The impact of storytelling on fundraising

By Shana Medel

Josh Kligman of Storyraise interviewed two industry experts, Claire Axelrad of Clarification and Jeff Rum of Storyraise, about the connection between nonprofit storytelling and fundraising.

The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.

Josh Kligman: We have two amazing guests here, Claire Axelrad and Jeff Rum, who are going to talk about the role of storytelling in fundraising campaigns and crafting compelling narratives that resonate with your donors, no matter what industry or vertical your nonprofit is in. Claire and Jeff, I’m going to turn it over to you to give a quick introduction of yourself and your great knowledge of nonprofits and storytelling.

Claire Axelrad: I worked in the trenches for 30 years for five different nonprofits, doing the same kind of jobs that you’re doing now. I’ve been out on my own consulting for about 12-13 years. And since I’ve done that, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many more nonprofits that have lots of different kinds of stories. I’ve also had the opportunity to do a lot of learning, looking at how you can apply neuroscience and behavioral economics and psychology to your messaging. 

Jeff Rum: I also started out my career in the nonprofit sector, doing marketing communications. I then went on to run my own agency for about 15 years. And then I co-founded Storyraise, and I’m very excited to be on both the product side and continuing to run creative services. Storytelling has been a huge part of my career. I’m a big believer in this kind of meeting point between fundraising and storytelling. 

Josh Kligman: Claire, I’m going to kick it over to you first to answer our first question: What are the best types of stories that you’ve seen nonprofits tell, ones that really evoke positive memories to connect donors to nonprofit brands? And can you get specific with examples? 

Claire Axelrad: First, let me talk about storytelling on a larger level. We all know that storytelling is good. Our psychology is wired for stories. As human beings, we want to enter into stories. We want to see ourselves in a story, the same way we want to see ourselves reflected in the character and the plot. 

The best fundraising story is an incomplete story. There’s a beginning, there’s a middle, but there’s no end. You really leave the end up to the donor. You’re trying to show donors what they can do to create a happy ending. Like providing all who visit a food pantry with the fixings for holiday dinners. When I worked at a food bank, around the holidays, we would say, “Please give a gift to help us supply turkeys, pumpkin, cranberries, potatoes and pie to our neighbors in need. Your gift fills bellies and hearts.” There was a consequence to giving or not giving. And donors could see the end of the story. People sitting around a table, happy and eating. Feeling remembered and cared for. 

You have to think about how people are going to relate. What they’ll empathize with. You want to leave them with a lump in their throats. You want to make them smile or laugh. And if you don’t do that, then it’s like you’re sharing a term paper. That’s what a lot of nonprofits do. Use a lot of corporate speak. And that’s not really a story. 

Jeff Rum: I’ll just add that for me, the best stories from nonprofits are the stories behind the stories. A personal example: On a nonprofit mission to Ethiopia, I visited a village where a well was being built. We got to speak to some of the children and other people in the community about how this well has brought clean water. The clean water was just one part of the story. The story that I remember most was of a young girl who told me that she was able to go to school because she no longer had to spend her days walking miles to and from home to get jugs of clean water for her and her family. And because of this new technology, she and other young girls in her village could go to school. This was the story behind the story. This was a story that went beyond one individual, impacting the future of an entire community. I would encourage everyone to think about what are the stories behind your stories, the ones that would really be memorable for your donors.

Josh Kligman: Jeff, what about coming at it from the other angle. What kinds of stories don’t resonate with donors? What should not be done?

Jeff Rum: Some of the larger organizations are putting out more of the mediocre stories. I think the reason why is because they work in a lot of different areas. Often, they try to speak so generally about the work they do because they want to fit everything into one story. And because of that, it just doesn’t become a great story. You have to narrow the focus of a story to make it more interesting and engaging for the user. 

The Nielsen Norman Group put out a study on attracting donors and volunteers to nonprofit and charitable websites. When they tested websites in front of donors and users, a lot of nonprofit websites didn’t do two things well: 1) they didn’t tell people who they were and what they did clearly and concisely 2) and they also didn’t tell people where their donations went. If someone is going to make a donation, they have to understand where their money will go and what their money will do. They have to understand the impact of their gift. Sounds very simple, right? But it’s not so easy. 

I think in terms of improvement, organizations can tell more specific stories about what they do. This will help donors and create more transparency and trust. It’ll give donors what they’re actually looking for, which is understanding the impact of the organization and the impact of their gift.

Claire Axelrad: I would add that the story is really about the donor, not the nonprofit. The best stories are these experiential journeys of understanding and empathy. But one of the things that we’re starting to get a lot of pushback on in the sector is the hero story. It’s kind of universally known as being a story that pulls people in. I’ve always encouraged people to try to get your donor to jump into the narrative and give a happy ending. But today, people worry that those hero stories emphasize or reinforce white saviorism, especially in cases where donors are perceived to be in positions of privilege and power. You can still write the same kind of story, but not of the donor rescuing the beneficiary, but of the donor empowering the beneficiary. 

If you send a letter about child sex trafficking, you can portray the child as a victim, or you can portray the child as someone fighting to survive. When the beneficiary is shown to be a strong survivor with independent agency, then the donor can embody the role of empowerer, helping the beneficiary fight an oppressive situation. You have to use words in your story and in your fundraising messaging that pump up the donor’s moral identity. So saying, “your compassion helps her fight” versus “your gift will save her life.” It’s a subtle but empowering distinction. You want to treat your donors as collaborators or co-authors. 

