[Video] Unlock the Secrets of Storytelling

In this webinar, Laura Ingalls helps nonprofits write more effective year-end donation letters.

How to Choose and Write the Best Stories for Year-End Fundraising

Edited Transcript:

Brianna: Without further ado, I want to introduce Laura Ingalls. She is related to Laura Ingalls Wilder and therefore she is a born storyteller. She comes from a long tradition of storytelling so she has a ton of great information to share with you today. Laura, take it away.

Laura: Thanks for coming to today’s workshop because I know your inboxes are full of offers and things right now, so I’m glad you're here. This is going to be super practical today and the more that you participate in the chat, the more I can customize the information to your needs.

Brianna and I have a small, women-run business called Abeja Solutions and we help non-profits like yours get donor mail done. We have a real focus on donor mail – we do some other general communications – but donor mail is something that can be really difficult for non-profits to get done. But it's really a high-return tactic so we help people with the data, the writing, and then getting the production done.

Brianna and I come from the nonprofit world. We met at a national animal welfare charity where Brianna actually did training for 2,000 animal welfare partners! So that's where we met doing training and doing storytelling for animal welfare. And you’ll see a little of that reflected in our materials today...

We realized that there was a lot that we could do to help nonprofits be more effective and make donor communications easy for you, so that's a little bit about what our company does.

Today, our context for our discussion really is going to be your year-end fundraising because that is when 31 percent of all revenue comes in for non-profits, on average. For some nonprofits, it's half of your revenue!

This has been a funny year, but time is starting to run out on doing that year-end fundraising. You'll see it's 4-6 weeks now to get your fall campaign done – I’m starting to write those appeals for clients this week. You'll need your appeals before Thanksgiving to drop in about 3 months. Then holiday, of course, you want that appeal to drop right around Thanksgiving/end of November, about 16 weeks away. So time is moving.

As I mentioned, this is part of a 3-part webinar series. We've already done data, and if you missed that data is so important because the worst thing you can do is tell a wonderful story and it doesn't actually get to someone's inbox! Or what I think is even worse is when you spend money on that appeal and then you misspell the donor's name or you don't ask them for enough money. You're not personalizing your asks.

Brianna did a great webinar about donor data and we've got a recording of that. You'll find that in our blog and, then starting next week, we'll kick off a 2-week series about avoiding costly donor mail traps so that you can save as much time and money as you need when doing really effective year-end mailings.

Storytelling is becoming a lost art

So once upon a time, people told stories around campfires and they came from lands far and wide. Of course, they shared news. They talked about the price of saffron in Samarkand. They talked about what roads were now beset by bandits and you don't want to go there.

But as the embers started dying down, every person knew that it was going to be their time to tell their story. To represent their culture, because every culture had a rich storytelling tradition that really communicated to people around you how you shared things in common with each other – even though you might be from vastly different continents. Storytelling was a human quality that we shared around that campfire on those ancient spice routes.

Today, storytelling is ... not so much. We're great content consumers. And by the glow of our tablets, our computers and our smartphones, we take in a lot of content. But very few of us are telling complete and active stories.

I think storytelling is starting to become a lost art. There are non-profits that are actually promoting storytelling that would agree with me. If you doubt that storytelling is dying or at least a little bit in danger, all you need to do is look at Hollywood and see the lack of original storytelling. How many Batmans can I live through in one lifetime?

I’m so glad you're here today because you're going to learn those secrets of storytelling and be able to pass those on to your donors to really engage them and help them invest in your mission.

What is storytelling?

So first of all, let's look at what storytelling is. The National Storytelling Network is a non-profit that is dedicated to keeping storytelling alive and they say storytelling is really about 5 components.

Storytelling is inherently interactive. Storytelling should be a 2-way conversation that provokes a response in the person who is reading it.

The Arab world has a name for people who are storytellers. It's called hakawati and he sits on this kind of throne in the coffee house. He tells rousing stories about history and it really is a 2-way conversation with the audience. It’s really fun performance art.

Storytelling involves language. Storytelling involves words. Big revelation, right? But it involves using the right words and as we'll talk a little about that today. Those are not the words that you learned in college. They’re the kind of words that you would use to talk to your mother about what you do at the Thanksgiving table or at the holiday table.

Storytelling is about actions. Now, when you're standing up in front of someone you can rap a cane on the table, as a hakawati does, or you can get people clapping. You can get some movement with your hands that really tells people something.

But it's a little bit harder in a written piece to show action and I want you to think about this as the parts of the story that are not words. Parts that say something about your credibility. Pictures that you use that tell people something about the people you serve – and maybe those people are just like them in some way. Those are the non-verbal or the non-word parts of your appeal.

You need to tell a complete story. A narrative has a beginning, a middle, and an end. What I often find with nonprofit stories is we tell part of the beginning. We kind of skip over the middle and then we get to the end. So we're going to talk about how to tell that complete story today.

