When you look back at the last five to ten stories your nonprofit organization has shared, how do you feel about them? Are they your best, most compelling and strategically important stories?
Or…
Are they the stories you could manage to pull together in a last-minute scramble?
When you only hunt for stories in a panic, the best ideas can slip through the cracks. That’s why it’s so important to ditch the nonprofit story scramble and build a library of strong, strategic stories before you need them.
The nonprofit story scramble: enemy of good storytelling
The frantic scramble for stories happens when idea generation, development, and publication are driven by immediate needs rather than ongoing planning:
“We need three impact stories for our annual report!”
“We need a face for our direct mail campaign!”
“We need to showcase the people involved in next month’s event!”
“We need a human-interest angle for this launch!”
The story scramble happens when marketing communications is constantly fielding one-off story requests. It feels reactive and scattered, rather than intentional.
In a scramble, your nonprofit’s best stories go untold.
When you’re scrambling, the stories that get told are often the easiest ones to find and develop. When everything is rushed, including generating and pursuing ideas, conducting interviews, and developing narratives, you end up making compromises. For example:
- Your nonprofit is marking a milestone, and you’re starting to pull together the threads of its origin story. However, as the time required for the research and consultation becomes clear, you opt for a quick donor testimonial instead.
- You know of a program participant with a particularly compelling story of transformation. But accommodating their schedule is taking some time, so you skip over to a less compelling but easier-to-reach story subject.
- You intended to profile a member of your nonprofit’s leadership team and share their vision. But when you realize that the extra layer of internal reviews and approvals will slow you down, you feature a “day-in-the-life” of a colleague instead.
Telling meaningful, strategic stories requires time and intention. They emerge when you give yourself time to identify, develop, and properly capture them. In a scramble, the stories that go untold are often those that would have added depth, context, and meaning to your nonprofit’s narrative.
Shift from story scramble to story readiness.
Do these examples feel a little too familiar? I’ve drawn them from situations I’ve seen play out at nonprofits many times, which is why I decided to tackle this topic. And it’s why I’m advocating for a shift from reactive storytelling to story readiness — which doesn’t mean you have to create dozens of stories at once. It means proactively building a library of your nonprofit’s best, strategically aligned stories and having them ready before they’re urgently needed.
Are you ready to shift from story scramble to story readiness? If you’d like my support in building a more consistent storytelling practice, take a look at my story writing service for nonprofit organizations and get in touch.
