EP 24: Using the Power of Story to Attract More Attendees and Donations

1. "if you're looking at how to improve your messaging, you should definitely read it" -> "if you're looking at how to improve your messaging, it's a fantastic read"

2. "if you're listening you run a nonprofit you should write these questions down" -> "if you're listening and you run a nonprofit, it's worth writing these questions down"

3. "my encouragement to nonprofits is try not to paint the picture of like you're the only organization saving the world" -> retained as-is (already framed as personal encouragement, not directive)

4. "update your website, simplify the heck out of your website, put a big fat button on your website" -> "the first thing we usually recommend is looking at your website, simplifying it, and making sure there's a big, visible button"

5. "you need to take this story and implement" -> "you want to take this story and implement it"

6. "you're going to need tweaks" / "you're going to need to make adjustments" -> retained as-is (descriptive of reality, not prescriptive)

7. "I would tell everybody" -> "I'd recommend to everybody"

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about all the different ways that you can make your next fundraising event better. And in the studio today, we have the master of this podcast, Kristen Wheeler, marketing guru.

Kristen: She is.

Jeff: And I tell you what, she introduces this podcast for us and she does an amazing job. So we're thankful to have her in the podcast today versus giving us hand signals from over on the side, telling us to move fast. Usually in the corner of the room going "wrap it up, you're out of time."

Kristen: No, she gave me a little timer, you guys. I have a little timer. It's so sweet.

Jeff: But we have a very special guest today. We've got Danny Peavy. Danny, introduce yourself.

Danny: Hey, everybody. My name is Danny Peavy. I am a messaging guy, so I help nonprofits, I help really companies of all sizes and shapes tell better stories so they can sell more products and services and, in the case of a nonprofit, raise more money.

Jeff: And Danny's been really instrumental in helping Handbid with our messaging. We've had a lot of conversations. Just to kind of give you a little bit of background, I met Danny in a -- I don't even know what to call it. It wasn't a webinar. It was like an online class because during the pandemic, I think this class was normally done in person. This was Donald Miller's StoryBrand workshop. So we attended, and I think there were three of us in our group that attended, but I think there were like 700 people that attended this thing online. You got a little breakout group, and Danny was our breakout moderator. So it was kind of fun.

What we did in this is Building a StoryBrand. It's a great book. I'd recommend to everybody, if you're looking at how to improve your messaging, it's a fantastic read. We're going to talk a little bit about that today as it relates to your event.

We had read it, and still, we looked at it and said, we still probably need a little bit of help. It might make sense for us to attend this workshop and see exactly how to implement the StoryBrand framework at Handbid. So we went through the exercise and it was great. I mean, it really was.

And then one of the very special things that happened to us at the webinar was Donald Miller picked five websites to critique at the end, and the last one he picks is the Handbid website in front of seven or eight hundred people, and he gives it a great review. So we're feeling really good about ourselves. We're like, "Yes, he loves our website. Our website's awesome."

So we get back into our small group, and there we have to schedule a follow-up meeting with Danny to talk about whether we finished all the things we needed from the workshop. About a week later, we get on the phone with Danny, we're on a Zoom call, and he proceeds to tell us about how not great our website is. And I was like, "Wait a second, time out. Donald Miller liked it." And here's Danny going through saying, "Well, I'd change this and I don't think this is right."

So we kind of sat there for a second, humbled in a certain sense, but also looking at each other going, "You know what, I actually think he's right. I think that we could make this better. And I think these things that he's bringing up do make sense."

So we still have the video of Donald Miller reviewing the website, and we will forever treasure that. It was definitely fortunate for us to get involved with Danny. We did bring him on as a consultant and went through the experience. The reason I bring all this up is because what the StoryBrand framework does is it starts to help you organize your messaging as an organization in the form of a story.

So I don't want to be the one explaining this -- that's why we have Danny. I want to turn it over to you, Danny, and you can give an overview of the framework. And then let's talk about how this can be used at your event.