A story draws in the reader. It invites the donor to see themselves in the story. To imagine this happening to them and what would they would do. And you really need to get to that imagination level when you tell stories in your fundraising appeals.

5 secrets of storytelling

There are 5 secrets that we're going to be talking about today.

1. Stories are usually better than facts

2. Fundraising stories contain 7 elements

3. Story choice is a critical factor

4. Your English teacher didn't prepare you to write appeals

5. Complexity kills

Stories are usually better than facts

Let's start with that first one: stories usually perform better than factual arguments. This is interesting because in the West we learn in school to give factual arguments.

I was having a conversation the other day with an accountant and a lawyer. They’re non-profit specialists that work in accounting and law.

They were talking all about the exciting tax benefits this year because of COVID 19. Because of the CARES Act, there have been additional tax deductions that have been put forth for U.S. donors.

They were essentially saying, "Well, you're going to have to explain all of these amazing tax benefits that people are going to be able to get. And that's really what these fundraising appeals should be about.”

And I told them, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! No, facts actually have a very different psychological effect on people's brains. We know that from psychological study after psychological study. I’ve cited one here at the bottom of the slide.

These researchers found out that when we take stories in, our brains radically change the way the information is processed. We open our minds and we see that story as more true than if someone would come at us with a factual argument.

It's kind of like the story about the Trojan horse. They reel in this Trojan horse, but inside there are soldiers. Inside of a fundraising appeal is the money that you're going to ask for – that's the ask.

But it's that beautiful Trojan horse, that gift that you give them – that's the story – that’s how you get the ask past the guards and get you past the gate. We know that when readers are really absorbed in a story that they detect fewer false notes than when people come at them with a factual argument.

If you've been on social media lately, there's lots of politics and you just get so tired of listening to everyone trying to make their factual argument. But when you see a person’s story, you let down your guard a little bit and you'll actually read that and say, “Huh, well maybe that's actually true.” That's the effect that telling stories has on people versus facts.

So here's how the accountant and the lawyer whom I love deeply – they've helped so many nonprofits in this challenging time – would write an appeal:

Thanks to the CARES Act, there is a new charitable tax deduction!

If you take the standard deduction (don’t itemize) on your 2020 tax return, you can claim up to $300 for cash donations to Bee-lieve in the Future you make this year.

And taxpayers who are at least 65 years old or blind can claim an additional standard deduction of $1,300 ($1,650 if using the single or head of household filing status).

Arizona also offers a dollar-for-dollar tax credit up to $800 ... 

That's pretty snoozy for an appeal. So let's contrast that with how an appeal should be written or how it should start out.

Stay in an abusive relationship until you can scrape together a month’s rent? Or suddenly become homeless – with a toddler and a 10-year-old?

It took a lot of courage for Rhea to make that choice this past summer. But it plunged her family into what seemed like an even more hopeless situation. She had no job and nowhere to live.

That is, until you offered Rhea a helping hand up from poverty!

Can you see the difference? Really, very different kinds of stories.

We will share it in the chat, but I actually wrote some stories from Nigeria and I’ll make sure that Benjamin receives those because there are amazing stories all over the world that we want to tell versus telling something that's really quite bureaucratic and fact-based.

Can you think of a time in the calendar the fundraising calendar the nonprofit calendar when you might want to lead with facts over stories? Yep, Brianna nails it – specifically the last 3 days of the year. People make decisions based on emotion for 362 days of the year or 361 if we talk about tax day.

But those last 3 days of the year, those people are making logical decisions. They're not making purely emotional decisions. On those last 3 days of the year that's when you want to remind people that they should get their tax deductions in by the end of year.  

Fundraising stories contain 7 elements

Let’s move on to our second secret – that fundraising stories contain 7 basic elements. Now down in the materials you'll see our storytelling treasure map that actually is a nice infographic that you can print out and that will actually show you the steps 1-by1.

You have to start with a character. One character. Donors have a very hard time with multiple characters. And it's a lot harder for you to write a story with multiple characters, so I really suggest in your appeal that you have only one story and it has one main focus person that people can emotionally invest in.

You need to know something about that person, but those details need to be sparing. You need to have very good reasons for choosing those 2 or 3 essential details. We'll look at a couple of great examples of what those details are. You really are just sort of panning gold, looking for those 2 or 3 important details that make people sympathetic and care about your story subject.

Your character needs to have a personal goal. Their personal goal isn't just to get services or become educated by your organization. They have a larger life goal and I bet it parallels life goals that some of your donors have as well. So really ask yourself, “What is their personal goal? What are they trying to achieve in life?”

There's got to be a villain and I think you need to name the villain. As a nonprofit person, you are very well aware of what the problem is and the scope of the problem. What is actually the issue. But it's not so clear to your donor, so you have to name that villain. Don't keep it vague.

There needs to be conflict. I’m the younger sister in my family, so this isn't like beating up on my older brother as a kid. It's not conflict in that way. It really is the point of emotional tension in the story.

And it's very rare that people wave their magic wand and a problem goes away. You know often we strive to do better and it's two steps forward and one step back. There are often some setbacks that people experience along the way and donors want to know about that because it makes your story more real.

Change. There needs to be change in every story – that 180-degree change that the subject’s life is better, if it really is 180 degrees.

And that change needs to be transformational, not transactional.  Sometimes I see this, “Nonprofit A delivered a service. All better.” But that's not what it needs to be. It needs to be change that's really enabled the person to do better in their life and seek the greater good.

Then you need to connect that story to the larger narrative. If you've done a focus story about one person, they're representative of probably tens of thousands of people in similar situations that you serve.

The larger narrative helps you transition out of the story and into talking about the problem and then why your solution is credible. So you need to make sure that you have that zoom in (on the story), but then you're able to get out of that and look at that larger narrative.

Today, Sandy Rees – she's a great fundraiser if you follow her – has a blog about storytelling. She talks about using your core number. That's the amount that it takes you to provide one unit of service or help one person you need. That number is actually a great way to get out of your story and into the larger narrative or the larger problem.

Let's do a little workshopping here. Are you all familiar with Harry Potter? I’m using this example because Harry Potter is a rebirth story. The most famous rebirth story is Jesus, of course, where something catastrophic happens and then he is reborn.

You see that same story in Harry Potter, right? Many of the stories that you will write at nonprofits are transformational – they're about people's lives being reborn – something happening new in their lives.

Let's talk about who Harry Potter is. What are the absolute essential details you need to know about Harry Potter to understand what happens in those really long books? They get longer as they go on, right? What are the essential details you need to know about Harry Potter? Put those in the chat.

He was an abused child. He's an orphan, right? He's an orphan and how did he get orphaned? His parents were killed by Voldemort – He Who Shall Not Be Named. But Harry Potter didn't die, yes?

Those are essential things that you need to know about Harry Potter. He's magical. He's an orphan in an abusive situation. His parents were killed, but he was not killed in the same attack. He lived for some reason – The Boy Who Lived. Those essential details make him real as a character. But you don't need to know his jelly bean preference is Bertie Bott’s.

We already mentioned the villain Voldemort and there's a lot of conflict that goes on, right? They have lots of fights and Harry Potter has difficulties in school with his professors. But what is the larger narrative?

In the end, they protect the school and everyone lives happily ever after. That's kind of the change that happens and Voldemort is vanquished. But what is the larger, really very adult narrative of Harry Potter? Does anyone remember?

Voldemort believes that only magical people should live and Muggles like us should not live. It's kind of a larger narrative about race and class and all of these kinds of things, so it's very sort of serious and that's the larger narrative that you would transition to out of a focus story on Harry Potter.

So let me ask you this. I’m going to read you a story and you tell me yes or no in the chat if it is a complete story:

Luis and his wife, both noncitizens, came to the office to request assistance with Medicaid benefits for their son, who is a citizen.

They were hesitant to apply due to the Public Charge Act, a rule that specifies aliens must be able to care for themselves. They were concerned that applying would affect the process of legal citizenship for them.

Our benefits counselor explained the rule, making them feel more comfortable to apply.

Yes or no? Is it a complete story? Does it inspire you to give money?

Right, there's some missing information. First, we know there are a lot of characters. There's Luis. There's his unnamed wife and their son.

We don't have a lot of essential details – all we know is that their son is a citizen and they're not citizens. We don't know why they're seeking medical benefits for their son. Maybe he has a condition. Maybe he has diabetes or maybe he has a heart condition that we would like to know about. That might be an essential detail: why they need that medical care for their son.

We don't know a lot about their personal goal. We know that they want to become citizens, but we don't know if they had to flee oppression at home and that's why they're here. Were they involved in a very difficult poverty situation and they needed to seek that kind of assistance ...

The villain isn't really named. Is the villain the law? Is the villain poverty? Is the villain the immigration process? We don't really know who the villain is.

Conflict … we don't hear too much about it. All we know is that they applied.

We don't know what change happened as a result of them being able to have medical care that can be very transformational. And then, what is that larger narrative of people who are working here and need medical care? So, that's not a complete story.

Is this next one a complete story? This one was written by a dear, executive director friend of mine and she had to write it at the last minute:

Charlie is disabled by a brain injury and lives alone in a 1-bedroom apartment with his cats, who he says are his “heart and family.”

His case worker searched unsuccessfully for months for an affordable spay & neuter option because Charlie’s cats were reproducing and the number of cats in his home was becoming more than he could care for. 

We were able to sterilize all of Charlie’s cats at no cost, helping him to keep his beloved cats and stay in his home.

Your support helps us sterilize thousands of pets, like Charlie’s, each year.

