Stories push donors to react to needs and ideas
People as we know them today appeared around 200,000 BC. We have lived in small communities, bands, and tribes for most of our history. We communicated verbally and conveyed our stored wisdom to new generations through stories.
Telling and listening to stories is deeply ingrained. The first human writings go back only 5,500 years. The dominant form of communication for centuries was oral. Many great literary classics probably began life as oral traditions, such as Homer’s The Iliad. The printing press was introduced around 1440, allowing the wider transmission of books. We have evolved over time, and stories now exist in many media including the web.
Today, we still tell stories, many of them based on the myths of the ancients. The movie “Jaws” is basically the same story as the ancient poem Beowulf — a reluctant hero battles against the evil sea monster, saves the village, and in doing so becomes a more mature person.
Why have stories?
Stories can serve a number of functions. The parables in The Bible are a way of explaining and sharing key philosophical ideas to create what many social activists would now call a movement. Other stories, like Aesop’s Fables or Japanese Zen stories contain important knowledge about a shared culture or contain advice on how to behave.
As individuals involved in social change, or more specifically to raise funds, there is a need to tap into the purpose and structures of stories to help convey information and ideas in a powerful memorable way.
Road Blocks
There are three key challenges in the way stories are shared by fundraisers or campaigners:
• They’re too internally focused: Many stories are obsessed with internal concerns or use an inaccessible technical language. By not focusing enough on the needs of the beneficiaries or the concerns of the supporters, stories become self-referential or even indulgent.
• They’re too long: The best story might exist in several forms but all short — from a carefully crafted two-page case for support, to a 60-second spoken version that can be shared over dinner.
• They’re too perfect: Listeners don’t want a perfectly polished story that sounds like it has been shared 100 times and allows no room for imagination. Create space for them to add in their ideas and “color.” This adds ownership.
Hero or Heroine
There is a framework to create the key elements in a story. The framework consists of linked parts. You need to begin by deciding who is the key protagonist — the hero or heroine. Then you must decide on why are they a heroine or hero and why the reader or listener should empathize or identify?
Typically, you can choose from three classes or categories of heroes and heroines:
• The organization: This might include fundraisers, research scientists, campaigners, humanitarian workers, doctors, social workers, etc.
• The beneficiary: These could be refugees, people impacted by an illness, children in need of protection, caregivers, etc.
• The supporter: These can be volunteers, donors, campaigners, members, and others who add value to your cause.
Your story ideally should involve an actual person — Abdul, Jane, Sean or Eman. (You can, and sometimes should, create a composite person to protect anonymity.) This individual can represent the more general cluster. So, Susan Jones, the research scientist working on the cure for MS, simply represents the many individuals and team working on a cure.
Which hero cluster is best? Supporter as hero is best. It’s the one with which other supporters or potential supporters can identify. Make sure your supporter as hero feels “agency,” the sense of power or ability to act and address the challenge.
Think about the difference between:
• “We’d like you to help us [the organization] challenge injustice.”
• “Please help Jane Jones challenge the injustice of her imprisonment.”
• “Here’s how you can tackle injustice.”
Taking “AIM”
Having decided on your hero, you next need to decide on how to direct or focus your story and content. By taking “AIM” you check your thinking about: Audience — Who is your story for?; Impact — What result do you want to have?; and Message — What key information or ideas you want to convey?
Think about four basic story structures which might appeal to, or engage, supporters: risk, crisis, opportunity, and vision. You should ideally be able to tell your story in any one of these formats. Or, tell it in all four as a story arc: Without action, risk might become a crisis, but it can then be solved by taking up an opportunity to deliver a vision.
This model has been successful for many nonprofits — from a gallery raising $50 million for a Renaissance painting to an international charity raising $500 million across 27 countries to provide education for children in conflict zones. The framework begins from the perspective that all stories can be based around two dimensions:
Time: Whether the outcome will happen now/soon or at some future point; and,
Impact: Whether the case will work toward a positive or away from a negative. These dimensions relate to common ways that people think about their experiences. If you put these dimensions together you have four choices. They include:
- A positive present: i.e., an opportunity. This has a relatively short time horizon and is about a positive outcome.
- A negative present: i.e., a crisis. This also has a relatively short time horizon and is about a negative outcome.
- A positive future: i.e., a vision. This encourages the supporter to think far ahead and is about a positive outcome
- A negative future: i.e. a risk This also encourages the supporter to think far ahead and is about a negative outcome
Better still, put them in a matrix as seen in the accompanying chart. Each of these choices is illustrated for a theatre education program in a small town. It includes:
- Risk: “If we don’t secure the funds for the education program then within 5 years there will be a whole generation denied access to culture – up to 3,000 18-year-olds in this town who will have never seen a live theatre performance.”
- Crisis: “If we don’t find funds for the roof repairs within the next 3 months, we will have to close the building. The loss of cash from the box office will be so great we may never re-open. Our town will have lost its only purpose-built theatre.”
- Opportunity: “Thanks to a shop closure, the building lease has come free on a large space next door. If we raise the money in the next 3 months, we can acquire the space for the experimental studio we’ve been talking about for years.”
- Vision: “If we raise the cash we can extend into the premises next door. With that extra 10,000 square feet, we’d gain experimental space to complement our main platform, and craft workshops. In 5 years we’ll be the leading arts center in the city.”
You need to decide which of the quadrants your story falls into most naturally. When in doubt, try crisis.
SUCCESS
Finally, you need to run your story through the SUCCESS checklist to make sure it is “sticky” — that it stays in people’s minds.
Brothers Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the book, Made to Stick, first came up with this framework based around the mnemonic SUCCES. Here’s a mnemonic if you want to spell it correctly. All the elements in your story should meet six key criteria. S=simple; U=unexpected; C= concrete; C= credible; E= emotional; S= story; S= simple (again).
- Simplicity: Identify your core message and make it short and sweet.
- Unexpectedness: Engage and intrigue the audience with counterintuitive ideas.
- Concreteness: Make it real and visceral. See, smell and touch the idea.
- Credibility: Use detail and information that symbolises and supports your idea.
- Emotions: Evoke and attach feelings about what is important.
- Stories: Use stories to make the idea memorable and personal.
- Simplicity: remove every extraneous element from the message.
There you have it: HeroesAIM4SUCCESS.
Bernard Ross is director at the consultancy =mc. His email is b.ross@managementcentre.co.uk. His latest book is Change for Good https://amzn.to/2QzdO4o with profits going to Doctors Without Borders/MSF
