Any nonprofit professional knows the challenges that come with engaging their audience. Whether you’re trying to drum up support or simply raise awareness, capturing someone’s attention can turn out to be quite difficult.

People typically only pay attention to an idea when it means something to them. Delivering information can help them think differently about the idea, but until they actually care about it themselves, that knowledge might fall flat.

That’s where storytelling comes in.

Stories make abstract things concrete. They help make the communicated idea real to the audience so they can imagine the problem or situation themselves. Raw numbers and statistics often remain abstract, making it harder for the listener to identify with the problem themselves. Stories put a face to numbers and compel people to respond.

Below, we’ll look at 4 ways nonprofits can harness the power of storytelling and share examples that highlight just how effective it can be.

Communicate Your Mission and Inspire Viewers

Stories can have a massive effect on a nonprofit’s ability to communicate their mission and inspire others to get on board. They give the audience a chance to see the mission play out rather than just hear it articulated.

Take a look at this video from Charity: Water, an organization that wants to “help bring clean and safe water to every person on the planet.”

The video shows how a lack of accessible clean water stopped a woman, Honorine, from fulfilling her dream and made her sick. It communicated the problem Charity: Water seeks to solve, but it also put a real face and a name behind it, sparking compassion in the viewer. They feel for Honorine and therefore start to resonate with the organization’s mission. In a sense, it becomes personal because they have a clear picture of what’s at stake.

This kind of storytelling can raise awareness of the issues your organization addresses, and it can help people start to care about that issue themselves.

Share Data and Statistics

Storytelling and data don’t have to be enemies. In fact, having the statistics to back up the story can lead to even bigger impacts.

Consider this promo from Feeding America, one of the largest nonprofits in the U.S. dedicated to ending world hunger.

Like the Charity: Water video, this campaign focuses on a clear, specific situation. Instead of an individual, however, there are two main characters–a young boy and his single mother. Viewers get an inside look into how hunger affects a small family.

The boy is distracted at school. He has less energy than the other kids. The mother is constantly thinking about how to provide food for her and her son at work, going as far as taking wasted bagels from a dumpster at the end of the day. All of this communicates the need Feeding America wants to highlight, and it prepares the way for the data driven voiceover at the latter part of the video.

The voice speaks about how “millions of working American families and their children” hide their struggle with hunger. He talks about waste, mentioning “over 17 billion pounds” each year. He lists statistics, but these statistics mean more after seeing the story of the little boy and his mother. It is as if the numbers show that the two characters are not alone. Many families just like them exist throughout the nation. The numbers help viewers know more, but the story of the family helps them care. It brings the data closer to the heart.

Raise Support Through Open-ended Storytelling

For 25 years, Steven Screen has helped nonprofits across the country tell better stories to raise financial support. He has pointed out that the organization’s story isn’t the only one at play. Donors have stories, too.

“Most donors are telling themselves a story about their life and their giving and their philanthropy,” he says. Most of the time, these stories focus on the donor helping people or organizations who need help.

Nonprofits that understand the donor story can use it to shape the way they fundraise. Screen suggests telling open-ended stories so the donor sees how they can step in and help provide a strong conclusion, effectively filling in their own story in the process.

What does this actually look like? Screen provides a few tips:

1. Narrow your focus. You don’t have to talk about all your programs and all you do. “Instead,” Screen says, “talk about some small identifiable part that takes a certain amount of time that’s happening now.”

2. Show the need for today. It can feel intimidating to ask for help with an ongoing project instead of showcasing all the good your organization has done before. However, Screen explains that to the donor, telling a completed story can make it sound like their help isn’t needed. When nonprofits are vulnerable and can articulate a sense of urgency, the donor can better see how their support will make a real difference right away.

3. Tell the complete story when you report back. The beauty of telling an incomplete story is that it gives the donor a chance to shape the ending. It’s not supposed to stay open-ended forever. Screen talks about three stages of fundraising: asking, thanking, and reporting. The story is only incomplete in the asking stage. When you report back to the donor, you show how their contribution helped create a nice ending, which may encourage them to offer more support later on.

One of clearest examples of incomplete storytelling Screen talks about is disaster response. When the story gets told, it isn’t complete yet. No one knows how effective the relief efforts will be. In fact, the incomplete story shows that success will only come if the donor helps, which is what they want their own story to be.

Utilize Various Media to Tell Your Stories

Stories don’t have to take place only in live-action video format. This video from Call and Response uses animation to communicate harsh working conditions of people who provide goods for many consumers.

The creators pack the video with data, but the visualizations engage the viewer in multiple ways. We see images to associate the data with. We hear the numbers read out loud. It plays to a variety of senses, tells a compelling story, and then challenges viewers to act.

Written articles or blogs can be another way to utilize nonprofit storytelling. Charity:Water wrote a great piece about how the water crisis has particular effects on women in villages. They even repurposed the video about Honorine. Here’s one section that tells a compelling story about how collecting water steals time away from women:

“We’ve met young girls who walk in the 115ºF (46ºC) heat of the Sahel Desert to collect water from 1,000-year-old holes. We’ve met women in Ethiopia who walk to the river before sunrise and don’t get back until after lunch. We’ve even met mothers in Mali who sometimes sleep next to an open water source so they can be first in line when the water refills the next morning.

That time adds up. Worldwide, women and girls spend an estimated 200 million hours every single day collecting water.

This burden robs women and girls of time to learn, time to be a kid, time to earn an income, time to rest, and time spent with family. For hundreds of millions of people, being born female means life revolves around water collection. Everything else comes second.”

The data is sandwiched between two compelling stories. The first one tells how women sacrifice their time and energy to get water. The second shows that the problem is greater than time being taken away. The work of retrieving water makes education, joy, jobs, rest, and family time less likely for these women.

Nonprofits can use videos, animations, photographs, infographics, blogs, podcasts, or any other medium to reach their audience and tell compelling stories. Those that have the resources may even consider investing in multiple channels to see which have the greatest effect. If there is one thing that we've learned in our INSPIRE process, it's that nonprofits need to tell their story in written and visual forms.

Final Thoughts

People are naturally storytelling creatures. We use stories to make abstract ideas concrete and to help us imagine situations more fully. Nonprofits can use stories to inspire people with their mission, communicate important data, and raise money, and following these 4 tips will give you a great place to get started.