Is that a complete story, yes or no? Yes, it’s certainly better, isn't it? It's almost a complete story, Marie. We're not exactly sure what his personal goal is and we're not exactly sure what the villain is. It's not expressly laid out.

Sometimes it's challenging for us to say, “It's the landlord, the landlord is the villain.” In this particular story, it also could be disability or poverty. All we know is that he’s struggling in life as we all have at times, but the point of tension is really that villain.

This is certainly a better story, but let's look at how it could be written:

Charlie calls his cats his “heart and family.” Their antics bring him comfort as he copes with a life of pain in his cramped flat in Ottawa.

You see, Charlie lives with a brain injury. It keeps him from working and doing so many things that you and I tend to take for granted.

Charlie’s case worker had looked for months to find an affordable spay/neuter clinic. The cats were multiplying and Charlie’s landlord was threatening eviction.

But you helped us alter Charlie’s cats – at no cost to him. That meant he could keep “his family” and stay in his home.

Thanks to you, we help thousands of pets and people in need each year.

So let's see why so this is a more complete story:

• Charlie has a brain injury and it expressly says he can't work. We had to assume that before.

• Now we know where he lives. He lives in Ottawa. People care about helping causes close to them.

• We see his personal goal is to keep his pets and home.

• The villain is the landlord.

• In addition to being more complete, this is also better because it brings the donor in. It makes the donor the hero of the story.

Here’s another difference. Do you have readability statistics installed in your Word? If you're using Word as a program, there's actually a built-in function that allows you to run it through what was a military program for coming up with the most readable directions.

You want folks in the military to be able to read the directions on the things that they're doing. So they came up with the Flesch Kincaid system and it's built into Word to tell you how readable something is. I actually found out about this really late in my writing life and it's been quite transformational for my own writing.

A couple things you'll notice in comparing the first version on the left and the second version on the right. The one on the left uses twice as many words per sentence. Those were long sentences – I think I needed water in between some of the sentences. On the right, those are much shorter sentences – easier for the reader to get through.

On the left, half of this is written in passive voice. That's the difference between the action has happened to the subject (passive) or the subject made an action happen (active). You don't want passive sentences. They're very indirect and you want direct sentences. Zero is the score you want for passive sentences.

You'll see in terms of reading ease 60 versus 82 percent almost 83. That's on a scale of 100. That's a big difference! The closer you can get to 100, the easier it is for people to read it – particularly on a mobile phone. It isn't just people's reading ability, but also the format in which they're reading it.

And then, this is the big kicker: the grade level. The grade level of the first one is kind of sophomore-junior level in high school. The one on the right is just under 5th grade and this is important.

Only 12 percent of Americans read at the 10th grade level. This is according to a study that's done every 10 years in every country in the world called the PIAA. It looks at global literacy and only 12 percent of Americans read at a 10th grade level whereas 82 percent of Americans read at a 4th grade level.

When I think about how can I can increase reading ease and reduce the grade level, the first thing I look at is jargon. How can I get rid of long words like “sterilization” and use “fix” or “alter?” How can I use words that are much shorter?

In the nonprofit world, we love to use words like “facilitate, implement, and capacitate.” Those all drag your reading ease down and make it harder for people to actually read what you're writing.

Now, I don't think if you really compare those two examples that the second one sounded simplistic, right? It was actually pretty easy to read and we weren't talking down to people. We were just making it easier for them to get through it by shortening the sentence length.

And you don't want to have any more than two sentences per paragraph if you can manage it. If you find yourself doing lots of explaining, you want to stick a period on something and start a new thought. I always do one thought per sentence. I don't try to cram a lot of things in there.

Should you use contractions? I love contractions, but I think it depends a little bit on your brand. Contractions are how we speak conversationally and, as you remember, storytelling should be a two-way conversation that provokes a response.

You don't need to tell people that you're intelligent or that you know your stuff by using words that they can't really understand, or words they won't or they can't read. I have a nice blog that lists some of the words that we use all the time in the nonprofit world internally, but externally it just sinks your fundraising appeal.

There may be more questions that I haven't seen here, and I’m sure Brianna will prompt me.

Brianna: Laura, it’s important to really emphasize that your donation request letters are not a business letter. They're not a bill and they're not a formal grant request. Think of them as a letter to a friend.

How would you write to your friend and ask them to be the hero in this story? Of course, you might use contractions with your friend unless you, for some reason, have a very formal relationship with them. An elder, perhaps? It's all about what does the donor want to hear from you.

Laura: Another thing we know is that when we use first person pronouns like “I,” “our,” and “we” it drags down readability. When we use pronouns like “you” and “yours,” it increases readability.

There are studies that date back to 1934 that say first-person pronouns – “our programs” or “we survived COVID” – make it hard for people to read.

