I Help Nonprofit Leaders Hone Their Pitch. Here are my Top Three Tips.
Every day, I do Zoom calls with nonprofit leaders who want to get better at drumming up support for their work.
Almost all of them improve their pitch dramatically in just that one hour of coaching. That’s a good thing. But it also shows there’s a lot of dormant communications ability among high-level leaders. Given the importance of what change makers do (fending off climate change, preventing nuclear war, saving democracy), that’s a problem.
So, here are my top three insights from more than a thousand training sessions:
1. Work up a conversational version of your mission statement.
Most mission statements suck. They use jargon. They are off-putting in a real-world conversation. You can keep the highfalutin language (if that’s your case) on your organization’s website, but for in-person pitches, create a conversational version and keep it in your back pocket. Make it plainly state your goal upfront and then, ever so briefly, touch on how you get to that outcome. For example: “Our mission is helping babies thrive by removing toxic substances from the foods they eat and the stuff they touch.” That is far better than something like: “Our mission is advancing strategies for policies, public awareness, and high-impact litigation to outlaw toxins that are dangerous to the brain development of infants.”
2. Talk about WHY your work matters first (and then about WHAT you do).
Some seventy-five percent of my clients rush into talking about WHAT they do (most often in too much detail) instead of briefly stating their mission (see above) and then saying something along the lines of: “Listen. [Pregnant pause]. Let me tell you WHY our work is more important than ever.”
People go straight to the “what” because that’s their focus every day. But skipping the “why” is fatal because without it, listeners will decide for themselves through what lens they will view your pitch. They may choose the “this-is-at-best-nice-to-have stuff” lens and start paying less attention. If you begin by telling them WHY your work is important and urgent, you will create a frame of urgency and opportunity. And your listeners will focus on your message.
To wrap up this initial WHY segment climactically, use a phrase along the lines of: “What ultimately at stake here is…” To fill in the blank, take a 40,000-feet-high view (don’t just restate your mission). For example, if your mission is more equitable access to higher education, then zoom out and say: “What’s ultimately at stake here is the strength of our nation.”
3. Tell them about your “secret sauce” and share a story that illustrates its magic.
A lot of clients tell me: “My biggest problem is that we do so many things, so I struggle to convey all that complexity.” My answer is: “Stop conveying complexity!”
When you have a chance to make a first impression, you want to engage (so your listeners will want to meet you again) rather than comprehensively inform (which creates information overload, making listeners want to flee).
You can do this by getting the complexity out of the way with a short sentence along the lines of: “Our work falls into three buckets, A, B, and C.”
Then put some excitement in your voice and say something like: “But let me tell you about the secret sauce in everything we do.”
One of my social justice clients articulates his secret sauce this way: “We measure our success by the number and depth of unlikely relationships we create in our community.”
To make your secret sauce even more special, give it a catchy name. Say something like: “We call it the ‘Unlikely Relationships Playbook.’”
Then you say: “Let me tell you a story that illustrates how well this approach works.”
Then you tell a story about something good that happened because of your secret sauce.
Your secret-sauce story allows your listener to differentiate your organization from others through one easy-to-remember thing. Your listeners will find it stimulating–even entertaining–to hear about it. It’s why movies about people with superpowers are so successful.
Remember, your goal is to get your listener to come back for more. There will be opportunities to talk about the details down the road.
So, here’s the gist
- State your mission using simple language.
- Then talk about the “big WHY” first.
- Articulate your secret sauce and tell an illustrative story about it.
These are three easy things that you can do immediately. They will help you engage supporters and funders.
Whether it is climate change, saving democracy, or other nonprofit causes–our challenges are increasingly existential. This makes your ability to communicate more important than ever.