Storytelling Builds Both the Brand and Its Capacity

Storytelling is a vital part of creating and communicating passion and engagement around your organization: it is how your organization comes to life and builds a community of support. An organization’s story is ultimately part of its brand, so it’s essential that the story supports the communications materials that make up an organization’s branding.

Every organization has a story and every individual within it has their own story about the organization and their connection to it. An organization’s story is one of the most effective ways to communicate its mission and support its brand. That story is must be consistent and reinforce the mission. Each person associated with an organization has a story too. These are personal connections – the things that motivate someone to work, volunteer or support an organization. These personal connections aren’t just important to build an organization’s brand in a traditional sense. These stories are an essential tool to reinforce the fact everyone involved plays a role in fund raising.

And the better organizations and individuals are at telling their story, the more effective they will be at building support because the stories capture the imagination of prospective donors by creating personal connections. The story helps people understand why the mission is important.

Sometimes that personal connection stems from the reason the founder decided to devote their time to starting the organization. In that case, the founder can tell that story best. What’s important, though, is that each individual within the organization thinks about why they are there; what drew them to the mission in the first place or what happened recently to illustrate their commitment to the mission. Be able to tell this story in a simple, relatively quick minute or two. Tell your story. Ask others in the organization to tell theirs. Make storytelling part of the culture.