People are more engaged when they're the hero of the story, when “you” the donor made this happen. “You changed Charlie’s life.” “Your generosity makes a difference for people just like Charlie.” Those kinds of things may sound funny when we write them, but donors love it and it makes it more readable.

Story choice is a critical factor

Secret number 3 is story choice. Story choice is a critical factor and it's not something that should be left until the last minute.

It requires you to think very thoughtfully about who is your donor. If you were part of Brianna’s donor data session – or if you'll spend some time looking at the transcript and the video on our blog – it'll really help you dig into your data to find out who is your donor, what does their daily life look like.

You know there's very big difference between someone who is my age who is sandwiched between children and their aging parents and worrying about both versus somebody who is retired and they're looking forward to engaging in some of the hobbies that they love. But they probably also have grandchildren.  

Your story meets those people at different points in their life journey. Here in the United States our average donor is a 62-year-old woman, so what is something that's going to appeal to them? How will your story relate to their life?

We just did a story for the Arizona Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. I had maybe 10 stories to choose from and we ended up telling a story about April.

April was someone who started working when she was 15 years old. She is a dedicated mother and grandmother, just like some of the donors. But she also has a sick husband who she's trying to take care of. She's only 40 years old and things are starting to be a little blurry in her vision.

But she ignores it because she has so much going on in her life. She'll get to her own needs later. By the time that she finally gets to the optometrist, he tells her that she's legally blind and will have to turn over her driver's license!

There's a couple really interesting details in there. One, turning over your driver's license as you get older. That's something that an older donor might worry about.

Then the shock that this is happening to someone who's 40 years old. We know in advertising that people who are older like to think of themselves as a little bit younger, so they might actually see April in that story as a peer.

We just think that's a really going to be a great story that performs for their acquisition appeal. Which brings me to asking, “What kind of appeal is yours?”

Is it retention – most of your year-end appeals will be talking to people you know. They already love you, they love what you do, and you're just reminding them of the change that they make happen through your organization.

It's not what you're doing it's what they're doing, so it really should be a story that ends in a happy place. Donors want to know that you've done something positive with their money.

We all need those stories! We're hungry for those stories this year because we're surrounded by so much sadness.

An acquisition story tends to be a little more negative. If you think about those ASPCA commercials, they don't end in a happy place unless you give them $19 a month. So acquisition stories tend to be a little bit more sad, and that's just the science of how that storytelling works.

You’ve got to ask yourself, “What are we trying to do” and then “What is that ask going to be?” Are you asking people to give a one-time gift – that's often what we're doing at the end of the year.

As an aside, we're seeing a lot of people use their fall appeal to ask people to join their monthly giving list. Essentially, start giving a little amount every year to help sustain us through difficult times like we're seeing with COVID 19.

We're also seeing people use their fall appeal for planned giving. They'll take a segment of their appeal and look for people in their database they know are likely to be planned givers. That's often volunteers and people who've given for at least 5 years.

That’s appeal type. Now let’s look at story type. There's some research that says child stories do better than adult stories. In general, we're more sympathetic to stories about women than we tend to be about men.

And if you work in the animal welfare space, people generally like to see stories about dogs \over cats. Of course, there are exceptions. If you're building a cat nursery or you're doing a trap-neuter-return program – which is specifically cats – there is a segment of your population that is wild about helping cats. They are the undercats, as it were.

Being able to have that ability in your database to know what people actually respond to is really helpful, especially right now.

That doesn't mean that you can't write stories about adults. I know we have some folks that are with assisted living facilities on today. That doesn't mean that you can't write about some of those older people because they have amazing stories.

But you just have to be aware you may be able to tell their story through their child. For example, a daughter who has to make a heart-wrenching decision in her life and how that ends up making her father's life better. You could tell the story in that way and that might make it more accessible to a wider number of people.

So, let me read this appeal to you and tell me in the chat why you think it worked:

Where would you go?

If your spouse suddenly died. Then, just as you were healing from your loss, you found yourself alone in your doctor’s office and you heard him say that cruel word ... cancer.

Aisha, 67, turned to her daughter. After all, Aisha was an Army veteran and she’d find a way to come back stronger – she just needed a little time.

But when her daughter’s boyfriend threw her out – just days before Christmas last year – Aisha lost more than just a warm place to sleep.

She lost her hope.

Thanks to you, Aisha found a safe haven at St. Brianna’s Shelter.

We told this story this spring in the middle of COVID 19. What is it about this story that resonates with you? Tell me in the chat.

Yes Marie, we can all get overwhelmed and lose hope. Can you imagine you lose your spouse, then cancer, and then the people you depend on the most? You end up being turned out at Christmas? It's a lot and it's relatable, right? This could happen to anyone. They say a lot of people are just a paycheck away from being homeless.

Cruel word, cancer. Yes, that’s right. She has physical peril, cancer in the middle of COVID. She also has emotional peril that she suffered that wasn't her fault.

Marie, you're right. She's an Army veteran. In journalism school, they taught us not to be hoodwinked or fooled because we have a tendency to be sympathetic toward age, women, veterans, and people in authority. But as a fundraiser if there is a detail like that to pull out, you’ve got to find it. That detail was not in the original story that the organization gave me, but I started poking around a little bit to find that sympathetic detail.

How about this one? Sometimes we serve people who aren't very sympathetic. They've done something in life that was not the norm and society would normally judge them for that.

This next story is about someone who was a drug abuser and we debated should we actually do a story about someone who’d been on drugs? But it was such a great story that that we decided to tell it:

Showing up. That simple act can mean so much to a person who is hurting.

A person like John, who today dedicates his life to helping people recover from drug addiction at a transitional housing program that St. Brianna Food Bank serves.

But just a few years ago, it was John who needed help. He spent years struggling with addiction and he knew that if he didn’t get help soon – he wouldn’t be around much longer.

John made the brave decision to change his life.

What is it about this appeal that makes you sympathetic or makes you think positively about someone who has been a drug abuser for many years?

We have a lot of internal conversations at nonprofits about how do we write about people who aren't just children and dogs. How do we write about  people who maybe we serve and we care about, but they're not necessarily sympathetic on the surface. How do we humanize John? How do we make John someone that the donor wants to cheer for and say, “Just do it! John, you're amazing.”

That’s right. He changed his life. He made a decision on his own and the story goes on to say that he put all of his belongings in a shopping cart and pushed it down to the transitional living facility. So he took some action on his own behalf. John showed up.

If you've ever known anyone with a drug addiction, when you're their family member, you don't want to show up for them. That’s because over and over the same drama plays out and at some point you've got to distance yourself from it.

So that idea of showing up was powerful. Here's a human being and maybe his people showed up for him at first, but his drug addiction went on and on. But you know something? That donor showed up, just at his greatest moment of need. Now it's ... I’m teary even reading this story ...

And yes, now he’s giving back. Brianna loves the give back story anytime that we can find that angle. I know that she's crying on the other side of the screen right now.

Brianna: (laughs) Yes, I’m thinking about this story and that's one of the tests that Laura especially uses when we're communicating. She says, “I found that nugget, because now I’m finally tearing up.”

Your letter should evoke your feelings. If it doesn't evoke something in you, it’s unlikely to evoke something in the donor. You want to create that warm fuzziness that really touches the donor's heart.

Laura: In the chat, Brianne makes a makes a smart observation. That we live with who he is now – the person that we wanted him to be, that his family probably wanted him to be.

And then there's this little surprise. This is about rebirth. This is about a comeback kid. And not only did he come back for himself, he's coming back for other men just like him! So there are now thousands of people like John all over his city because you, the donor, made sure that there was food for him in his recovery center.

It's just an amazing story. So you can write about people who don't necessarily seem like the most sympathetic folks, but you've got to think, “what is it really about?

Before I sit down and write a client's story, I think about what is the one emotion that this story is about. What is the one point of tension that would happen in this person's life?

People with drug addiction are abandoned by their own people because it's just so frustrating to deal with someone with addiction. Even though you love them, at some point you've got to bless and release. But that donor didn't bless and release and they were there in a way that maybe his family couldn't be, so that was kind of the tension there.

I really sit and think about it and if I start bawling I know I’ve got an absolute winner.

Another interesting thing about this story is that it isn’t about the transitional housing program. This is about a food bank that made sure the housing program had food. Some of you have programs that have affiliates that actually do the work. This is an example of how you tell that kind of story.

Now, how do you write a story where the subject is not human? How would you write about trees? Do you have any ideas?

[Chat response] Imagine a world without trees.

Laura: Yes. What is it about trees that provokes emotions in us and what emotions do trees evoke?

Let's take a look. I thought about “what is the donors experience with trees?” This story happens to be in one of those beautiful little mountain towns that has had a lot of deforestation.

[Chat response] Peace.

Laura: Yes. Trees are about peace. Trees are about wonder. I decided trees were also about magic. I thought about the donor's experience of looking up in those trees and being surrounded by nature. Right? It's so peaceful. It's so restful, restorative. That's how they feel about trees.

So then I thought about “what is our first experience with trees?” And this is what I wrote:

As a kid, did you have a favorite tree?

Maybe you climbed to its highest branches. Or built a rickety treehouse in it with your friends. Maybe you read an amazing book in its cool shade.

One thing was certain … every time you visited that tree, it felt like magic!

That’s how 6-year-old Daisy feels about her favorite tree. Her red maple is one of the 500 trees that you helped us to give away this year to restore Asheville’s urban forest.

But you didn’t stop there! Thanks to you, Daisy learned to properly transport, plant, and care for her tree – so that it grows up big and strong beside her. 

As a kid, I had a favorite tree and the organization had a child who, funny enough, had a plant name as her first name. She is one of the kids who got one of these trees that are restoring the urban forest.

