Nonprofit Storytelling for Board Members
Summary
Your nonprofit board members are the best free marketing channel that your nonprofit can utilize. Let me tell you how to leverage them. Then, learn how to tell great stories that will inspire from these examples.
“Talk about exactly what you've done or the impact that that you personally have been able to affect through that nonprofit. It invites that person to be part of the story and it also helps them to see concrete ways that they can get involved with your nonprofit.”
If you want to empower your nonprofit board members or trustees to advocate on behalf of your mission, you need to equip them with simple best practices in your nonprofit storytelling.
Before you send out your board members to talk about your mission, take time to learn four best practices for nonprofit storytelling including how to talk about your mission without boring other people with too many facts and figures.
“It's at this point that you paint a future picture of how amazing it will feel for them and how good it will be for their community or the organization that you serve for them to get involved.”
In this episode, learn how to structure your stories in such a way they inspire people to join in and support your mission. Plus, you’ll discover the power of making your stories personal and a common pitfall that can turn listening ears into closed minds.
Watch the video to get the full training.
If you’ve learned something from this episode, take a screenshot or post and use the hashtag #marketyourmission so I can celebrate you on social media!
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Transcript
Your nonprofit board members are the best free marketing channel. Let me tell you how to leverage them.
Hey everyone, I'm Ricardo Ibarra with Market Your Mission. I'm bringing you my 17 years in design in marketing to help you grow your donor base, share your story, and ignite a movement around your mission. Let's get started.
Today I'm talking about nonprofit storytelling for board members. That's right, if you've got a board and chances are as a nonprofit you do, I'm going to share with you four big ideas to help them tell better stories, so they leverage their networks to bring you more donors, bring you more volunteers, and inspire folks to join you on your mission.
You know, I've had the pleasure of serving on four nonprofit boards thus far, and if you add up all the time I've spent on those boards, it's almost 20 years. And I have been really fortunate to work with some amazing nonprofits and executive directors and other folks who were really passionate about a mission. There's something so much fun about working with others as a board member to affect real change in your community, among certain people, sometimes even with a greater impact, with a regional impact.
So today I'm sharing all how to tell great stories from the perspective of a board member. If you think this will be helpful for a board member, hey, send them the link to this video please!
I will be speaking to you as a nonprofit executive director or communications professional or a nonprofit leader of some type, but I think, I know, this will be super helpful for sharing with your board members. And the reason why we want to galvanize and empower our board members to share great stories is because they are the best and free marketing channel that you've got. Chances are, they know some other folks who are like them, who want to be change makers or have a positive impact in the world or just want to make a difference by being a role model. Birds of a feather do flock together, especially in the nonprofit space. I have met so many incredible people who were my fellow board members, and turns out their friends were just as incredible, just as service minded or positivity-minded or passionate about their own unique issues and interests. So leveraging your nonprofit board members and helping them become expert storytellers is a fantastic way to not spend a whole lot of money on marketing and have a lot of influence in your community.
1. Start with Values
Let's get started with number one, my first big idea is to start with values. If you are trying to convince someone to attend an event with you, or volunteer with you for your favorite nonprofit, I want you to think about starting with values and finding those shared values with that other person you're trying to influence. The reason why is because values give rise to our emotions and our feelings. If we value kindness, fairness, love, honesty, hard work, whatever it is, chances are, there's a whole set of emotions around that value. And what we've learned from a Portuguese-American neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio is that our brains tend to make decisions based on feelings first and then we rationalize those decisions with logic. It's kind of like that old paradigm of right brain left brain, but a bit more subtle. Have you ever felt like this when you, maybe you had a chore to do that wasn't your favorite thing to do, and you're sitting around and you think to yourself, "I should probably do some laundry. Oh I'll do it tomorrow, I don't feel like it." It's in our language! And if we can find the common values that stir up emotion and feelings in the person we're trying to influence, we're much more likely to connect with them. If you can connect with someone over your shared values of honesty or hard work or kindness to others or compassion, you'll have a good foundation for understanding how they look at the world and also you'll be able to tailor your story to what their values are.
