How not to tell stories in fundraising

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15 November 2012

How not to tell stories in fundraising

Here's a good post at Frogloop for fundraisers who want to tell stories well: How to Win the Story Wars.

Main takeaway: the Five Deadly Sins of storytelling...

Gimmickry: Relying on cheap tricks and humor that elicit laughs but undermine your brand.
Puffery: Ordering audiences to act using the impersonal marketing voice of God.
Authority: Spouting facts and expert opinions then stepping back and waiting for applause.
Vanity: Talking about your own fabulousness as if you are the hero of your own brand story.
Insincerity: Pandering to audiences by trying to speak their language instead of defining your own.

How many of those sound familiar?

Posted by Jeff Brooks on 15 November 2012 at 04:30 | Permalink

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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.

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Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 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 [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. More.

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