It's an adorable picture of her with her arms around her first tree and the nice thing is, when she gets to be my age that tree's going to be bigger and maybe her own kids will be under the shade of that tree.

So it is a love story, but it's a love story between a girl and her tree. And it really isn't just about the magic we feel as children or that peace we feel with trees.

Your English teacher didn't prepare you to write appeals

In school, we’re taught to write a logical, factual argument. We write essays – the 5-paragraph essay. In that we use lots of logic, very little emotion, and lots of credibility in terms of sources, the grammar that we use, and the important words that I learned to use when I got my master's degree. That is how we do things in school and this is what the structure looks like:

• Introduction

• Body paragraph 1

• Body paragraph 2

• Body paragraph 3

• Conclusion

We use an introduction. There might be a little emotion, but the introduction is really about making our main point. This is my thesis.

And I’m going to prove it with 3 paragraphs that are proof points that look at different details, facts, figures, and sources that are credible.

The conclusion is I proved it to you. So I’m going to prove something to you, I’m proving something to you, I just proved something to you.

There’s very little room for emotion and it's very different from what we do in a fundraising appeal. I often find when people write fundraising appeals they try to use an essay structure instead of a fundraising appeal structure.

You can see an example of how the Charlie story was originally positioned. There's a handout called Epic Storytelling and the front page is lots of essay and the focus story is buried on the back page. Take a look at that and you can see the essay structure doesn't work as well as flipping that around.

There are different ways to write fundraising stories, but I often find this is the structure that I’m using.

• Story at point of greatest emotion
  Donor thank you

• Story continues and resolves
  Soft ask 

• Writer relates story to larger problem, explains credible solution
  Hard ask, paired with story reference

• Writer makes logical appeal
  Hardest ask, paired with story reference

• P.S. – Writer reminds reader of story tension. Repeats ask.

I start with an emotional story and I look for the moment with the greatest emotion.

Think back to the Aisha story. She lost her husband and had cancer. That should be enough for any woman to go through, right? And now she's alone.

Then I thank the donor for everything that they've done. I resolve the focus story. I show a little bit of the conflict of the story, I talk about the middle, and then I resolve it. Then I make a soft ask of the donor.

So the first ask is a thank you. “Thanks to you, Aisha got the help she needed.” So you know it's going to end okay for her ... keep reading the story. The soft ask might be, “Because of you, women like Aisha have a place to go.”

The next thing I do is I relate the story that I’ve just told you to the larger problem. I explain why the organization has a credible solution to that problem. So Aisha is one of thousands of women, particularly women of color, who are facing homelessness right now.

And I talk about how the shelter is helping those women. They’ve been able to stay in a local hotel where they are safe and they're able to practice social distancing better.

This organization also works with other great partners, with other organizations in the area, so Aisha was able to take advantage of a veterans program that helped her get rent assistance. She could get into her own apartment, and that’s important because she had bladder cancer and she needed to have her own place.

At that point, I make a harder ask. I start asking, “Will you make a critical gift today for people like Aisha?”

So I’ve done lots of emotion, a section of credibility – about who your organization is, what is the scope of the problem. How what your organization is doing makes sense in the local context, why it’s good for your community – that's the ethos or the credibility part.

And then I finally get to the logic part. I get to the accountant part where I’m asking you to make a one-time gift of this amount which is going to achieve this. I’m asking you to give a monthly gift to not only solve these short-term problems, but to make sure that we're here the next time a woman like Aisha needs help.

Then don't forget you've got a P.S. The P.S. is often the first thing that the person reads and sometimes it's the only thing they read from you. It really is a short tease of what the story is going to be about and then how you, as the donor, make a difference when you donate.

As I mentioned, there are multiple asks in this piece. And here, this is another appeal about trees. You can see that there are actually 6 asks in the piece and they go throughout the letter. So don't be afraid to ask and don't wait until the bottom of the letter to ask.

But you want to vary those asks so they start out soft,  as “thank yous” and “because of you these things happen.” Then they get harder, “Will you make that critical gift today?

Complexity kills

I’ve had the good fortune to be able to travel all over the world teaching communications and  marketing to non-profits. And I know not to bring a lot of stuff. Seasoned travelers pack light.

When COVID hit, I was supposed to take my mother and my 12-year-old nephew – who's a little naughty – to Hawaii. This was the packing list that I gave my sister-in-law for my nephew. This is all I asked him to take for a 2-week trip because we were going to do laundry in the middle and I didn't want him having to schlep too many things on those little tiny puddle jumper planes between islands.

It’s a lot like writing. The more that you try to pack into your story or into your appeal, the less impactful it becomes. One of the great writer axioms is, “Show, don't tell. If you find yourself writing more than 2 sentences about anything, you're starting to tell more than you're showing.

