The Power of Story

Submitted by JSchaub on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 2:52pm

Every nonprofit needs to be good at storytelling.


In 1981, I was getting ready to graduate from the eighth grade at St. Veronica’s Elementary School in East Detroit, MI. Like a good catholic boy, I wanted to go to Notre Dame High School next door in Harper Woods, MI. But the tuition was pretty pricey.

So when I heard about a writing contest to win a scholarship, I signed up. One Saturday morning, about 200 boys showed up at the high school for aptitude tests and then to write their story. I was ready for anything.

When the test booklets were distributed, we were told to write about something in our lives. I thought for a minute and began writing. My story was poignant, yet strong. Emotional, yet reserved. There was a quirky group of characters and just enough detail to paint a word picture in the reader’s mind. The ending pulled everything together while leaving room for the unknowableness of the universe.

I won a $250 prize. I proudly gave the tuition certificate to my mother.

Did it bother me that not one word of the story was true? They did not require that I write only facts. And given the tragi-comedy of my father’s life and his friendship with Mr. Jack Daniels, I am not sure I had many life experiences to draw upon that had not been brutally suppressed into my bottomless subconscious.

On that day I understood the power of a story to change lives.

Nonprofits also need to tell their stories. A story is a much more efficient way to  convey information than books or reports. You can tell much about me from the story I just told you.


 
Nonprofit executives, with their watered-down MBAs are obsessed with the problem du jour. They kneel before the altar of metrics and data. The only way to advance their mission, it seems, is through PowerPoint presentations, U.S. Census Reports, and GANNT Charts.

Nobody helped a child because of the GDP. The poverty rate has never caused someone to open their wallet or their hearts.

Nonprofit employees dedicate their lives, volunteers their time, because the child they give a meal to reflects hope through her eyes. It does not matter that a barrel full of quantifiable data could guarantee that that girl would one day need that help.

A donor does not support the nonprofit’s past, or its problems. She donates to make possible its future. You can make what will be one day real through storytelling.

Here are some ways to add storytelling to your nonprofit tool box:

  • Create an interview form that captures biographical information (name, age, schooling, work history) as well as the connection to the nonprofit.
  • Use that form with every possible staff, volunteer, donor, and client so you understand who is involved with your nonprofit and why.
  • Interview the founding board members and volunteers. Ask: Why was the nonprofit was founded? What was the community like? What did they hope to achieve? Have they achieved their goal? What else needs to be done? You may not like some of the answers.
  • Go out and observe your clients. Do they use your services like you say in your brochures? Do you save lives or ease the pain. Maybe the children run and play. Maybe adults dare struggling to learn how to read. You can’t tell their stories if you are chained to your desk.
  • Listen. Think about the words that people use to describe your organization. Hear their passion and their frustrations. Begin learning how to write conversationally. Easy and smooth. You will want to be able to copy their natural way of communicating in your stories so the reader pays attention and remembers.
  • Tell the stories to friends and families. If people don’t care, or are confused, you need to listen more.
  • Find your hook. Identify the fact or situation that is unique to your nonprofit. Bill Seidman and a group of community leaders went around playing the song “High Hopes” and raised $1 million in the late 1950s to found a public college in Western Michigan that became Grand Valley State University. GVSU’s hook is that the university and community are partners.
  • You need tension. Why should people care? You need something that gets people to take action, whether to go to work every day or give blood. The economy may be getting worse. Autism rates growing. Frogs are dying off. Supermarkets are as rare as dodo birds in inner cities.

Now you can begin telling your stories. Infuse them in every communication, right next to that blessed data.

Instead of listing the curricula of an international conference, tell the story of three students coming from Japan, Italy, and Chile. Describe where they come from, what they want to gain, and most importantly how this three day conference will pay dividends for years to come.

You might drone on about the thousands of dogs that are tortured every year by dog fighting. Or, you could describe the dozens of dogs abused by Michael Vick. Instead of being put down as monsters, Vick was the real monster. Many were rehabilitated by loving volunteers and found families to care for them.

No one can help thousands of dogs. But everyone can be inspired by that one dog who sits at the foot of the bed of a little boy, the faint scarring on his back still visible by the light of the setting sun.

Young nonprofit professionals have a great deal of drive and dedication to change the world and improve their nonprofit organization. It would be good to take some time, stop working, and watch and listen.

They will have many stories to tell.

____________________
Steven Geoffrey de Polo is the Director of Foundation Giving at Grand Valley State University. Steven has worked in corporate and foundation giving for 21 years in New York City and Grand Rapids. He was a founding member of the Kids Food Basket and is currently a board member of Local First and the Grand Rapids Creative Youth Center, which promotes storytelling. He also organizes the Grant Writers Roundtable of West Michigan.