Once your nonprofit receives a major gift, it’s your job to maintain that relationship by showing appreciation and communicating the donor’s impact. You might steward major donors by sending program updates, inviting them to VIP events, and publicly recognizing their support. All of these efforts are effective, but you can make them even more impactful by incorporating storytelling.
Telling stories is vital to successful nonprofit communications, even in the stewardship phase. Use these strategies to fine-tune your approach and improve major donor relationships through the power of storytelling.
Before exploring new ways to steward major donors with storytelling, let’s review some general storytelling best practices to help you sharpen your skills.
Beyond the basics of telling a true story with a beginning, middle, and end, what can you do to tell stories effectively? How can you ensure your storytelling is not only targeted and impactful, but also genuine and ethical? Meyer Partners’ guide provides a framework for meeting all these needs called the three R’s of storytelling:
Following these three R’s will help your nonprofit tell stories that touch major donors’ hearts and deepen their connection to your cause. This framework will also point you in the right direction when choosing the stories that will appeal most to specific major donors.
Let’s zero in on the relevance aspect of effective nonprofit storytelling.
As with any donor stewardship, the strategies that work best for deepening major donor relationships are highly personalized. This means focusing on stories that align with each major donor’s unique contributions, interests, and history with your nonprofit.
For instance, you might tell the story of someone who participated in the program they funded or an individual who now relies on the services of the community center the major donor’s gift helped build. Find someone directly impacted by their donation and invite that beneficiary to tell their story.
You should also consider each major donor’s core interests and motivations for giving when telling stories of their impact. For example, say that a major donor named Sally is a former board member who was involved in the launch of your nonprofit’s after-school program. You know she continues to give after retiring from the board because she wants to empower young girls to succeed like she did. To appeal to Sally’s interests, you might tell the story of a former program participant who’s now thriving in a similar career field thanks to the program.
Make your stories even more powerful by including personalized, genuine thanks from the storyteller. Instead of only sharing a video or sending an email that tells the story of a beneficiary they impacted, take it a step further to truly show your nonprofit’s and the beneficiary’s appreciation.
You might do this by:
It’s not only a story’s content that determines how impactful it is—the medium you use to tell the story also plays a role. Ideally, you should mix up the communication channels you use for storytelling throughout the stewardship process to leverage the unique benefits of all of them. However, if you have to focus on one, consider choosing direct mail.
Direct mail is uniquely suited to telling compelling stories because it’s versatile, tactile, and one-of-a-kind. In fact, one study found that at least 38% of people believe direct mail is better at telling compelling stories than email.
To make your stories stand out even more when sharing them via direct mail, use the following tips:
Stewardship isn’t just about communicating impact—you should also aim to get the donor more involved with your nonprofit beyond donating. One way to do so is to invite major donors to tell their own stories.
If a donor is interested, you could interview them about their experience with your nonprofit, their personal connection to your cause, and what contributing to your work means to them. You might share their story in your monthly newsletter, on social media, or at a donor appreciation event. You could even give major donors the opportunity to speak at an event or your building’s grand opening.
Telling their own stories can help major donors feel more connected to your mission and remind them that your organization values them as people, not blank checks.
With these storytelling strategies, you can deepen major donor relationships and bring new joy to this part of the donor journey. As you try them out, note which strategies and stories resonate most with major donors so you can replicate them in the future.
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Disclaimer:
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