Your unique brand story is the most crucial part of your nonprofit fundraising campaign. When your brand story is well constructed and convincing, it will bring together your fans under one community and develop a sense of belonging. Here’s how you can create stellar brand narratives in 8 simple steps.
-
Know your values.
The first step is define who you are. What are your deepest beliefs? How do you design your brand voice? It’s not just a name and a logo, but principles that will stand the test of time. It requires introspection.
-
Have a clear vision
After understanding and creating your identity, you must remain faithful to it and remain consistent in your communication. To do this, develop a vision statement such as a slogan or value proposition. This sentence will help you define your brand’s narrative positioning for the future, which makes it unique. This will serve as a reference tool in your marketing decisions.
-
Find your audience
The next step is to find and understand your target audience. You can not tell a good story without knowing who you are talking to. The key is to choose the right group of donor persona, to know their motivations, fears, needs, desires and dreams.
Your role is to connect your brand to people: what do they like? what do they need?how to improve their situation?
-
Reduce the field of expertise
After defining your audience, establish the link between your goals and your donor expectations. This is where you create a pretty strong brand story.
Our advice, adapt your expertise to the needs of your audience and avoid deploying too many services/ messages all at once to optimize the understanding of your brand and its positioning. Remember: good in all, good for nothing!
-
Find your story
The best method is to distill your brand story little by little. Use anecdotes surrounding your creation, the founder’s story, as well as real experiences from donors, beneficiaries, employees or volunteers. This can be a very good start to finding what resonates with your target audience and thus help you create the perfect brand story.
-
Be authentic
The goal is to tell a story that evokes emotion while remaining simple and authentic. What problem are you trying to solve and how are you doing it? Finding answers to these questions will help you build a story of great value.
-
Staying human
To create a connection with you, your audience must be able to identify with your brand. How do you describe your brand as a person? Are you conservative, wise, experienced or daring? Remember: Adding a “personal” quality improves your story and makes it more authentic and relatable.
-
Live your story everyday
You must live and breathe your story as narrated. It must become an integral part of the identity of your organization. Each of your contents must assimilate it fully. Your employees must also be ambassadors of this story. The latter can not be limited to the “About Us” section of your website, it must reflected in your marketing, business and social strategies.
Respecting these 8 steps is the assurance of conveying a convincing, authentic message that will touch your target audience in the heart. Take the time it takes to build an effective storytelling and deploy it throughout your communication.
Brand storytelling donor expectations Nonprofit fundraising campaigns storytelling tips
Last modified: March 11, 2019
