"I hate that damn log." 3 Keys to Great Nonprofit stories
- thomfox
- Jul 10, 2024
- 8 min read
Compelling starts here.
With her heavy mountain boots my grandmother kicked a pine cone to the edge of the stream and said, “I hate that damn log.”
It didn’t look much different than any of the other huge Douglas Fir logs sticking into the stream, but when she took off her cowboy hat, those following her knew we were getting a story.
I grew up with constant story telling. Well organized, compelling and suspenseful stories represented a huge part of my family life as a child. I tried for a long time to make the telling and writing of creative stories my life’s work. I studied creative writing in college and grad school and through a couple dozen serious seminars, and learned a lot from my various literary agents and editors. Eventually though, after a few modest successes and lots of starvation, I settled into the amazing rewards of teaching, writing and speaking for education and human services organizations. In all of those activities, I used storytelling. And I wholly believe that storytelling made me more effective.
I intend to do a full webinar with around 9 elements of great non-profit stories this fall, but there are three components truly necessary to make our nonprofit marketing content, appeal letters, lift letters, and many grant proposals compelling. Compelling is only half the battle.
Compelling is not enough, because our stories have a goal! We tell them to change minds, to get funding, to gain support for our NPO efforts to improve our communities. But Compelling comes first.
Three Elements of Compelling Nonprofit Stories.
1. Stories need characters.
In our case that’s human characters. Real, live, humans with all of their flaws, potential, beauty and ugliness, triumphs and tragedies, smells, unfortunate hair situations… all that human stuff. There are plenty of great stories that feature dragons, Ewoks, Wild Things, anthropomorphized versions of anything from a tree to a lawnmower… but, nonprofits are, at their core, about humans.
We need a human character in a story. We don’t have a chapter or 30 minutes of stage or screen time to develop character in social media content, communications content, presentations, fundraising events, appeal letters, lift letters or grants – all the fundraising and support growing writing we do has no space for a novel or a trilogy or a 6 episode arc.
But it doesn’t take much to establish a character. “With her heavy mountain boots…damn…her cowboy hat…following her.” In the story above a reader gets an pretty strong impression of my grandmother in those 11 words, about 82 characters. 11 words and we know this is not the cookies and milk type of grandmother. We have an image with heavy boots and cowboy hat, we have a voice with “damn” and we have a quality, leadership, with “following her.” In 11 words she is now, for you, a real person. *(setting/place took even fewer words. See below if you like.)
That’s Extra, Super, Big Time, Mega, WAYYY important because…
2. Compelling Stories have a “Story Question.”
…the most compelling story questions, especially in donor communications and nonprofit content of all types are questions about real people. And also…YOU CAN MAKE ANY LAME, OVERUSED, OBLIGATORY CONTENT INTO A COMPELLING STORY IF YOU HAVE A CHARACTER + STORY QUESTION. That’s another article.
In our sample above, we not only have a character, but a story question too in the first sentence. Why does she hate that log? If you want to know, you were just compelled. That’s what “compelling” really means. We want to know an answer and we are compelled to keep reading, watching, listening to get that answer. Why did I not go to bed at a reasonable hour like I knew I should? Because the episode ended with John Snow about to face a Dragon. I want to know what happened. How is he going to deal with the death of his father? Next episode. How is she going to get that guy to ever love her again? I want to know. How will Othello make that scumbag Iago pay for his evil? I’m reading the next act. Even though it’s after midnight, I want to know.
Look, it’s not likely that our nonprofit content is causing much sleep deprivation, but, a story question is what we need to stand out from the dreary parade of “A volunteer group came,” “We had a success,” “We were awarded a grant,” “We started a new program.” None of those give us a character with a story question we want answered. All of them could.
Second, it’s also not likely that you will often have the kind of life, love or death story questions that novels, plays and film have. You don’t need too because you’re aiming for people to be compelled enough to spend 4 minutes with you, not 4 hours. You still have plenty of story questions that merit interest.
The main story question nonprofits pose is “How did Janie’s Life Improve?” It’s the client/patient/patron/student (CPPS) success story. Janie was in a bad place. Anything from homeless or facing death from an injury or disease to scared about her future because she needed education to deeply unfulfilled. Then she found us, and we provided social services/healthcare/a stimulating arts experience/education. Now she’s so much better.
“How did Janie’s life improve?” is a tried and true story question. It even applies beyond CPPS stories to volunteers and major donors and board members, even staff. And you can add “How did Janie change?” as the basic story question for all of those. You just need the right TITLE of course.
Janie’s life Improved or Janie Changed won’t quite do. “Janie found something she never expected here at Good Organization.” Now your title has a story question: “What did she find?” And then when your story starts and Janie is in that bad place, or doesn’t know what to expect when she starts volunteering, you have a second one that will carry readers through to the end.
