Without our stories, we are lost - and we are forgotten
- Wed, September 22 2010
- Filed under: Nonprofit leadership
That’s right: without our stories, we are lost. And we are forgotten.
It’s not a newsflash that we are forgotten without stories. As I’ve said many times, a good story is the one thing that sticks with an audience. It is guaranteed to be remembered and to motivate supporters. That’s not as true with any other form of information. Unfortunately, we continue to struggle mightly in our sector to tell good stories. Most nonprofits don’t have a single story on their home page. Appeals tend to feature a litany of statistics rather than a human story that grips a supporter’s attention.
Why?
Maybe we are so used to seeing our work we take our stories for granted and don’t recognize them as interesting anymore. Or maybe we are too far from our own front lines and enveloped in strategy to know what is happening to real people. Or maybe we think stories are too simplified or individualized to capture the grand scheme of what we’re trying to accomplish as an organization.
To be effective communicators, we have to fix this.
But there’s another reason to tell stories: They aren’t just good marketing, they’re good self-reflection. My favorite quote about life and stories is this one:
Life is understood backward, but it must be lived forward [Søren Kierkegaard]
When we look back on our own stories, we see patterns and meaning that weren’t there in the moment we experienced them. Sometimes things don’t make sense or teach us anything until we have some temporal distance. Suddenly, a random series of events becomes a narrative with a clear shape and significance. We can make sense of our lives - and our work - in the story that we can see in retrospect.
Let’s go out and collect stories about all of our work. This is not just about getting the attention of others - it’s about understanding ourselves.
Comments
Thanks for the great reminder of the power of stories. It reminds me of Dubai, whose culture and business relies on stories, and Tanzania, whose people are full of short proverbs to make their points.
Perhaps one of the greatest powers of stories is its versatility; it can be done in interpersonal, intrapersonal, group, mass, and electronic communication - generally with the same power.
Thanks again!
Totally agree. Stories are ubiquitous, technology agnostic and the only things that actually change minds.
One of my new favorites—the It Gets Better project—popped up yesterday. I dissected it for marketers and nonprofit folks here: http://wp.me/pOeuv-3X.
Great work, Katya!
Katya,
Stories cannot be over emphasized. When I work with a fundraising client, I teach the CEO that he or she must tell stories, because it’s the only way volunteers and donors will understand what what the nonprofit does. I worked with one CEO and I insisted he tell a story at every campaign steering committee meeting. At first, he’d forget. But one day he told a story and later that afternoon, one of the people at the steering committee meeting called him to say she wanted to give a $10,000 gift to meet the need of a specific person that he had described that morning in a story. He never forgo to tell a story after that.
Rich, what a GREAT story about stories! I love it!
Totally agree. Stories are amazing!!
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I teach business ethics and business law. I tell my students that there are two basic mediums of understanding. The first is the use of facts coupled with logic. The second is stories. Facts and logic are only very recent in world history and western civilization has really not grasped the concept with any thoroughness (look at the horoscope in the paper). But stories have been the principal medium of learning for thousands of years. So, we learn facts and tell stories. I enjoyed your entry on the blog. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
James Pilant
Writing our success into stories will help us to treasure our success as a story. Sharing it with ours will help others to take inspiration from it and at the same time it will give us the needed push when we are surrounded by challenges.
Interesting views! I thought the point about stories being good self-reflection is brilliant.
A few years into our marriage Sarah and I began to have a lot of conflicts. Based on a book by John Gottmann, we developed a practice of each sharing how we perceived and felt about the conflicting situation.
Then we took turns telling a story where we perceived a situation the same way and felt the same way. We always drew the stories from relationships other than our own.
The stories helped in three ways. One, it forced us to listen carefully to see how the other perceived and felt. Second, the story-telling proved to be a powerful way to connect with the others perceptions and feelings. Three, when you heard the others persons story, you experienced an amazing feeling of being understood.
It was a very challenging process. At first we did it in writing to keep from being derailed. But it proved to be very helpful in that stage of our marriage.
I love stories, because as James Pliant indicated in his comment the alternative is a combination of facts and logic. Facts and logic divided Sarah and me. Stories brought us together.
This is such an important concept. Thank you for the reminder.
But, what are some specific ways in which non-profits can share success stories with stakeholders?