You want people to feel. You want people to imagine themselves in the story. You don't want to be so prescriptive in your description about all of your programs or every step that you've taken during COVID that you lose people. Or every step that they have in terms of tax deductions and tax credits.

You'll lose people. You'll lose their interest.  Right now, they say that people have a 7-second attention span – about that of a goldfish. So you really want to keep things vivid, emotional, and draw people in. Don’t get too bogged down with dragging lots of baggage around and having to explain things.

This is a skill, so let's talk about how you would practice this, “showing, not telling.” Not getting so complex that people don't understand the picture you're painting, right? They don't need to see every little dot that you've painted and every brush stroke. That's for your newsletter, not for a fundraising appeal where the main point is to make money.

So in the chat, tell me what would you do if someone said, “We need to mention all of our programs in our fundraising appeal” or “We need to use our fundraising appeal as a year-end news update and tell donors everything that we've done this year.” How would you respond?

These are things that I got told all the time at non-profits. Sometimes it comes from boards or executive directors, if they’re not writing appeals themselves. Maybe we've missed a newsletter or we've missed a few appeals because we've been so busy. So we're trying to have this appeal be the “one ring to rule them all.” We want this to be a multi-purpose piece instead of a money-making piece to sustain our organization.

What is the diplomatic way to tell people, “We're not going to do that?”

[Chat Response] Marie: Less is more because it is clearer.

Laura: Yes, I think especially in the Western context we have a preference for minimalism in design and that something can be more beautiful if there is less of it. So maybe giving people a metaphor and thinking about how good they feel when they see Crate & Barrel or IKEA, right? Because it's not super fluffy, Louise XVI furniture. It's clear, straightforward, and your appeal is about emotion and asking for money.

Anjali has a great suggestion: Show them samples of successful appeals with one program, one story.

Yes, if they want to represent all their programs that's great for a newsletter. You might be able to do it in a series of 3-4 email appeals. But your print appeal has one great story, one great emotion, and one great ask based on your donor's individual giving history.

Brianna: Something that I always go back to is, “What is the goal of this particular piece?” You've got the larger communications with your donors to consider. Not every piece is an ask, every single time. You use the cadence: ask, thank, report, and repeat.

So can we use that particular story or program in another piece like Laura said? But you know the goal of this appeal is to make $10,000. Okay, then this is the way that we're going to do it. This is the scientific way to pull that off.

Different types of print pieces or communications have different goals, right? Your newsletter is not a hard ask. It's reporting and thanking people and that's a really great piece.

Laura: With an ask!

Brianna: Yes, you always ask, right? But it's a softer ask.

Laura: So the person who's probably suggesting that you pack all of these things into your appeal probably doesn't actually know much about response rates. You may know industry benchmarks, right?

A printed, year-end appeal generally has somewhere between, on average, a 5-6 percent response rate right. It can be much higher if your donor data is well maintained.

We know email has a 0.06 percent response rate. So less than a printed appeal. It doesn't cost you anything, but it is less effective in bringing in money. That's why I’ve got to send so many emails versus sending one printed appeal.

Then we know that social media advertising generally loses about 3 cents for every dollar you invest in it. But it doesn't cost you anything to just post on Facebook, although we know that less than one percent of the people that we have as friends on Facebook actually see our posts.

But the people who are asking you to do this probably don't know that. You can say, “Hey, we'll dedicate an entire week to that program on social media. That might be a good compromise.

We are almost wrapping up here, so remember a good appeal needs to:

• Connect emotionally to donors

• Tell a complete story

• Show transformation, not just transaction

• Be grateful

• Use a repeated ask for support to do even more good

• Make the donor the hero of the story, not your organization

Got better things to do? Abeja can help

We've got a few weeks here until fall appeals, a couple months to your Thanksgiving appeal and then maybe about 3-4 months to holiday. So, if along the way, you need help with your storytelling – whether it's for fundraising appeals or things like newsletters or emails – definitely shoot us a note.

Putting out donation letters can be really time consuming to do in-house. Brianna and I have been part of the “stuff, lick and stamp crew” in the past. We’ve been in the, “Hey, wait! Why do we have one appeal left over?” situation at nonprofits.

If you don't want to do that this year and you want to leave the asking to us, we would be happy to write your appeal, do all of the data, to make sure that donors get personalized asks that fit the way that they want to give, do all of your list prep to make sure you don't have duplicates, and then make sure you print and mail at the most efficient cost both in time and money to you.

Of course, we have non-profit pricing because we love you and want you to make more money this year to make more change happen in our world. We all need that this year!

Brianna: Thank you, Laura, for an inspiring session. I always learn something new and you know we're yin and yang. I’m data and you know bigger picture stuff and Laura gets into the letters.

If you want to stay and ask questions, we'll keep the session open for a few more minutes. We're going to send you the materials via email and, in a few days, we'll have the recorded session up and share that with you, too.

Thank you so much for your time everyone and go have a successful Giving Season!

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