What about everything else?
“We Attended a conference.” I don’t need to read the content below that headline. The question is already answered.
“Our Program Director Sarah is so excited this week!” About what? I want to know the answer to that story question. Turn out the answer is, “First, all she learned at the conference about… But more importantly, all the ways we can use that knowledge to improve our services.”
“We attended a conference” doesn’t have a character and it doesn’t have a story question. And it doesn’t have…
…a chance.
My Grandmother facing a bear at the end of the log she’s stranded on has both. How will she get off that log? I’m hoping that character/story question combo has a chance to get you to the end of this article.
3. Compelling non-profit story telling has dialogue. Or…at least someone talking.
“Yeah,” Grandma said. I saw that pool in the stream bend there right across from that log and knew it was full of trout. From from end of that log I could put my flys right on ‘em.”
“That sounds like a great log,” my Dad said.
“Yeah, I showed up there at sunrise and had two huge trout in no time,” she said. “But then a biga** bear showed up and watched me catch a third one, and put it on the stringer in the water. He sat down at the end of that log where I had to go.”
She spit on the log. My little sister gulped and looked nervously around the woods.
Even the most introverted folks among us talk to other people sometimes. Even the most self-involved people must listen to others talk at some point. I think? The truth is, conversation is wired into us. It’s in our DNA. On the whole, we respond to real humans saying something personal far more, more complexly, and for a longer time than we do to most other sensory stimuli. The speaking itself makes person in a story more human.
The effect is that, adding a quote or two makes a story come to life. It gives it a reality to hear a character’s words and not just the writer describing or worse, summarizing what happened. The quotation marks set the dialogue apart from the summary and make a quote stand out. Quotes bring us immediately back to seeing and now even hearing the real person in the story again.
This is not just a caricature of a client/patient/patron/student or volunteer/donor/staffmember- they have a VOICE. And we respond to humans with a voice. A quote is a “Compelling Factor Multiplier” let’s say.
Finally, it’s just better story telling. Instead of me describing how bad it must have been for Jane, or how excited Sarah was by the conference, they are telling you in their own words. I probably wouldn’t say “bigass bear” or “Damn Log” as the writer of most of my content. But, my grandmother gets to say that, because that was who she was, and also, because that’s really what she said.
Part 4. Even Compelling Stories Need Brand Messaging.
Compelling Stories are just a complex tool you build to do the real job. A means to an important end. If you’re writing a novel or screenplay, the compelling story you’re aiming for is the end product. For us, the goal is not for the story to be so good that people buy the book or the movie ticket or the streaming service. IT’s that they get our Message, and even that is so they will volunteer, fund the grant proposal, donate, get involved, support us.
I love to help people make their stories more read and more engaged with, but my goal remains to get the nonprofits I work with more support for the good work they are doing. That means the best part is embedding primary and secondary messaging into those stories. Make them do more work than just engaging your audience, make those stories move your audience toward action. That’s where the story gets good 😊
However, this is already a long article. I have written another about how to do that and it is coming soon. Besides, if I’ve even remotely done my job, you still want to know what happened with the Log and the bear.
“Were you scared?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“I kept fishing. I figured he’d move off after a while. Get bored you know. But when I caught another fish he made a interested kind of sound, you know? So I stopped that.” She resumed the hike she was leading us on at that point and started talking over her shoulder.
“I waited nigh two hours on that bear, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Now, I really hate to give in on anything,” she said.
My parents said in unison with matching eyerolls: “We know.”
“But finally, I knew I had to give him one of those beautiful trout. I took the third biggest off the stringer and threw it up on the bank at the end of the log.” She just kept walking for several minutes after that.
“So that worked?” Dad asked.
“Hell no,” she said. “Thought he might get full but no. He ended up eating all four of those trophies, one at a time. Then he finally left. I spent a whole day on that log, butt sore, legs soaked and no fish to show for it.”
Something still troubled me. “Why do you hate the log and not the bear?”
She stopped and looked up into the Ponderosas. “I like seeing bears on these trails. When I see one, I don’t think of that day. But I do every single time I see that damn log.”
Wait. Was that… Messaging?
Thanks for reading. I hope your stories are compelling and that they help your organization get all the support it’s good work deserves. If they don’t quite, I’d be proud to help.
You can read more here, and check out my services and subscribe to the newsletter here, and follow me on LinkedIn here.
*Setting. Just “Douglas Firs” and “stream” let the reader know that the story took place in a mountain forest in the American Northwest or Western Canada. It only takes 5 or 6 words to put people in a place. Being able to see the setting of a story helps the whole thing come alive and makes it easier to keep reading. It’s not essential, just an effective bonus I encourage you to incorporate. Good luck out there.
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