Storytelling for Nonprofits

How to increase your fundraising?

A speech at a donor event can raise $1800 or $180,000. How can you be more productive in your fundraising, so you raise more money for the same work?

You could do more low ticket speeches, but you have other work to do apart from fundraising! 

You could boost your fundraising hit rate and get more money from more people by telling better stories - and telling them better!

Tell better stories about your nonprofit

Of course, some of that depends on your audience. But… Getting in front of the RIGHT audience and then persuading them to support you, not with a token $500 check… but a transformational check or series of checks that allows your organisation to do more and better work... that depends on your story... and how you tell it. 

We all know that many regular or potential donors of all sizes are being damaged financially by the impact of the Coronavirus. It’s in times like these that fundraisers like you need to be even better so that you can fulfil your fundraising responsibilities to your volunteers and users.

How storytelling helped the founder of this charity

One of my clients leads a health non-profit that benefits families. She is incredibly bubbly, charismatic and enthusiastic and her personality and fundraising seemed “good enough” in the early years. But as the work of her volunteers was noticed and spoken about, it triggered demand from other towns and families. The success of her team meant that the non-profit was growing faster than her ability to fundraise.

We discussed her story and motivation, and I talked with her and some of her team about the impact of the work they were doing. It was emotional. There were some funny times, and there was also some crying. I first helped one of her team develop and rehearse and deliver a TED-like talk for a competition held by a big Pharma company. They won that award which was huge financially but also gave them recognition and profile.

Then the founder and I worked on a fundraising speech that was already in the diary. Now she was the speaker. It would be attended by some of her friends, some legacy “duty donors” and a few people from the business community where she was involved. They expected to have to dutifully listen and then applaud and give a modest sum to a worthy cause. Then go home. We wanted to change that. Fundamentally.

We took her fundraising “pitch”, her baby that she’d been delivering for years and turned it on its head and refocused it. Then we worked on her delivery. I gave her my version of her speech and then she tried it. Then we did it again and again. She learned fast, and she rehearsed it so much that her husband could have given the speech. I had bullied this “always busy, always doing something” dynamo of a person to stop and “Sharpen the knife.”

She trusted our coach relationship and obediently took the afternoon off before the event and even took a nap and went to the gym - we’d done the prep already. I needed her in the zone. Then she went and gave the speech, and I heard nothing. Not a damn word. 

All our coaching was done virtually by Zoom. We’ve never met face to face. I became anxious. Was silence good or bad? No news … is that always good news? Had she choked or had she rocked the room? What had happened? Eventually, she messaged me late that night.

The taps had opened. Serious people had been touched and signed up on the spot. Business people who normally gave a small personal cheque wrote bigger checks and invited her to present to their company Board about corporate sponsorship.

Read the testimonial below to find out what happened...