Empowering Your Board to Be Your Storytellers
Creating a meaningful storytelling culture within your organization will set you apart from other nonprofits. While bombarding your audience with data can be overwhelming and provide little direction, effective stories can incite curiosity, inform, and motivate people to further consider and engage with your mission. Storytelling is an essential tool for building community and raising the funds necessary to support your work.
But having a strong storytelling culture is about more than just you and your staff—your stakeholders need to be empowered to talk about the organization’s mission. Setting up those stakeholders to be successful storytellers on your behalf will only help you amplify the work that you do. Board members are an integral part of cultivating the organization’s identity and should be top among your stakeholders to be empowered to tell the organization’s story.
Let’s review 4 key tips for empowering your board members to be storytellers on behalf of your organization:
Create a culture of storytelling
Help board members identify their personal story
Provide memorable talking points
Put board members in the right place, at the right time
CREATE A CULTURE OF STORYTELLING
Empowering your board to be your storytellers means establishing the organization’s culture around storytelling. If storytelling is not at the forefront of the work being done, and easy place to start is by incorporating the conversation into board meetings. Create space for staff members to tell stories to the board, and for board members to practice telling their own stories about the organization and its mission. Keep in mind that there is vulnerability associated with storytelling, so the act itself fosters deeper connections between all of us.
Once the space for stories has been created, start taking active steps to encourage your team and board members to develop and hone their storytelling skills. Provide resources such as articles, books, or even helpful videos that everyone can learn from and then create opportunities for people to practice. Highlighting effective stories and discussing new opportunities for storytelling familiarizes everyone with the concepts.
Once you’ve embraced more traditional modes of storytelling as part of the culture, you can take the leap to think about it in even bigger terms. Storytelling comes in many forms, verbal and written of course, but let’s not forget other kinds of stories that your board members might take part in creating, such as photos, designs, or budgets (yes, even your budget tells a story about your organization!). An important part of building a strong culture of storytelling is thinking about how everything you do tells the story of your mission, vision, values, and actions.
HELP BOARD MEMBERS IDENTIFY THEIR PERSONAL STORY
One important element of a compelling story is authenticity. To ensure your board member is telling a story about your organization that feels authentic, you need to help them have personal ownership over it. What’s more, identifying each board member’s personal connection to the organization will help them be more comfortable when having these conversations with their network.
Here are some prompts you can use in conversation with your board member to help them identify their personal story about your organization:
Who or what introduced you to this organization? Perhaps your board member was moved seeing one of your programs in action, intrigued reading about your work in the local paper, or had the time of their life at one of your events. The memory of the moment that first sparked this person’s interest, or even passion, for the organization can be very powerful both for the board member, and the person who is hearing their story. These memories can be deeply emotional and often relate directly to your mission.
What makes you proud of this nonprofit? Pride can be a very helpful emotion to call on, because it is important for your board member to be emotionally engaged as they convey the significance of your mission. Ask them to think about what makes them want to brag about your organization to their family and friends. Whether it be a personal or organizational achievement, this is a great opportunity to tie the board member’s story back to the organization’s meaningful work.
What is something that most people do not know about this nonprofit? Consider what your board member might know as an insider, that the general public might not yet be aware of. These are sometimes the most interesting or aspects of your programs. Are there any behind-the-scenes moments that may not typically be highlighted? Prompting your board member to offer personal anecdotes as part of their storytelling has the potential to really humanize your organization.
What is your connection with the work being done? Now that your board member is so deeply engaged with the organization, tap into what continues to inspire and motivate them, at board meetings and otherwise. Ask them to reflect on their work with the organization, and how that relationship has evolved over time. Acknowledge that it is normal to face failures or challenges, and that the story might not have always been simple. In being authentic, your board member’s stories might also be a little complicated, but that’s okay as long as they demonstrate perseverance from the lessons learned along the way.
And finally, which stories resonate with you, in general? Urge your board members to reflect on a time that a story they heard really resonated with them. These stories might be from any nonprofit organization. Does any recent email campaign or social media post come to mind? This is a great way to get your board member’s wheels turning and draw inspiration from what is already out there to get an idea of what works.
