In fundraising — and marketing of any kind when you get down to it — storytelling is the key.

It’s the key to engaging your donors.

It’s the key to inspiring and motivating your donors — to donate, to volunteer, to act in whatever way you’re asking them to.

We all love stories. It’s part our human nature. We’ve told stories before we had written language. They are an intrinsic part of who we are.

Donors don’t approach giving like they do investing

As much as we love to call major donors “donor-investors” and want to believe that these donor-investors will give us wads of money because they understand the good business sense in making positive change through our organization, that’s not the thing that does it.

People make donations because they have an emotional connection with your charity. And stories make that connection.

Our donors are smarter than that!

I know what you’re thinking.

“But our donors are smart, well-educated, reasonable, rational people.”

Yes, they likely are.

But that’s not why they make the decision to give you money or time or talent. That’s not why they invest in you.

They invest in you because they care. Because the cause you champion means something to them inside their squishy, mushy centers.

We have to convince them we’re awesome

“But our donors will only want to give us money if they believe we’re a good investment, that we use the funds well, that we know what we’re doing.”

Sure. But you can give them all of that knowledge and reassurance through stories. Stories about the good that’s been done because of donors like them.

Stories — moving, heartwarming stories — in fact, will convince them of those things better than anything else.

Things that don’t work (and do)

Bragging about children whose lives have been saved because of your organization doesn’t do that. (But thanking donors who have saved those lives does — along with a story about such a life.)

Promoting your latest piece of technology doesn’t do that. (But a story about the good it’s done that thanks donors who enabled its purchase does.)

Data on your productivity and ROI and how much you spend on administrative costs doesn’t. (But a story about how you helped someone with the money you don’t spend on admin costs does.)

Imagine this

Think, instead, of a story about a young girl. Her life was changed for the better, her adversity overcome, her hopeful future restored because of your donors. Donations paid for her surgery/the technology used in the surgery/the skilled surgeon. Or they paid for her therapy, or clothes, or education or whatever. It doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that her hopeful, rightful future was restored to her. Hope. That’s what your donors are investing in. Sell them that. In a story.