Are you narratively ready to meet your nonprofit’s storytelling needs? Do you have the right mix of stories to support your organization’s range of objectives and messages?
Yes, your nonprofit needs impact stories, but to leverage the power of storytelling across your nonprofit’s communications, you need a mix of story types. Being narratively ready means building a library of stories that show your organization’s impact as well as your identity and values, the stand you take, the importance or urgency of your cause, and how you’re addressing it.
The narrative friction caused by reactive nonprofit storytelling
In my last post, I discussed the operational friction reactive storytelling creates. But reactive storytelling creates narrative friction as well.
Choosing the wrong stories: strategic friction.
Reactive storytelling puts you in constant decision-making (and potentially disagreement) mode about what stories to develop. You can’t be strategic because, instead of the story you really need, you’re telling whatever story is available. Lack of preparedness leads you to reuse the same stories across your communications. As a result, your campaigns start to sound too similar or confusing, and your nonprofit’s narrative becomes too narrow or fuzzy.
Producing weaker stories: creative friction.
The story scramble may also leave you feeling creative friction. When you rush, you cut corners, which can show up as less research and vetting, weaker interviews and incomplete narrative development. This creative friction can take the form of shallower, less memorable stories — or worse, poor-quality stories you simply can’t use.
As with operational friction, you can reduce creative friction by being more proactive and getting prepared to meet internal story needs.
The range of stories nonprofits need to have ready
As a nonprofit communicator, story requests come to you from across the organization, and each team needs stories to do a different job. For example:
- Advocacy colleagues need stories that shed light on the issues and related policy gaps for their presentations, briefs or leave-behinds.
- Direct-response needs stories for email and mail campaigns that show the urgency of your cause and how the organization is making a difference.
- HR needs stories for onboarding materials to help new employees understand the mission.
- Volunteer development needs stories for recruitment campaigns that help potential volunteers see and feel alignment with your values.
- Programs want stories that help potential participants understand the experience your organization provides so they feel encouraged to join.
- Strategic partnerships need stories that showcase your identity and core relationships so peer organizations feel confident aligning with you.
- Grant writing needs stories that help funders understand your model and theory of change.
And of course, as a marcom pro, you need a mix of story types: from an origin story for your history page, to participant anecdotes for executive speeches, to impact stories for the annual report, to compelling profiles for your publications and social media.
I’m not suggesting you need a different story for every use. In fact, many of these story needs may overlap. But you need to intentionally create a mix of stories that deliver a complete narrative and cover the nuances.
Building narrative readiness (beyond impact stories)
How can you achieve narrative readiness? How can you be ready with the right mix of stories before the requests arrive?
The first step is to shift from reactively scrambling for stories to proactively building your nonprofit’s story library around a complete narrative. Develop stories that convey key messages about your organization’s identity, purpose, people, work and results.
Then, you’ll be able to stop asking, “Where can we find a story that supports this communication?” every time a story request arrives. Instead, you’ll be able to ask: “Which of the stories in our library best support this need?”
Are you ready for more choice, stronger alignment and better stories without the scramble? If you’d like my support to achieve narrative readiness, see my story writing package and get in touch.
