Tracking Success in Nonprofits: It’s in the Eye of the Beholder

© fontriel - Fotolia — © fontriel – Fotolia

Success in the nonprofit sector is often hard to quantify. Carolyn Egeberg, vice president of strategy and communication at Minnesota Philanthropy Partners, a regional community foundation in St. Paul, identifies several reasons for this. First, and perhaps most readily apparent, is that outputs are measured differently than they are in business. “It’s easier to measure success in the for-profit sector. You make something and sell it,” she explains. “In the nonprofit sector, the value is highly individualized.”

While the benefits provided by nonprofits are no less tangible than those provided by for-profit businesses, they tend to be shared among a more diffusely defined group and can require more time to manifest.

Another difference is that while for-profit businesses typically share a single measure of success—profit—nonprofit measures vary. For example, one nonprofit that Egeberg worked for provided a Web-based communications platform to medical patients. Success measures there were highly data-driven and tracked in real time using online dashboards. Egeberg’s next nonprofit was a science museum. Although its mission was STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education, the leadership focused on numbers, such as visitors per day, ticket sales and event attendance, because they were much easier to measure.

A third key difference between nonprofit and for-profit measures of success concerns the expectations of people who invest in them. “Donors talk about impact, but I’m not convinced that they want us to spend the money it takes to do that,” Egeberg says. Why? Many donors simply do not realize that an organization’s ability to achieve outcomes and goals (its effectiveness) depends on having the resources it needs to accomplish them (i.e., its capacity).

Convincing donors that effectiveness cannot exceed capacity can be difficult. “Success is in the eyes of the stakeholder,” explains Wesley E. Lindahl, Ph.D., the Nils Axelson Professor of Nonprofit Management and dean of the School of Business and Nonprofit Management at North Park University in Chicago. “Organizations with a complex set of stakeholders will have a difficult time knowing what success is and whether they have reached it. An organization with only a few simple stakeholder groups will still face issues, but perhaps there may be more overlap/ agreement on success.”

At a college or university, for example, Lindahl offers what the following stakeholders may feel success means to them:

Alumni: They are nostalgic, and so success is remaining in the “same place” as when they attended the school. They also like a high buy propecia new york public reputation to use when job hunting.
Faculty: Success is getting a high ranking for publication use from research publications and attracting many students to their major, and they seek to hire well-known researchers in their field.
Board: Success is growing the endowment and working well with the president.
Major donors: Success is having their money used and recognized properly.
Governor/legislative body: Success is having a high graduation rate, with all students’ finding employment after graduating.
Students: Success is a great teaching faculty, several opportunities for scholarships and getting a job after graduation.
Development office: Success is raising greater amounts of money, year after year.
Administration: Success is admitting a full/diverse class of students and having a steady stream of tuition income.

“Stakeholders define the terms of success, so it’s important to define and establish your stakeholders and what they consider priorities,” Lindahl says. In some cases, their definitions of success can conflict or even contradict each other.

He suggests trying to achieve consensus around three or four broad goals as a way to find common ground. “If you just use outcomes, some organizations’ mission will be very difficult to fulfill,” he says. “You can’t simply say that success is just to focus on achieving the mission, because sometimes the mission is so lofty that you can’t achieve it.”

In their article, “Measuring the Efficiency and Effectiveness of a Nonprofit’s Performance” (Strategic Finance, Vol. 93 No.4, 2011, pp. 27–34) Marc J. Epstein and F. Warren McFarlan offer a methodology for identifying those goals and finding a broad consensus among stakeholders. They argue that nonprofits can overcome donor reluctance to invest in impact by providing donors with five types of data.

Inputs: the resources that enable the nonprofit to perform programs and tasks
Activities: the programs and tasks themselves
Outputs: the tangible and intangible results of the
programs and tasks
Outcomes: the specific changes in the individual recipients of programs and services
Impacts: the benefits to communities and society resulting from the outcomes

Performance measures then can be developed for each type of data. “Breaking the organization into these pieces and analyzing it in parts,” write Epstein and McFarlan, “give insight into how the organization is performing against mission.”

The result is information that allows each donor to trace the particular route from the gift to its impact.

This post was adapted from “It’s All Relative: How Your Organization and Its Myriad Stakeholders Define and Measure Success,” by Paul Lagasse, Advancing Philanthropy, Fall 2016 (reprinted with permission). You can read the whole article here.