Also, a lot of marketing and fundraising staff worry about presenting a person as the poster child. You have to become skilled at talking to, interviewing the people you’ve helped. You can ask simple questions, like “What was your life like before our organization helped you? What is your life like now because of the help that you received? If you could thank the people who supported you, what would you tell them?” 

Jeff Rum: Data supports this. The subtleties that you talked about, Claire, are really important. We know that good storytelling positively impacts giving. We’re going to publish a survey report soon on the impact of storytelling on fundraising, and I’ll just give you a couple of data points that might be useful. More than 70% of the respondents that we surveyed said they’re much more likely or somewhat more likely to donate to a nonprofit that effectively communicates its mission and its impact through storytelling. And even for people who are likely to give more money, we found that 63% of the people we surveyed said they have increased their nonprofit donation after hearing or reading a compelling story from that nonprofit. So if we really lean on storytelling, we can make even more of an impact.

Claire Axelrad: Research shows that an appeal that tells a story about a single person raises more than an appeal that talks about numbers of people in need. And you may think, “Let’s combine the data with the story.” But it’s not helpful. It’s not helpful to tell Abe’s story and then say, “There’s 20,000 other people like him who need help.” People don’t want their gift to be a drop in the bucket. 

When you put together your fundraising appeals, be very suspicious of any data that you’re putting in there. When I worked at the food bank, we talked a lot about how one in four children in our community were hungry. But whenever anyone see facts, we want to put up our dukes and fight those facts. What do you mean one in four? One in four in certain neighborhoods? How are you figuring this out? We get distracted, and we get out of the story.

Josh Kligman: Let’s say there’s a nonprofit that helps small businesses and entrepreneurs. How can they express impact in feelings rather than numbers?

Jeff Rum: Go into a small business and learn about the impact that small business has had on the owner and their family. You can talk to a patron of that small business and learn how they’ve been helped. As Claire said earlier, it’s about the individual stories. If you’re trying to engage donors and make them feel like their gift is not just a drop in the bucket, you have to find authentic stories that are significant to the community and pull on heartstrings. You have to find stories that connect donors to individuals you help. That’s the best thing to do. 

Josh Kligman: Jeff, can you talk about how some of our Storyraise customers have let their stories shine through, even when talking about how they’ve spent their dollars all year round?

Jeff Rum: Nonprofits are including interactive components, like embedding videos or social media posts, in their annual or impact or donor reports to engage with their audience. Being able to include stories and having some of the imagery move, even just slightly. This is drawing people in.

Diversity of content is really important when trying to engage people. We know people learn in many different ways. Some are audio learners. Others are visual. Having a report that creates an experience for a donor does more than a static report. This makes people feel like they’re part of the experience rather than just reading something. 

Josh Kligman: And part of that experience is how they’re interacting with content. So much of that interaction is done on mobile. Jeff, you mentioned that survey report earlier. Almost 100% of the respondents took that survey on mobile.

Jeff Rum: That teaches us something. Not only is it mobile first, in many cases, it’s mobile only. There are segments of the population that are only consuming information on their mobile devices. And likely, that number will only continue to grow.

Claire Axelrad: Before we had all of this technology, we had serialized stories in magazines and on radio. And that’s what we can do now. Use email newsletters or blog posts or even text messages. This is all part of the story to draw people in. You really create a compelling journey for people by stringing your stories together or pulling your stories out.

Josh Kligman: Now, retention is much lower with nonprofits organizations than for-profit organizations. Why is that? And how can some of the storytelling tactics we spoke about today increase retention?

Claire Axelrad: We don’t put enough resources into building engagement and loyalty. We’re so worried about getting that first gift, and then we lose 80% of donors before they make a second gift. One thing that I think is very important, and it’s becoming even more important, is that consumers expect personalization from the brands they choose to engage with. If Amazon can serve you up exactly what you’re looking for, people expect us to be able to do that, too. We can do a lot more of that if we pay attention to the things that donors identify with. A lot of that has to do with how you use your data. Don’t serve your donors up a story about your dog program if they’ve shown you that they always give to your cat program. Figure out as much as you can about how your donors identify with you. 

One thing I used to do with my direct mail pieces, and you can also do this on your donation landing page, is when people are filling out their name and such, ask them to input one or two words that describe why they were motivated to give. Some answers I would get were kindness, ethics, compassion, religion and justice. Use those words in your stories to help your donors empathize with what you’re doing. You want to trigger their emotions. And that’s probably a place where Storyraise can be really helpful. You want to investigate and use tools that help you automate some of those interactions. You have to prioritize engagement to get loyalty.

Jeff Rum: Everyone wants their stories to be perfect and polished. But no organization is perfect. And sometimes, nonprofit stories aren’t perfect either. That’s what makes them real. The most authentic stories are rough around the edges.

I remember we were trying to promote a private school in an area that was difficult to get to. Parents were concerned about the amount of time students would spend on the bus. So we started telling the story of the bus. Kids were actually having so much fun riding the bus because they got to bond with other students. We even interviewed the bus driver, who’d been there for 20 years.

Sometimes you find stories in the most unusual places. And if you step outside of the box, you can find some really touching stories. You may not even realize those are the ones that are going to hit people in their hearts in the best way possible.

Josh Kligman: I want to thank nonprofit fundraising coach and guru and expert, Claire Axelrad. You can learn more about what Claire’s been talking about today on her website, clairification.com. And thank you Jeff Rum, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Storyraise. You can learn more about his platform that creates digital reports and campaigns by visiting storyraise.com/#/blog. Thank you both for your time and insights.