Danny: Yeah. So the framework, I've learned over the years, is just a quick and dirty shortcut for people to learn things. StoryBrand was really great because it is a way for nonprofits to tell a story that will help you hopefully raise more money and engage more folks.

What Donald did, as just a guy that's written movie scripts and things like that, is he distilled all great stories into a business framework. You can go down the rabbit hole of storytelling like I have -- I have a book this thick on different plot points in a movie, and that's kind of where my original interest was in all of this from a foundational perspective. But it's helpful to have a storytelling framework because he distilled down a lot of great stories that you'll see in a movie.

Donald always says, "Hey, Star Wars -- who created Star Wars?"

Jeff: George Lucas.

Danny: George Lucas, thank you. George Lucas has made billions of dollars, and this is how he did it. He showed the framework -- how there's a hero that wants something, they run into a problem, then they meet somebody in the movie that has empathy and authority, that gives them a plan, calls them to action, then there's something at stake, and at the end of the day obviously they're going to win the day and everybody's going to be happy.

It was really impactful for clients, and I'm excited to talk about it in the case of the nonprofit because one thing, Jeff, about that time a couple years ago that was interesting is that we later found that for-profit companies, the way they tell stories is a little different from the nonprofit. We can dive into the differences, but the way nonprofits tell stories -- it's not more complicated, but it's not as streamlined sometimes as a for-profit company.

Jeff: I think that's an important point to make. And what you describe is something that we went through, and we even took this into one of my own nonprofits. You have that -- I forget what they call it -- that kind of aspirational goal you want to say, like "it shouldn't be this way." Life shouldn't work this way, or this isn't fair. In the case of my daughter, kids shouldn't -- we just want to level the playing field. Kids that have a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome should get all of the equal opportunities that everybody else gets. I mean, that was the thing that kind of drove us.

And then we started to talk about, in this case, who is that hero, who is that guide, who is that villain that's creating the conflict, and then what's at stake if you don't help. Those are some of the things you helped us with, and it might be good to walk the audience through the basics.

Danny: Sure. So for the audience listening, you work at a nonprofit -- maybe you're in donor development, maybe you're in marketing -- there's really two stories that you can tell as an organization. The first story is the mission story, and the second story is the donor story. I can break down a little bit of each of those and even talk about some actual charities that are good examples of each story.

Before I do that though, just really high level -- I think everybody's seen the movie Rocky, right?

Jeff: Yeah.

Danny: Or if you're my age, 42 --

Jeff: Well, the new one's called Creed.

Danny: Right. So if you're younger, go watch Creed. We're on like Creed Three now or something.

Jeff: We're on Creed Three, which by the way, was amazing.

Danny: So let me just take Rocky. There's seven elements, really eight elements to a story. Let me walk through each element and then use a real movie as an example so it kind of hits home. Then I'll go over the two nonprofit stories of how you can take this and apply it to a nonprofit.

Rocky -- there's always a character in a movie and a character wants one thing. The problem is that he doesn't know how to fight. So he's solving one problem. He's not solving everything. Maybe a takeaway for your nonprofit is there's probably like 1,200 different elements of the problem you're solving. But really at the end of the day, we need to distill it down to the one problem we're trying to solve.

So the second part of the story is that there's a problem. Rocky's problem was that he didn't know how to fight, and that's why he felt depressed, and they showed him as a bum. That's the problem Rocky had.

Now philosophically, there's always a philosophical problem that your company represents. Not to get too in the weeds here, but philosophically what Rocky was trying to say as a movie without saying it is that there's a champion inside each and every one of us.

The third thing that a great story needs is a guide. Guides have two very simple things: empathy and authority. All guides do is say, "You can do it. We believe in you."

The fourth step is a plan. In Rocky, the plan was step one, go train; step two, go fight; step three, become a great boxer. So your plan as a business doesn't need to be your operational plan that's 85 steps. It just needs to be a simple 90,000-foot view plan of how your customer can achieve success.

