The Power of Your Organizational Story

Stories have been with us from the beginning of time—inspiring us and moving us to act. Stories are how we learn, remember, and talk about who and what we love. Stories impel us, and they compel us. They tell us about family, country, faith, and about our communities and neighbors who may need our help.

In fact, your own organizational story is one of the most important things about you: it defines and refines you, and it’s as up‐close‐and‐personal as it gets. Telling your story to strangers, retelling it to friends—both online and through direct mail—is how new donors are found, retained and renewed.

Your story—your vision, values, and purpose—it’s naturally about you, but it’s more so about your donors, as it closes the circuit between your practical mission, and why they support it.

Telling your story with a personal touch helps your donors feel a part of what you’re doing, and can be the single best way to make yourself heard, known and, remembered.

Which means the more personal your story is—and the more personally it is told by you and those who speak for you—the greater its impact and the longer it will be recalled.

Your donors are more likely to respond to this method of telling your story, as they can see themselves at the center of what you do. Bottom line is that donors want to hear a story from you to them.

I remember seeing an online storybook where you could type in your child’s name and receive a printed book to “celebrate their story.” I showed the site to my young son, and he said, “But that’s not my story.” And he was right—just because they put his name in it didn’t make it his story

He was looking for a story from me to him instead. A story that was all about us.

If a child connects more to a personal story, and wants to hear about us, we can promise that your donors will too. Especially if you want them to invest their hard-earned income in your mission and ministry, your point and passion

Yet the reality is, you usually don’t have the time, or technique to tell your story exactly the way it deserves to be told. If you’re not really seeing your own story in your appeals, acquisitions, newsletters, ads, and digital assets, please contact us and let us help tell your unique, and powerful story.