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Nonprofit storytelling is an essential nonprofit marketing strategy that helps your organization attract new supporters and build relationships with existing ones. When backed by the right technology, your nonprofit’s stories can reach wider audiences and deepen donor engagement in ways that traditional tools alone can’t.
However, with so many new technologies emerging, it’s difficult to know the best way to integrate these platforms into your marketing strategy. To help your nonprofit cultivate stronger relationships with more donors, we will share tips to hone your digital storytelling strategy.
1. Create a compelling story.
While technology can enhance your story, the story you tell must still be strong enough to capture donors’ attention. An effective nonprofit story accomplishes these basic goals:
- Articulates your nonprofit’s brand. Like all external messages from your nonprofit, any stories you share should align with your overall brand. At a minimum, anyone who reads your story should understand what your nonprofit’s mission is and why it matters.
- Creates a connection with its audience. Stories are powerful marketing tools because they can establish emotional connections. Rather than understanding on a theoretical level that your nonprofit’s mission matters, stories help supporters sympathize with individuals impacted by your cause. To foster this emotional connection, share specific details that help supporters visualize and identify the protagonists in your stories.
- Issues a call to action. After reading your story, supporters should feel compelled to take action. Channel these new emotional connections by providing your audience with immediate next steps. For example, you might ask supporters to donate, volunteer, or advocate for your cause by sharing your story with others.
Start by writing out your story in full. This text can be shared with supporters via email, mailed letters, and published on your website.
However, to fully utilize your technology, create versions of your story for other channels and platforms to boost visibility. For example, you might turn your story into a script for volunteers to use on phone calls, or create a one-sentence version to share via SMS.
2. Develop a social media presence.
When it comes to reaching new supporters, social media is the go-to channel for most nonprofits. In particular, a compelling or well-timed story can go viral or at least be shared by dedicated supporters, promoting your cause to their networks.
To make the most of these channels, your nonprofit should develop its social media presence by:
- Keeping your audience in mind: While social media is often associated with younger audiences, older supporters still engage with causes they care about online. However, rather than using TikTok or Instagram, they might be on Facebook.
- Using compelling graphics: To stand out on social media, visuals like photographs and videos are essential for grabbing attention and enhancing your stories. For example, instead of presenting your story via text, you might create a video or share a series of images that convey that same story.
- Making it easy to engage: Incentive interactions on social media by responding to comments, encouraging people to share your posts with their followers, and adding social media sharing buttons to story content posted on your website.
There are numerous social media platforms, and while each can put you in touch with new supporters, you don’t need to post on every single one. Instead, prioritize quality over quantity by choosing a few high-value platforms to create active profiles on. Aim to post content at least once a week to signal to followers that your organization is active.
3. Use digital communications.
Outside social media, other digital channels, such as email and text messaging, can help you share your story with your audience.
For your email marketing, follow these best practices:
- Include an engaging subject line; it directly impacts your email open rate. Keep your subject lines between 9 and 60 characters, and use intriguing questions, facts, and story openers to entice recipients to read on. For example, an animal shelter might use this subject line for a story about an animal rescue: “[Pet name] and her puppies are safe and sound.”
- Write interesting preview text: Preview text is a snippet from your email copy that recipients see in their inbox, and it should be just as intriguing as your subject line. Consider how your subject line and preview text can complement each other, such as the subject line teasing your story and the preview text providing a compelling detail.
- Issue a single call to action; multiple calls to action can overwhelm supporters and lead to no action. Maximize the likelihood that supporters will focus on a single call to action.
For text messages, your nonprofit should follow these best practices:
- Keep it short and to the point: Your supporters are bombarded with notifications every day. Increase the chances your supporters read your text messages in full by getting to your point quickly. For storytelling, this might mean providing a few intriguing details and linking out to the rest of your story, or even telling your story in just one or two sentences.
- Use conversational language: Compared with email, text messages feel casual. Use friendly and conversational language to engage your recipients. Consider adding images, GIFs, and even emojis to grab attention and set a friendly tone.
- Make it easy to donate: If you’re running a text-to-give campaign, make it as simple as possible. Contributions made via text tend to be impulse-driven, so reducing the number of steps supporters must take increases the likelihood they will complete their gift.
Connecting with your audience digitally is faster and more effective than printed materials. The more familiar your supporters are with your core story, the better.
4. Create online ads.
Online ads can put you in contact with brand new audiences. However, you may doubt your nonprofit’s ability to pay for digital ads, especially on popular platforms. Fortunately, several websites offer additional support for nonprofits.
For instance, the Google Ad Grant provides nonprofits with $10,000 in ad credits every month to purchase ad space on Google’s search results pages. All nonprofits have to do is apply for the grant and maintain compliance with its rules once they have it.
Through Google ads, if a potential supporter searches for a phrase related to your nonprofit, your ad may show up at the top of the results page. For example, a wildlife organization might target the keyword “tree planting volunteering” and use geo-targeting tools to reach local audiences.
When it comes to storytelling, ads offer limited space, but you can convey your nonprofit’s story in the 160-character meta description. Include an interesting fact, tease the dramatic beginning to a story, or emphasize how the supporter has the potential to be the hero of the story.
Platforms like Google also offer analytics tools that let you assess which meta descriptions and page titles are attracting attention. Follow click-through rates to see which ads resonate with your supporters and which should be reworked.
Stories put a human face on your nonprofit, fostering emotional connections with your cause. When backed by technology and data, you can create a structured process for sharing these heartfelt stories with as many supporters as possible, helping you inspire thousands to donate to your cause.
FAQ
What is nonprofit storytelling?
For nonprofits, storytelling is the act of conveying their mission and persuading donors to take action by sharing a relevant narrative. This story might be about the nonprofit’s founding, its target issue, or its impact.
How can technology help with nonprofit storytelling?
Technology enables nonprofits to convey their stories to a wider audience. For example, a nonprofit might disperse its story across its website and multiple social media platforms. Additionally, technology helps nonprofits tell stories in new ways, such as through multimedia elements like video.
What technology do nonprofits need for storytelling?
While nonprofits can engage in storytelling with almost any level of technological backing, tools like a user-friendly CMS and communication platforms, such as phonebanking software and an email management solution, can significantly aid this marketing strategy.
Author: Carl Diesing, Managing Director, DNL Omnimedia
Carl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.
