Whether you’re hosting an in-person, virtual, or hybrid event, your nonprofit’s fundraising events rely on audience engagement to succeed. Your engagement approach likely focuses on participants—after all, you’ll only hit your fundraising goal if they register for the event and have a good time! However, you also need to consider your volunteers and sponsors since they make your event possible in the first place.
One strategy you can use to engage all of these audiences is storytelling. Stories allow your supporters to connect emotionally with your nonprofit and picture everything that will be possible through your event. This includes bringing your community together, creating a positive experience, and—most importantly—furthering your organization’s mission.
In this guide, we’ll review how to tell nonprofit stories that showcase social impact before discussing ways to incorporate storytelling into your events. Let’s dive in!
Fundamentals of Nonprofit Storytelling
Nonprofit storytelling overlaps somewhat with the fictional stories you’re likely familiar with (novels, movies, TV shows, etc.). However, there are also some notable differences because you’re telling true stories about real people, and instead of entertaining readers, your purpose is to inspire support for your mission.
Include the following elements in all of your nonprofit’s stories:
- A compelling protagonist. If you choose someone your organization serves as the main character, it allows audiences to put a face to your work, making these stories particularly moving. You may also focus on supporters in some stories since they’re the most relatable main characters to most audiences, but these stories are most resonant when you use first-person testimonials in them.
- A complete plot. Your story should have a beginning, middle, and end so your audience can follow it easily. Start by explaining a problem the main character faced, show how your organization stepped in to help them solve the problem, and end on a joyful or hopeful note.
- A call to action. After you tell a story, clarify the next steps for your audience—such as registering for your event, volunteering, or staying involved afterward—and share tools and resources to make it easy for them to take action.
Depending on the storytelling format you choose, relevant images and concrete data can ground your stories in reality and tie them to your mission more effectively. Just remember to be truthful and transparent when using statistics, and always get consent from subjects before using their photos or names in your communications.
Telling Stories for Nonprofit Events
Every stage of planning and executing an event holds opportunities for your nonprofit to incorporate storytelling. Let’s break down these possibilities based on whether you tell each story before, during, or after the event.
Before
Since registration is likely one of your main priorities before your events, the main place to tell stories is in your marketing content. Get supporters excited about attending your event and giving to your cause with stories about what previous events have accomplished and your mission-related plans for the near future that you’ll use the funds from this event to achieve.
Infuse storytelling into all of your event marketing materials, including:
- Your website. According to social impact agency Loop, “A great nonprofit website should inspire visitors and guide them towards the various actions they can take.” Create a webpage for each event you host, draw visitors in with a story, explain key logistical details, and link to your registration form. Using event software like EventUp Planner ensures that designing and maintaining your event website is hassle-free.
- Social media. Add a relevant story to your Facebook Event description, and alternate primarily informational and storytelling-based posts across all platforms in the lead-up to your event. Also, if your event includes a peer-to-peer component, encourage participants to share their own stories about their involvement with your nonprofit on their individual fundraising pages.
- Email and direct mail. Stories are also great attention grabbers for these more personalized event invitations sent to individual supporters. Keep in mind that people are more likely to read longer content on paper than on a screen, so email stories should be concise, while those in direct mail can be more expansive.
Don’t forget about your sponsor and volunteer audiences in your pre-event storytelling strategy! Requests for event volunteer signups are another great place to use the email and direct mail techniques above. Plus, Winspire recommends including stories about your nonprofit’s impact in letters to potential event sponsors to demonstrate your credibility—a key factor for many businesses in deciding how to direct their corporate social responsibility efforts.
During
Storytelling during events keeps participants engaged and excited to support your mission. This holds true whether they’re in the room with you or attending virtually, and no matter if they’re enjoying a fancy gala dinner or challenging themselves to keep moving for twelve straight hours at a dance marathon.
Consider telling stories in:
- Event kick-off and wrap-up speeches by your nonprofit’s leaders, board members, sponsors, or grateful recipients of your services.
- Educational and breakout sessions during events like conferences, webinars, or panel discussions.
- Attendee information packets, which should include an “About the Organization” page to keep your event’s purpose top of mind throughout it.
If you have guest speakers or outside professionals helping you with any of these event components, ensure everyone is on the same page about aligning all stories with your nonprofit branding guidelines and the aforementioned best practices for nonprofit storytelling.
After
Once your event ends, keep your audiences up-to-date on its impact by sharing stories about what you’ve been able to accomplish. If you have relevant stories ready to go within 48 hours of your event, you can also include them in your thank-you messages (since time is of the essence when expressing gratitude!).
Choose different impact stories for each audience based on what resonates with them—here are some ideas:
- Participants will most want to know how their fundraising dollars allowed you to serve your community, whether you tell them about the new cats your animal shelter took in after expanding its facility or share testimonials from the new beach cleanup efforts your environmental organization launched.
- Sponsors may also appreciate stories about the event’s impact on those you serve. But if you hear from a participant about how much they enjoyed your catered meal or how excited they were about winning a donated auction item, you could share those stories with the businesses that contributed those goods or services to pass along their gratitude.
- Volunteers, in a similar vein to sponsors, might like to receive a combination of cause-related stories and quotes from participants or staff members about how particular volunteers helped them resolve issues during the event so they know you value their contributions of time.
Sending an initial thank-you followed by additional updates with more in-depth stories like this keeps your organization top of mind for all of these audiences. Then, the next time you’re looking for donors, sponsors, or volunteers for any initiative, you can reach back out to everyone who made your event possible, and they’ll be more likely to say yes!
As you incorporate storytelling into your nonprofit’s events in these different ways, track information like conversion rates for your marketing materials and post-event survey responses that mention stories. This way, you’ll have a reference for what storytelling strategies worked and which areas could be improved when you plan future events.
Learn more about how event planning software can help you incorporate your brand story into your event from start to finish by booking a time to talk to the EventUp Planner team.