2. Keep it personal
Big idea number two, is to keep it personal. If you are sharing the story of why you volunteer for your favorite nonprofit, stick to that. Stick to why you have chosen yourself to support XYZ nonprofit. Try and stay away from rambling off a list of accomplishments like you're regurgitating the annual report. Yes, it's great that you served a thousand young adults in your community who were looking for jobs. It's fantastic that you and your volunteers helped build six houses for folks who otherwise may not have been able to afford homeownership. That's great, but if you are a nonprofit board member and you're trying to convince someone else to join your cause, you need to keep it personal. Start talking about why you support this nonprofit. Why their work is important to you. What the impact of that work and your volunteering, your time on the board, what does that impact on you personally? On your family, on your friends, on your community? Keep it really personal because it allows the other person to see themselves enjoying that same type of reward. It allows them to see, "Oh wow, if I volunteer here, I'm going to have a sense of fulfillment, I'm going to feel proud of myself and the work I'm doing in my community. I'm going to step into that role model mindset. I'm going to..." fill in the blank here. But if we start off after we've identified their values and we start off, and we go, and we start talking about this kind of big, corporate-y, like, "We fed this many people that year, and we did all these amazing things, and we built this thing" it very quickly loses its personal, heartfelt connection. So number two big idea, is keep it personal when you're telling a story or you're trying to invite someone to support the nonprofit that you do.
3. Focus on the Impact of One
Big idea number three, is to focus on the impact of one person. Again, speak from the heart and speak from your own personal experience of the impact that you have been able to have on the bigger issue. If your nonprofit is working to end homelessness in your community, talk about exactly what you've done or the impact that that you personally have been able to affect through that nonprofit. Again, it invites that person to be part of the story, and it also helps to see them concrete ways that they can get involved with your nonprofit.
If you volunteer every Thursday at 2 p.m. to be a math tutor, talk about that. Even if there's a dozen other tutoring programs, or a dozen other education support programs that your nonprofit does, focus on what you do and the impact that you, one person, has. Now maybe you're a board member and you aren't actively volunteering, and you're making your required or desired annual contribution, great. Talk about the impact that you've had through that financial contribution. The idea here is to shrink this big nonprofit's mission into something that is easy to digest and easy to understand so that the other person can very quickly see, "Oh, so that's an example of how I could get involved." You could even share the story of a fellow board member, say, you know, one of your fellow board members like me loves design and marketing and you know that your friend is a PR agent or maybe they also work in the design or ad or marketing spaces. Maybe you don't. Well, you could then tell a story of a fellow board member like me to connect to the desires and the hobbies and the passions and interests of the person you're speaking with. But you're still sharing the impact of one. You're not talking about, "Oh, we as a board did this thing, or the whole nonprofit did this thing." You're talking about the impact of that one person and connecting their shared values, interests, and passions with the other person who you're trying to inspire.
4. Invite them in
Number four on my list of nonprofit storytelling ideas for board members, is to invite them in. After you've connected with them on shared values, you've kept it personal by talking about your own impact and your own relation with the nonprofit, you've talked about the impact that one person can have on this nonprofit's mission and you've given them a concrete example of how they can get involved, number four is to invite them in.
It's at this point that you paint a future picture of how amazing it will feel for them and how good it will be for their community or the organization that you serve for them to get involved.
You can use future pacing, you can think, "Think of how great it's going to feel after we finish this highway cleanup, and we're heading back, and we know we've got all these items that instead of being on the side of the road, now they're either getting recycled or they're going to the landfill. We know that we've just protected those little wetlands that are nearby. Think of how great it's going to be knowing that as kids are getting bussed to school they see a clean road median, and they think, 'Wow, people in our community really care about our environment, and care about our natural spaces.'" Notice how I, how I painted this picture of how they could feel in the future, how awesome it's going to be. And of course, you want to invite them in with you. Give them something concrete, "Hey will you attend this event with me? Hey, I'd love it if you would join me at this thing. Hey, I would really appreciate it if you would sit at my table at the fundraising gala." Invite them in and make it really personal.
If you'd like some other storytelling examples, I've created a free guide for you, click the link below, I've put together the best nonprofit storytelling examples that I could find all over the internet and I hope they'll inspire you as you share the story of your contributions to your nonprofit, and of course, the enthusiasm that you have for its mission. And if you know a nonprofit board member who would benefit from this, hey, send them the link to this video or share this with your other nonprofit friends that you know around the area.
Freebie: Nonprofit Storytelling Examples
I have scoured the internet from email to websites, to social media, to find the best examples of nonprofit storytelling and I've put them all together in this guide. So hopefully you will be inspired in your nonprofit storytelling, too. Click the link below to download and get these nonprofit storytelling examples that you can use to inspire your next tweet or post or blog, or even appeals letter.
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And if you like training like this, I'd love to have you join me at my monthly training program, where I go live and teach and train on the latest nonprofit marketing topics. You can find more information about that at marketyourmission.co/monthly.
I would love to serve them with some more of these videos. Alright, every day is a great day to SHINE, so go out and Serve with Heart, Integrity, Nerve, and Excellence. I'll see you in the next video.