The MITRE Corporation®

mitre.org

Mission:

A not-for-profit organization that operates research and development centers sponsored by the federal government, MITRE operates federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), which are unique organizations that assist the United States government with scientific research and analysis, development and acquisition, and systems engineering and integration. MITRE also has an independent buy valium online us research program that explores new and expanded uses of technologies to solve its sponsors’ problems.

Services:

Write and edit a variety of products for the Office of Corporate Communications and Public Relations, including:

Monthly program reports
Award nominations
News features
Capability fact sheets
Project stories:

“Technology Disruption in Law Could Lead to Disruption in the Courts,” December 2016

Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education

wiche.edu

Mission:

WICHE and its 16 member states and territories work collaboratively to expand educational access and excellence for all citizens of the West. By promoting innovation, cooperation, resource sharing, and sound public policy, WICHE strengthens higher education’s contributions to the region’s social, economic, and civic life.

Services:

Perform a variety of editing tasks for the print and interactive online editions of Knocking at the College Door: Projections of High School Graduates, 9th Edition, including:

Substantive editing
Copyediting
Proofreading
Reports and studies

Donor-Advised Funds Appeal to Younger Philanthropists

© Africa Studio - Fotolia — © Africa Studio – Fotolia

In a previous post, I discussed some of the concerns that fundraisers and donors have about the as-yet still largely unknown impact on the philanthropic economy of donor-advised funds (often referred to as DAFs). In this post, I’ll discuss some of the advantages that DAFs offer.

Donor advised funds are charitable accounts established by donors and managed by public foundations, such as a community foundation or a foundation set up by a commercial brokerage. When a donor contributes money, stock, or other liquid assets into a DAF, the foundation takes ownership of the deposits and invests them. The assets in a DAF can be used only for charitable purposes, and a donor recommends or advises on their disbursement to nonprofit organizations of their choosing. In turn, the foundation provides value-added services such as due diligence on recipient charities and investment advice, and allows the donor to claim a full charitable tax deduction upon deposit of assets into the fund. Unlike private foundations, public foundations in the United States are not legally required to distribute a minimum portion of their assets every year.

Donors may choose to set up advised funds for any number of reasons. Malcolm D. Burrows, the head of Philanthropic Advisory Services at Scotia Private Client Group in Toronto, has identified four:

Convenience. Public foundations handle day-to-day administrative and management burdens, freeing up donors to focus on other things.
Tax benefit. By turning over control of deposited assets to the foundation, donors can take the charitable tax deduction right away and make disbursement decisions later.
Support for causes, not charities. Donors who support causes such as land conservation or inner-city education can use advised funds to take a long-term view with their giving.
Flexibility. If a donor’s charitable interests change, the fund can be used to support more, fewer, or entirely different organizations right away.

Another selling point of DAFs is their low initial contribution, explains Jo-Anne Ryan, vice president of Philanthropic Advisory Services at TD Waterhouse Canada Inc. and executive director of its Private Giving Foundation. This is particularly appealing to young, early-career professionals who are looking for ways to engage in philanthropic activities with their own growing wealth.

Ryan points out that the wealth of two-thirds of her foundation’s meds no prescription cheap clients is self-made, whereas just a decade ago the majority of the wealth had been inherited. Furthermore, savvy young donors are more familiar with how finances work and are comfortable using investment vehicles like DAFs. “They want to be more hands-on, and they want to engage more in their giving,” explains Ryan of a typical advised-fund user. “The more options they have, the wider the net is, and ultimately that’s going to represent more money going to charity.”

Like their parents, Generation X and Millennial donors are values-driven, but they are also deeply interested in strategies that are hands-on, innovative, and the result of due diligence. “If donor-advised funds make it easier to be a donor now, and without the administrative requirements of a foundation, then I can see how they would appeal to that kind of mindset,” says Moody.

Jeffrey M. Gorris, a partner at the Wilmington, Delaware, law firm of Friedlander & Gorris, P.A. — and a Millennial — uses a DAF to manage his philanthropic activities. He says that DAFs offer several advantages for early-career professionals like him. Because of their lower financial thresholds and ease of use, DAFs appeal to young donors who want to support their favorite charities but for who traditional foundations are not a feasible option. The low threshold allowed Gorris to establish the fund and start giving in meaningful amounts earlier than if he had had to wait to set up a foundation. Another advantage of the fund is that it helps even out his giving over time. “In certain years, the tax deduction may be worth more to me as my income fluctuates,” he explains. “If I’m going to contribute to a charity, I’d rather not have the gift fluctuate up and down too.”

