Story Gardening Step One: CULTIVATE
(This is the second in a series of five posts on how to create a garden of stories your organization can harvest for appeals, newsletters, gratitude reports, social media posts and more. You can read the first post here!)
What’s the storytelling environment like in your organization? Is the 'soil' hard and dry (pretty set in its ways), or is it soft and flexible -- easy to stick that shovel into and move things around a bit?
Are the people you work with supportive of storytelling?
Maybe you like the idea of sharing stories, but don’t have the time to invest in proper story-gathering? Maybe you think you don’t have any good stories to tell, or you can’t safely or ethically tell the stories you do have.
The most common thing I hear from nonprofit professionals is that they feel stuck telling the same story time and time again, using the same voice or perspective. Often, this will be the CEO or Executive Director.
One of the easiest ways to start shaking things up is to look at some different perspectives you can tell your stories from.
Let’s look at a Hospital Foundation as an example.
Many Hospital Foundations that I work with are stuck on telling stories in their CEO’s voice. They might occasionally share patient stories or stories of doctors and researchers, but most often those stories are still told by the CEO.
What if you shifted the perspective ?
Why not tell the story directly from the patient’s voice? Have you considered what the doctor, nurse or researcher might have to say about that patient's treatment and care?
You could take it even further and share how a family member felt while their loved one was in hospital.
Or... what might a piece of equipment have to share? I bet it would be completely different than anything you’ve shared before!
Or how about a Food Bank? You might share how it feels to receive food, from the perspective of a food bank client. A volunteer or delivery driver might share how it feels to provide food to someone in desperate need. Your warehouse workers or agency partners probably have their own wonderful stories to share.
Or... you could take things up a notch and tell your story from the perspective of a paper bag, or a delivery truck!
Now I understand that these slightly ‘out of the box’ ideas can bring up feelings of worry and fear for some of you. Many people working at nonprofits want to look and sound ‘professional’ and ‘on brand’. They want consistency of voice.
They don’t want to stand out or sound weird or different or too emotional. They don’t want to risk someone getting mad at them or complaining.
And yet… people are starving for connection. Your donors want to feel connected – to you, to your staff, your beneficiaries – to your mission.
Everyone has different motivations for giving – so why would you only share one perspective and one voice of your organization?
There is lots of research out there on this. You can check out the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy, or read books written by Francesco Ambrogetti, or John Lepp, or Tom Ahern, along with many others.
I can tell you this:
Time and again I hear from folks just like you, who have started to cultivate their story soil and stir things up a bit. When they tell their stories in a new and interesting way, from a different perspective – their donors respond enthusiastically! They give more and they interact more with the nonprofit.
That’s a win/win in my book!
So why not start today? Start cultivating the story soil in your organization. Start stirring things up, shifting things around. Do some brainstorming around different perspectives and different types of stories you might be able to tell.
Let me know how it goes! And stay tuned for my next post, which will dig into how to start sowing the seeds of storytelling.
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Cultivate is the first module in the five step StoryGardening process I’m creating. If you’d like to learn more – you can let me know here.