The key to coaching your board members to be great storytellers is to work with their natural tendency to relate experiences through stories of all kinds, and to leverage the pleasure others get when talking about things from their perspective.
PROVIDE MEMORABLE TALKING POINTS
Elements of a good story include: a character which creates a focus on a specific individual, conflict that a resonates with someone to elicit a response, and motivation for an audience to make a change for the better.
By highlighting your Board Member’s personal story, you have already helped them with that first key element: an individual character. Now, you still need to provide them with the tools to describe the conflict your organization faces and motivate a listener to respond.
You can do that by creating clear and memorable talking points by taking the following steps:
Start on a note that is personal and vivid. Have your board member introduce themselves and their relationship to the work of the organization. Use elements of the personal story you helped your board member create to set them up as open and authentic.
Present a challenge or conflict. This is the statement of need or case statement that you need your board member to make. It can be simple and straight forward, perhaps stating that you are trying to build a new building to better serve your audience. Alternatively, it could be serious and more involved, maybe describing how your organization has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless, you need to give your board member the language to help them appropriately and accurately describe the challenge or conflict your organization faces, and the reason you need members of your community to take action.
Offer a takeaway. Make sure your board member has a task to give their audience. Whether you want listeners to investigate the issues further, take a specific action (like contact an elected representative), or make a donation, your board member needs the language to give that direction. This might even go so far as to include a specific set of instructions or a website to visit. Whatever it is, make sure that information is in the talking points!
You can also coach board members with the following helpful tips:
Keep in mind what connects you to your audience. Think of any common ground you may share, whether it be professional background, physical location, or common interest in helping others.
Actively listen to your audience. Remember that we are all involved in the mission of the organization because there is progress to be made. It is important to acknowledge the health and wellbeing of constituents served by the organization.
Relate to your audience. Be yourself and demonstrate how you relate to the cause with respect to the population served. It is important to be conscious of the ways to tell stories and to promote the well-being of others in our work in stories we tell. Board members are an integral part of this community building process.
PUT BOARD MEMBERS IN THE RIGHT PLACE, AT THE RIGHT TIME
So how do you get the right message to the right person, and at the right time and place?
Donors and constituents expect the information you share to be interesting and compelling. They also expect transparency and a bit of personality. They want to know that their gift made an impact, and they like to know how. This is where heartfelt stories come in.
So, you want to help prepare board members for consistent storytelling in various settings. The intention will almost always be the same, to offer a first-hand insight of the organization from the board member perspective. However, the audience will always be different. There are the impromptu situations where board members may be inspired to tell their stories at their place of work, at gatherings with friends and family, or at other nonprofit events. These settings offer an opportunity for a more conversational storytelling experience. You can also create a structured opportunity for board members to recount their story through written or spoken words that serve as deliverables.
Some board members will be ready and willing to put their storytelling skills to work cultivating new individual and institutional funders. In those cases, create a space for your board members to practice! The more often stories are shared, the easier it gets to deliver them and think of ideas. Challenge your board members to tell five new people an iteration of their story. To further refine the skill, ask them to be open to feedback and remember any questions that get asked.
For those not comfortable with outright cultivation of their network, create a different opportunity to participate in storytelling. Consider adding thank you calls or handwritten notes as a board role. It is often a great experience for both parties when a board member calls just to say thank you and ask about the donor’s interest. Provide a few names and addresses with a short script as a monthly responsibility. Another option is pre-recording the story to distribute. A collection of board members interviewed individually or as a group discussion can provide a helpful asset among your communications and fundraising tools.
Representation matters. Having variety in your board to highlight diversity of perspectives will appeal to a greater audience. Even more than that, sharing the board member perspective is an underutilized tool. Making the story unique to their experience will elicit further consideration from the audience who is engaged with your trustworthy nonprofit.
Great storytelling is the best way to capture the attention, as well as the hearts and minds, of your supporters. Telling empowering stories is critical to the long-term goals of changing public opinion and policy around the issues nonprofits address. By empowering your board members to tell excellent stories on behalf of your organization, you can improve connections with donors and empower your community to better support your mission and the people you serve.