecca: Our next question is from Caroline and she had a question about the shelf life of a story, "Do we need to constantly write new stories, and can you depend on one for a long time?"
p.13 Mark: Great, great question. And I would say that if you have one of those big, overarching meta-stories like Greenpeace and the whalers in the Zodiac. That's going to last for decades. Amnesty has the big, overarching mega story of the prisoner of conscience who's thrown into jail by a third world dictator, and people politely writing letters at their kitchen tables to get them freed and the person getting out. Those are brand stories, and they will last for years and years. The individual tales of your organization and how it works and how it succeeds, and how it could succeed more with the donor's help, I would say focus on four or five stories. Andy Goodman calls them, "The Sacred Bundle." The story of how you came to be founded, the story of how you overcame some major obstacle. Four or five really emotionally compelling stories, they're going to do most of the heavy lifting for you for a very long time. You may also want to provide mini-stories, little vignettes that come back to the larger points that that sacred bundle makes. But I would say a small number of stories could have a pretty significant shelf life. Remember that one of their goals is to create an emotional connection between a potential donor and your organization. Are you going to need to have more stories to keep that donor? Probably over time, but get the first four or five down and then worry about the others later. Rebecca: OK, let's see, we have a great couple of questions from Emily. Emily is writing from a rebuilding organization that assists victims of Hurricane Katrina. She says, "Since we have worked with more than 300 clients, mostly in the same age group, how do we differentiate their experiences and make each story compelling and unique rather than melding them together?" Mark: Really, just, you're trying... Tell them one at a time. You don't have to tell all 300 stories or however. The one really great story you tell is going to stand for the group. Rebecca: That makes sense. All right, and then her other question is, "Do you have any advice about steering clear of victimizing or exploiting your protagonists so that they're seen as independent, empowered, instead of a charity recipient?" Mark: Yes, I think it's really important. I completely agree with that perspective. It is why I think the best stories are told from the standpoint of the protagonist so they are not seen as a victim. They are seen as a dad, or a mom, or a worker, or someone whose life is upended by evil or by nature, or by something else, and who in their effort to overcome those obstacles and get their life back on track they encounter your organization who provide help at a key time. But it is their own personal heroic journey and not your organization's heroic journey. I think that does get you out of the organization as savior and victims as poor pathetic creatures mold.
p.14 Rebecca: Barbara says, "How do you tell stories about sensitive and scary topics like sexual assault, child abuse, murder? Often these stories are not resolved through the justice system for years." Mark: Well first of all, I mean telling them in a very matter of fact way when the stakes are so high, if you are dealing with sexual assault or murder, the emotional content is already there. You don't need to amp it up. You don't need to use so many of the tricks. You just need to be very matter of fact. People obviously care more about the murder of someone who is not a criminal or not a bad person, so spend a little time establishing who that character is. I assume the point of the story, in this case, is to reform the justice system. So you have a got a great opportunity to just lay out the bureaucratic legal obstacles that this person encountered as they sought justice. That is a great story to tell. Movies get made about things like that. Rebecca: Laura says, "We have different audiences: those purchasing products from us and those who want to give us money. We have to convince those who buy our products that we have a model that works and those who give us money about the individuals. Do you have any suggestions about multiple audiences and where and how to put out those stories to them?" Mark: Yeah. For product sales other than the Peterman catalog, most sales messaging are not story driven, although the Peterman catalog was very powerful. If those are really truly different audiences, I think the simple answer, in an online fundraising context, is to get them to separate pages where you can tell the appropriate stories, the product story versus the organization story. Rebecca: Ulan has a question. She says, "My organization focuses on the plight of workers, which tends to give pretty good stories. However, due to the recent economic crisis, we have heard from some donors that helping workers demand too much out of their employers at the current moment is a bad idea. How do we combat that, and should we continue with the stories regardless?" Mark: It is a really, really good question and I am hesitant to give a glib answer. We are working on a work and family project and we are hearing that too, that people don't want to make additional demands on their employer. I wouldn't pull back from advocating as an organization. I wouldn't pull back from telling the stories. The recession is not going to last forever and the issues are still going to be acute when the recession is over. My only hesitation is if you are...you also don't want to be inciting people to do things that are going to get them fired instead of get them a better working condition. That is a judgment call you are going to have to make. I don't know on that. Rebecca: We have a question from Caitlyn following up to what you mentioned earlier from Andy Goodman's advice. She says, "Do you think there is a place at all for including numbers or stats that provoke emotion? For example, there is a statistic used often that some states use fourth grade reading scores to determine how many prison cells they need to build for the future. This fact often provokes shock and outrage for people. So would you ever recommend using something like this as part of a story?"
p.15 Mark: I don't think that is a statistic. I think that is a powerful fact and has a lot of emotional energy around. Andy says one. If that is a statistic, and we can have a philosophical debate, it is your one, because it is very powerful. The issue more is where people try to tell the story of global warming and they talk about how this bill could reduce a 47% reduction in 1990 emissions by the year 2013 resulting in a 15% decline in blah, blah, blah. Those are the kinds of things that are just deadly. Rebecca: I want to round out with this question we have received from a few callers who would like to know, and I hate to put you on the spot, but if you have any examples of other non-profits, particularly small ones if you can think of any, that are doing a good job of storytelling? Any references that we could share with folks for places to look for inspiration. Mark: Yeah. Again, I am going to send you back to the blog. It is a post from about two weeks ago, and I link to a couple of examples there. And I would also urge you to look at Katya's blog because I know that she often highlights organizations that do great storytelling. If I can find this I will put it on our blog today. There was appeal I got about a dog named Meadow who was a stray dog who was brought in and was going to die unless it had liver surgery. I ended up giving $100 to Meadow because I found Meadow's story so powerful. I am still getting updates on Meadow, who is doing very well by the way. I thought it was an extremely good example of storytelling from a very small non-profit. Rebecca: Also, from our end we wanted to share one other example of an organization that tends to do a good job with storytelling. It is called Charity Water. It is charitywater.org. They do have a lot of statistics on their home page, but once you dig in there are a lot of great stories in there. It looks like it is two o'clock, so I would like to first say thank you so much, Mark, for being with us. We really appreciate you donating your time and sharing your expertise with us. Mark: My pleasure. Rebecca: Secondly, I would also like to thank our sponsor for today's call. This call was made possible in part due to a grant from the Surdna Foundation. So we want to say thank you to them as well. So thank you again. Thank you everyone for being with us today. We hope you will join us for future Nonprofit 911 calls. Thanks. Transcription by CastingWords