Gorris says that his donor advised fund suits his giving preferences, which may differ from those of others, and he considers that another advantage. “I think it makes me more willing to give to a charity that I like,” he says.

This post was adapted from “Deciphering DAFs: How the Simplicity of Donor Advised Funds May Be Creating Complex Issues for Fundraising Professionals,” by Paul Lagasse, Advancing Philanthropy, Summer 2015 (reprinted with permission). You can read the whole article here.

In Eastern Europe, Rebuilding Philanthropy One Relationship at a Time

In countries with active and thriving cultures of philanthropy, conscientious fundraisers would take issue with the suggestion that they take donors for granted. After all, donors are the lifeblood of any organization, and it is a fundraiser’s responsibility to seek, cultivate, and steward people who care about the causes he or she represents. However, at a more basic level, fundraisers in such societies do take donors for granted because they have the luxury of assuming that there are donors out there to be found in the first place.

Fundraisers in the former Communist bloc countries of Eastern Europe don’t have that luxury, however. They operate in societies that for two generations actively discouraged both giving and trusting, both of which are prerequisites for any successful donor relationship.

“For them, success means building a philanthropic culture,” says Tony Myers, CFRE, Ph.D., MA, LL.B, principal and senior counsel at Myers & Associates in Edmonton, Alberta. “They are doing things that help build awareness and dialogue in countries that are still rebuilding civil society.”

Fundraisers and donors perceive different starting points for their relationships.

In addition to helping young nongovernmental organizations develop sustainable giving programs, Myers also helps them learn effective techniques for developing relationships with individual donors. Critical to that, Myers says, is understanding the differences between how donors and fundraisers perceive their relationships. “The fundraiser begins a relationship when the donor is first identified, and often the relationship declines after the first gift,” Myers explains. “For the new donor, the relationship with the charity is more likely to begin at the point of the first gift. Success is the ability to close that gap.” (See figure.)

To help nonprofits better understand donor motivations and fine-tune their outreach accordingly, Ioana Traista of the PACT Foundation is in the process of interviewing donors in Romania, the Czech Republic, and Serbia about what influences them to give and to continue giving, and how the act of giving affects them. Using the most significant change (MSC) technique, a methodology widely used by development aid agencies, Traista will qualitatively analyze donors’ stories for patterns related to how they perceive the effects of their giving and how they want to be kept informed.

Although her research won’t be completed until late this year, patterns of donor behavior are already emerging. “They want to be treated as partners, not only as supporters of a certain program or community,” Traista explains. “Also, donors do not want to receive only stories of success. They are aware that the problems are complex, and do not expect the organization they are supporting to find the solutions alone. They want to be part of the solution-finding process.”

Traista says that this dovetails with her observations about donors to the PACT Foundation, which supports community development and social economy programs in rural and small-urban communities in southern Romania. PACT’s donors are more likely to be ambassadors when they understand the organization and are encouraged to provide advice and get involved with programs.

Traista’s findings help illustrate why definitions of success in emerging philanthropic cultures depends so heavily on relationship building. It may be a slow process, but it is a vitally necessary one. “In building a philanthropic society, you first have to build trust,” Myers explains. “You can only do that one person at a time.”

Tough Questions about Donor Advised Funds

© Hugo Félix - Fotolia — © Hugo Félix – Fotolia

Many fundraisers and donors are concerned about the as-yet still largely unknown impact of donor-advised funds (often referred to as DAFs) on the philanthropic economy, particularly their ethical and policy implications. “I think the discussion about donor advised funds, like the discussion of overhead, is long overdue,” says Karla A. Williams, M.A., ACFRE, principal of The Williams Group in Charlotte, North Carolina. While there may not be an economic argument against saving money instead of spending it, Williams believes there are other, more compelling arguments against doing so. “Given the historically low patterns of charitable distribution in this country, we need to look at the charitable distribution of donor advised funds,” Williams says. “If the money is not being distributed, is it, or is it not, a charitable act?” The available evidence suggests that DAFs may not, in fact, be boosting charitable giving as much as advocates have hoped.

