How to make your stories persuade donors to give

« Who's wrecking your fundraising? | Main | In fundraising, the donor is the hero; you are the sidekick »

01 August 2012

How to make your stories persuade donors to give

Neuromarketing reports on a study of how stories persuade juries, at Six Characteristics of Highly Persuasive Stories. (The study itself is available here.)

Attorneys working to persuade jurors through narrative need to take these things into account:

Delivery Counts. A well-written story is stronger than a weak one.
Vivid Imagery.
Realism and Understandability.
Structure. Stories should have a beginning, middle, and end and an unconfusing structure.
Context and Surroundings. Annoying, noisy design may make a story less effective
Audience. Know them. Make sure you're aiming at them.

Fundraising is easy compared to jury trials. But they're not that different.

Posted by Jeff Brooks on 01 August 2012 at 08:29 in Donor Psychology | Permalink

Technorati Tags: fundraising, story

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a0120a59ccea7970b017743d5aa22970d

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference How to make your stories persuade donors to give:

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Nice analogy. Thanks for sharing.

Posted by: Claire Axelrad (@CharityClairity) | 02 August 2012 at 21:07

The comments to this entry are closed.

What this blog is about
The future of fundraising is not about social media, online video, or SEM. It's not about any technology, medium, or technique. It's about donors. If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. And the future? It's already here. More.

Subscribe with the reader of your choice

Subscribe to this blog's feed

About the blogger

Jeff Brooks, creative director at TrueSense Marketing, has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 20 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff.brooks [at] truesense [dot] com. More.

Blog policies

Podcast:

Instead of talking at donors, TrueSense is proving it's smarter to listen. Asking donors how they prefer to give. Because we’re about creating relationships and building trust and communicating honestly and powerfully. One to one. Want to talk fundraising? Drop me a line.

Branding can boost fundraising

Is branding evil? Of course not. It only seems that way sometimes because it is so often wrongly applied to nonprofits.

Discover how to make branding improve your fundraising in The Money-Raising Nonprofit Brand: Motivating Donors to Give, Give Happily, and Keep on Giving. It's easier -- and less expensive -- than you may think! In this ground-breaking new book you'll find out...

Why commercial-style branding is so destructive when applied to nonprofits.
The 7 essential elements of a successful fundraising call to action that will motivate donors to give.
How to find and use images that remind donors why they care about your cause.
How to become your donors' favorite cause and set your organization apart in their hearts and minds.

If your organization is even vaguely considering "branding work," you need to read The Money-Raising Nonprofit Brand by Jeff Brooks. Available at: