Storytelling helps your nonprofit further a variety of purposes, whether you’re trying to increase awareness of your mission, encourage action from your community, or reflect on your organization’s accomplishments. Not only do stories engage your audience’s emotions more effectively than facts alone, but research also suggests that they’re up to 22 times more memorable.
However, trust and accountability are critical for your nonprofit to gather and retain support. Since you’re relaying true stories about real people in your communications, ensuring authenticity in every aspect of your storytelling is essential.
In this guide, we’ll discuss four strategies for telling nonprofit stories that inspire your audience while remaining true to your mission and work. Let’s dive in!
1. Solidify the Fundamentals of Storytelling
Effective nonprofit storytelling requires three basic elements. You’ll recognize two of them from more traditional stories told through media like movies and novels, but the third is unique to impact-driven storytelling.
Characters
Since most of your nonprofit’s stories will be relatively short, centring each of them on one main character will help you get to the point. Your options for protagonists include:
- Staff members who can provide an inside look at your organization’s work.
- Supporters who are the most relatable characters to audience members, helping them see themselves engaging with your mission.
- Recipients of your nonprofit’s services whose stories deliver the greatest emotional impact and highlight your accomplishments most effectively.
Despite the relative advantages of highlighting those your organization has served, stories about staff members and supporters still have their place, especially when they’re delivered as firsthand testimonials. No matter whose story you’re telling, make sure to get their consent (or their guardian’s if they’re underage) before sharing their names, photos, or other personal details in your content.
Plot
All well-written stories have a beginning, middle, and end. In nonprofit storytelling, the plots of your stories should show where your protagonist was before your organization stepped in and how you helped them achieve a resolution that furthered your mission.
To see this approach in practice, here is an example story an animal shelter might use:
Lulu was a stray kitten living alone on the streets of a university town. One winter night, two students found her trying to keep warm under the hood of a car and brought her to our shelter. Our amazing medical staff examined, vaccinated, and spayed Lulu, and thanks to the generosity of donors like you, our shelter paid for all of the supplies she needed in foster care until the students who found her adopted her for good. She is now thriving in her forever home!
This story begins with the predicament that the protagonist (Lulu the cat) faced, highlights the efforts of the shelter’s staff and supporters in the middle, and ends happily with her adoption. While you may need to adapt this framework based on your mission and characters, ensure all of your stories have this foundational plot to hook your audience.
Call to Action
After reading your nonprofit’s stories, your audience will likely feel inspired to take action. Outline a clear next step at the end of your story to give them the opportunity to engage immediately while the desire to do so is strong.
Set up your call to action by incorporating elements into your story that make your next step seem logical. In our animal shelter example, including the phrase “thanks to the generosity of donors like you” sets the stage for a donation request (e.g., “To help more animals in need like Lulu, donate online today!” with a link to a donation form). If the organization’s goal had been volunteer recruitment instead, they could have discussed how volunteers helped care for Lulu and linked their volunteer application in the call to action.
2. Back Up Stories With Data
Although stories are more memorable than data, that doesn’t mean your organization should fully pivot away from sharing statistics. As UpMetrics’ guide to social impact measurement explains, reporting impact data helps boost accountability and inspire more support—making it the perfect accompaniment to storytelling.
Track the outcomes of your mission-related efforts and share them alongside your stories to ground them in reality. For instance, our example animal shelter might report the number of animals adopted from the organization over the past year or the percentage by which it has improved its veterinary care since its founding.
You might also share fundraising or engagement data if your stories are linked to specific initiatives. For example, when thanking event participants, you could report the total amount raised during the event and tell a story to illustrate what those funds will help your nonprofit achieve. Consider displaying data using charts, tables, or infographics so your audience can digest complex information more quickly and return to your emotionally impactful stories.
3. Leverage Multimedia Content
Creating infographics of the data that accompanies your nonprofit’s stories is just one option to make them more engaging and interactive. Here are some other ideas for leveraging multimedia content for storytelling:
- Show photos of the main characters (with their consent). In our animal shelter example, the organization could share pictures of Lulu lying under the hood of the car where she was found, receiving care at the shelter, and happily playing in her forever home to illustrate each part of the story.
- Create videos to tell your story. Testimonial-style stories are particularly compelling when told in video form, but you can also combine images, on-screen text, and music to engage your audience’s senses in other storytelling formats.
- Experiment with audio storytelling. As of 2024, more than 100 million Americans listened to at least one podcast per week. Consider jumping on this trend by having representatives from your nonprofit be guests on relevant podcasts and tell your organization’s stories to new audiences. If you have the time and resources, you might even create your own podcast-style content for your website!
Design all of your multimedia storytelling elements with accessibility in mind. Write alternative text for images, include closed captions or transcripts with video and audio content, and ensure adequate contrast between the text and background colours on infographics. Resources like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines can help you make sure every member of your nonprofit’s community can get value from your content, including those with disabilities.
4. Feature Your Nonprofit’s Branding
According to Loop’s nonprofit branding guide, “An effective nonprofit branding strategy can help your organization stand out and allow your audiences to build more meaningful connections with you.” This is especially true with storytelling content, as consistent branding helps cement the connection between your stories and your mission.
Within and alongside your stories, feature brand aspects like your nonprofit’s:
- Name
- Tagline (if you have one)
- Logo
- Colour palette
- Typography
- Imagery/graphic style
- Messaging standards (tone, word choice, mechanics, etc.)
Compile all of these elements into a brand guide so anyone who creates storytelling content for your nonprofit has a reference for how to use them correctly across channels.
The strategies above should provide a solid foundation for authentic nonprofit storytelling. With a little creativity, you can adapt them for any communication channel, from your website to social media to stakeholder presentations. Just remember to always keep your mission at the forefront so your stories support your organization’s overarching goals.
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