While public foundations report that the average annual disbursement of advised funds is significantly higher than the federally mandated 5-percent floor required of private foundations, this number is an aggregate of the entire corpus of donor advised funds. According to the 2012 study An Analysis of Charitable Giving and Donor Advised Funds from the Congressional Research Service, more than 70 percent of DAFs paid out less than 5 percent annually, and more than half made no payments at all. In practical terms, the explosive growth of DAFs mean that while a lot of money is still being designated for charities, a lot less of it is being distributed to them.

“In a world of urgent needs, we are encouraging the saving of money, not the spending of it for charitable purposes,” Williams says. The rapid rise of charitable savings accounts, she argues, is forcing the profession to confront a novel, but vital, ethical question: Do the benefits of saving money outweigh the benefits of spending it?

One way to ensure that donor advised funds are distributed is to set a time limit on them. Ray D. Madoff, a professor at Boston College Law School, suggests requiring funds to pay out completely in seven years. When he was chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Michigan Representative Dave Camp proposed a five-year cap on DAFs. In his article “Avoiding Misuse of Donor Advised Funds” (Cleveland State Law Review, 2010), Michael J. Hussey of Widener University argued for reforming DAFs along the lines of IRAs, requiring penalties if regular distributions are not made after a certain period, and termination of the account four years after the death of the donor.

Alan Cantor, principal at Alan Cantor Consulting LLC in Concord, New Hampshire, is an advocate of the required payout approach. “Donor advised funds serve a purpose, but ultimately the money has to go out the door to fulfill that purpose,” Cantor says. “I don’t think the money should be kept in perpetuity. I believe in investing in people and mission now.”

Cantor also argues that savings vehicles like DAFs, endowments, and private foundations are being oversold to donors at the expense of the nonprofits they are designed to support. He argues that, ultimately, the issue is one of public policy, not of economics. “Investing money now lessens the need to invest even more later,” he says.

In addition, Cantor is calling for greater transparency and accountability in public foundations with ties to commercial financial firms to ensure that the interests of the fund advisers aren’t at odds with the philanthropic interests of the donors or the ethical standards of the fundraising profession. Do the management fees that fund advisers receive, for example, violate the AFP Code of Ethical Principles and Standards? Without proper oversight, says Cantor, fundraisers can’t be certain that they do not.

Are such solutions feasible?

“All the proposed solutions either don’t address the problem, or address it badly,” says Eugene Steuerle, Ph.D., an Institute Fellow and Richard B. Fisher Chair at the Urban Institute. According to Steuerle, there are three key questions that must be answered before an effective solution can be determined:

Do the objections make sense?
Do the proposals align with the objections?
Can the proposals be implemented reasonably and fairly?

And, where does this leave fundraising professionals?

Diversified Funding: A Grantmaker’s Perspective

© tonymills - Fotolia — © tonymills – Fotolia

Founded in 1915, The Chicago Community Trust is one of the nation’s oldest community foundations. It is also one of the largest, disbursing millions of dollars to Chicago-area nonprofits in the arts, human services, health care, education, and more.

The trust is also a firm believer in the need for healthy diversification of funding sources. “Whenever we see that a nonprofit has support from a wide range of sources, we can immediately tell that this is an organization that has a wide number of investors,” says Ngoan Le, the Trust’s vice president of programs. “We see that as a sign of strength, that this nonprofit has a low probability of going out of business.” Le says that when the Trust considers funding a nonprofit, it looks at the applicant’s program and administrative budgets to see if they are funded from a mix of sources. “We never want to be the only source of revenue for a budget,” she says.

Jamie Philippe, vice president of development and donor services at The Chicago Community Trust, explains that funding diversity can be broken down into three interrelated categories:

Diversity of sources, which includes earned and unearned income as well as competitive government grants;
Diversity of methods for securing sources, which includes direct mail appeals, face-to-face fundraising, special events, grant proposals, etc.; and
Diversity of purpose, which encompasses restricted funds such as facilities, programs, and endowment, and unrestricted funds.

The key, says Philippe, is to find the right balance of these three elements for a particular organization. For example, a membership drive is typically a fairly modest source of revenue, but its method is labor is intensive. However, membership funds are typically unrestricted. Special events are also labor intensive too, but the revenue is potentially greater, even though the funds raised may be restricted to a particular program.

The Trust encourages nonprofits to explore alternative revenue sources due to the economy, such as social enterprises and counseling services, but notes that these ventures can require fundamentally different approaches, a shift in the organizational culture, new staff, and possibly even changes to the mission. It even encourages nonprofits with similar missions or constituencies to consider mergers. “If merging helps you do your mission better and get a better base of support, then you are doing your mission well,” says Le. However, mergers should not be sought when in a position of weakness. “A merger can still work then, but it’s not a strategy for growth,” she says.

