How do you leverage storytelling and data to showcase your event's cause and impact?

Storytelling is a great way to reach the hearts of potential donors while highlighting the successes of your organization. There are many frameworks out on the web and I suggest connecting with @Storicate and @Stan Miller, he/they are the best I’ve found. Simple and repeatable from your story to your collateral. It’s changed my way of looking at telling my organization’s story without it being the main focus.

In my experience, big fundraising events are a great opportunity to do some exciting creative work. You can build a unique team each time, pulling from staff, volunteers, or even outside voices. This lets you dream big in the planning stage and earns buy-in from the people who are on that creative team. These events are also an opportunity to think about how to tell your story in a different way than you normally do. I would sit down with our Executive Director before we started planning the event and have a conversation around what the core fundraising need is and the challenges to get it. We would then come to that creative team with the story we want to tell and then let that team have fun coming up with creative ways to tell it.

I am a story teller who wrote two books about the late, great humorist Lewis Grizzard. Many consider him to be the finest story teller America ever produced. I aspire to speak at events about Lewis. My books include hilarious stories as told by his closest friends. Lewis did not hang with no chumps, and I have stories that few in the world have ever heard.

A data dashboard is essential for internal metrics for fundraising and organizational success. You want to be able to compare years to each other in an easy way, and a data dashboard is really helpful. It is also great when sharing with potential foundational and institutional funders. However, for major donors and individuals, storytelling is a better way to make your case.

If something is too difficult, donors won't do it. So if your donation page has too many questions or isn't easy to use, then it will discourage its use. So make sure to make it easy, AND that the donation page functions in the way you think it will.

Similar to what municipalities do for capital purchases... if a group can set up a reserve fund and then put a portion of the funds raised into it each time they fund raise, then after a few years start to develop low cost programs off of the interest (don't touch the principal). Tim Hortons Foundation has been very successful with this method TIMDAYS

Data and stories ultimately need to come hand-in-hand when fundraising. The top consideration on a donor's mind is almost always impact - when fundraising, showcasing both depth and scale of impact is one of the best ways to demonstrate that your organization/cause is doing great things and deserving of support to continue its work. I have always found that starting with a highly personal story, then showing with data that others are in the same position and that your cause is driving real, positive change, is a powerful fundraising tactic.