The Chicago Community Trust’s belief in diversified funding isn’t simply philosophical.

“Diversification is very relevant to us,” Philippe explains. “Community trusts are one of the few types of foundations that have to proactively raise money.” The Trust is currently in the middle of an endowment campaign, and is seeking a broad range of funds to continue serving an equally diverse spectrum of community nonprofits. “If it’s done well, we don’t think there’s such a thing as too much diversification,” she adds.

This post was adapted from “The Right Mix: How to Strengthen Your Organization’s Sustainability through a Well-Thought-Out Plan That Sees Money as a Strategic Asset,” by Paul Lagasse, Advancing Philanthropy, Summer 2013 (reprinted with permission). You can read the whole article here.

How to Tell Great Fundraising Stories

“There are three rules for writing the novel,” the author Somerset Maugham once wrote. “Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” The same holds true for nonfiction stories. In his latest book, Storytelling Can Change the World, author and fundraiser Ken Burnett distills some valuable tips and techniques that he’s picked up in his more than twenty years as an advertising copywriter and fundraising consultant.

Key among them is to trust your readers. “Writers everywhere quickly learn that their job is not to tell the whole story, to etch in every detail of characters, places, impressions, and actions,” Burnett writes. “Much better instead to leave it to the reader’s imagination to fill and color in the gaps.” This is especially true for nonprofit storytelling, in which writers are often tempted to buttress their case with impressive facts and figures that only end up smothering the story. “Stories stick,” Burnett admonishes. “Statistics don’t.”

You can avoid data dumping by taking the time up front to think about what the reader will want to get out of your story. To help writers put themselves into the minds of their readers, Burnett recalls a lesson from playwright David Mamet. For every scene in a drama, Mamet taught, a writer has to ask three questions:

Who wants what?
What happens if s/he doesn’t get it?
Why now?

Even then, it may be hard to hear the beating heart of the story the first time you sit down to write it. Experienced writers know that the best stories require multiple drafts. Newbery Award-winning author Shannon Hale has likened the first draft to shoveling sand into a box from which she will later build sand castles. Feedback and testing are important for improving drafts; don’t be afraid to ask people to read each version and tell you what works for them and what doesn’t. But when you do, stress to your readers that you’re not seeking rewrites, approvals, or sign-offs at this stage. Draft stories are vulnerable to well-intentioned meddling, which inevitably hurts the story more than it helps.

A great story is an investment. The more work you put into crafting your story up front, the more durable, and thus cost-effective, it will be for your organization. Burnett recalls how, when he was working with the international nongovernmental organization ActionAid, fundraisers were concerned that a film about the organization and its mission that they showed to prospective donors had become overused and was no longer an effective motivator. However, testing quickly revealed that the film’s effect was just as potent as when it had first appeared; it was the fundraisers themselves who were getting tired of it, simply because they had shown it so many times. As a result, ActionAid’s fundraisers continued to show the film to great effect for many more years — generating gifts that might have otherwise been lost had the film been retired early.

How much have you invested in your fundraising stories?

This post was adapted from “Once Upon a Time: How Storytelling Can Motivate Donors to Support Your Nonprofit Without Being Asked,” by Paul Lagasse, Advancing Philanthropy, Summer 2016 (reprinted with permission). You can read the whole article here.

What Makes a Fundraising Story Great?

© Kirsty Pargeter - Fotolia — © Kirsty Pargeter – Fotolia

Fiction storytellers are taught from an early age to “write what you know” and to “show, not tell.” Both of these admonitions apply to nonfiction storytelling as well. “The most important person in a story is you,” says fundraiser Ken Burnett to colleagues who come to him for advice. At first glance, this might seem to contradict the fundraising mantra of focusing the story on the donor and not on the organization. But in practice, the two perspectives are not just complementary, but also necessary. In a well-told story, you are serving as a proxy for the donor. “It is in effect saying, ‘I was there and I saw this, and believe me, if you had been standing there beside me, you would understand this too,'” Burnett explains.

An effective eyewitness story exudes authenticity. “It’s a lot harder sell when you have to repackage other people’s stories,” Burnett says. He advises people not to write their stories down too quickly after they happen. A story full of raw, fresh emotions tends to come across as false and insincere. At the other extreme, over-editing can have the same effect, though it can sometimes be difficult to balance the need for review and approval up the chain with the need to preserve is there generic propecia in the u.s what makes the story compelling. (“I like to believe that the customer is always right,” Burnett observed, “but I wish that the customer wouldn’t always rewrite!”)

Regardless of the writing and review process, the goal should be to craft a story that reads like it was created more or less spontaneously. “You can still script a story,” says Burnett, “but the best stories retain an element of improvisation.”

A successful story is also tailored for its audience. As legendary advertising copywriter David Ogilvy put it, “If we don’t understand them, how can we expect them to understand us?” When writing stories, fundraisers can and should draw on their extensive knowledge of donors and the community to craft a tale that will resonate with them. To share a story is to give a donor something of value stands out from everything else that’s coming in through their inbox and mailbox. Your generosity in offering a story to a prospective donor is more likely to lead to that person wanting to share something with you in return.

Effective Stories Make People Trust You — So Tell Them to Donors!

© Frank Boston - Fotolia — © Frank Boston – Fotolia

What makes donors feel good about you and your organization? Veteran fundraiser Ken Burnett likes to talk to colleagues about a chemical called oxytocin. Discovered in 1952, oxytocin is a natural hormone used by doctors to safely induce labor. A little over a decade ago, oxytocin was also found to generate feelings of trust and cooperation in people. When he read about this discovery, Burnett saw a potential application for fundraising. “If we only could work out how to release the right chemicals in our donor’s brains, we’d be more successful,” he would tell fundraisers. Then, with a laugh, he would add, “The secret of success would be to take out a syringe of oxytocin and squirt it up their noses!”

Fortunately for fundraisers, science has since discovered a less invasive method of invoking feelings of generosity within the brains of donors: storytelling.

Dr. Paul J. Zak of Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., author of The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity and president of Ofactor Inc., is the scientist who first discovered the emotional benefits of oxytocin and recently demonstrated that character-driven narratives caused the brain to make produce the hormone (“Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling,” Harvard Business Review, October 28, 2014). “When you want to motivate, persuade, or be remembered, start with a story of human struggle and eventual triumph” Zak writes. “It will capture people’s hearts — by first attracting their brains.”

Zak’s discovery didn’t surprise Burnett, the managing trustee for the Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration. Shortly before Zak’s findings were announced, Burnett released what he considers his most important book, Storytelling Can Change the World, a handbook for building lifetime relationships with donors through the power of compelling narrative. Science, it seems, has finally caught up with Burnett, who’s been trying to convince nonprofits about the power of stories for years.

“The book is the core of my philosophy of what’s wrong with fundraising,” says Burnett, an active participant in the ongoing cheap xanax no membership civic debate in the UK over fundraising practices that have led to controversial regulatory changes. “We have to move from persistent asking to consistent inspiration. And storytelling is brilliant at doing that.”

Changing the World, One Story at a Time

In Storytelling Can Change the World, Burnett argues that there are only two types of stories: those that inform and entertain people, and those that rouse them to action. Fundraisers, he says, too often rely on the former while avoiding the latter. He illustrates the distinction using a story of his own. Imagine two Roman senators, Caius and Marcellus. Both are master orators. Caius presents indisputable facts and persuasive evidence using reason and logic, inspiring his audience to applaud his skill. Marcellus, on the other hand, arouses passionate emotions and paints vivid narrative scenes, inspiring his listeners to rise out of their seats willing to follow him wherever he points.

Fundraisers, argues Burnett, need to emulate Marcellus. “We don’t want our stories merely to move our readers to applause,” Burnett writes. “Rather, we want them to leap to their feet, passionate, angry, impelled and determined to make change happen.” According to Burnett, the stories that rouse audiences to their feet are:

About the reader, not the cause
Interesting, surprising, or unexpected
Believable, real, and accessible
Gripping
Simple, visual, memorable, and friendly
Capable of grabbing the audience’s emotions

Storytelling also offers a solution to a troubling paradox revealed by many donor surveys: Donors report feeling a sense of satisfaction and achievement when they give, but dislike being asked. A good story, says Burnett, encourages people to give without feeling like they’re being asked in the first place. “The two ‘i’s in fundraising should not stand for ‘interruption’ and ‘irritation,'” he emphasizes. “They should stand for ‘inspiration’ and ‘information.’ And storytelling is key to that.”