The fifth element is a strong call to action. I always tell the story of when I knew I wanted to marry my wife, I didn't get down on one knee and say, "Do you want to learn more?" or "Do you want to contact us?" She would have dumped me.

Jeff: You could have said, "Would you like to book a demo?" You could take Danny out. "Here's a link to my calendar."

Danny: "Here's a link to my calendar. Spend the rest of your life with me. Here's a link to my lifetime." Right. But on our nonprofit websites, a lot of us will probably laugh at this, but some of us might have "Contact Us" without a big button, because we don't have a big button that says "Donate" or "Volunteer."

But in Rocky, the call to action was, "You can do it, Rock!" Cue the music of him running up the stairs.

The sixth element is success. What does success look like? For Rocky, it was become champion of the world. You are now a great fighter. There's a champion inside of you and it came out.

And then what was at risk is that he would lose the fight, maybe he wouldn't win.

But there was something even bigger happening. When you watch a movie or listen to a story or listen to a piece of music or hear a great pitch from an organization, there's a transformation. At the beginning of the story, Rocky was a depressed bum who couldn't fight. But at the end, the gold that was inside of him came out and we all saw it on display. And what did that say to us as watchers? That there's something inside of us that's gold that also needs to come out and be put on display. And I think it's what we want.

Rocky doesn't become a popular movie if he loses in the end. And I -- spoiler alert. Well, I mean, people want to see that transformation happen. If Luke doesn't blow up the Death Star, there's not eight more Star Wars movies, right? He's got to blow up the Death Star.

Jeff: He does, but sometimes I use Rocky One as an example, and I've loved it when somebody says, "Danny, you know he actually loses to Creed at the end."

Danny: Yes. He actually does. So he really doesn't win, but kind of.

Kristen: Kind of. Movie spoilers.

Danny: Movie spoilers, that's right. So that's just the general example of a great movie, the framework from a simplistic perspective.

Jeff: Hey, just want to let you know this episode is brought to you by Handbid. Handbid is mobile bidding and auction technology software built by fundraisers for fundraisers. We're able to help you with everything from ticketing and registration to mobile bidding to live auction recording appeals, you name it. And the nice thing is, in addition to the software that we're able to provide, we have a ton of services we can offer you. If you need help getting everything set up, if you need coaching, if you need counseling and advice on how to get through your event, you need someone to show up and make sure that it runs smoothly -- these are all the types of services that we offer. So if you want more information about what we do, please click on the link below or reach out to us at handbid.com, and we'd be happy to talk to you.

Danny: For the sake of the nonprofit listening, let me go back to mission story and donor story because it is slightly different. If you're telling a mission story, the question isn't "what does that one person want?" The question is "what do the people we help want?" Then from a problem perspective, the question is "what is standing in the way of that pain being relieved?"

If you're listening and you run a nonprofit, it's worth writing these questions down because you can clarify your message on your own.

Jeff: If you're driving, you can go back later and listen to this again.

Danny: That's correct, we'll drop them in the show notes.

Kristen: Do not text and drive.

Danny: Thank you, Oprah.

And then as far as painting your organization as the guide with empathy and authority, usually this is pretty easy for you guys. This is what most nonprofits lead with -- why are we qualified to help? How do we empathize with this? Like Jeff, you gave the case with your daughter. That's usually easy to tell -- the story of why you did this.

The fourth thing, and I think this is very important for nonprofits: what's the plan to solve the problem? I think this is one where nonprofits get a little off track. What's the actual plan? Because the problems that nonprofits are solving are very complicated and complex, and my encouragement to nonprofits is try not to paint the picture that you're the only organization saving the world. I think nonprofits can be very transparent and vulnerable and say, "This is the piece of the problem we're trying to solve." Show that plan, and then pivot to the donor.

On that mission story, your call to action is very simple: it's donate, it's volunteer. But have a big, visible button on your nonprofit website that says "Donate," that says "Volunteer." And then show how the people you help are going to have better lives because of the donor's help.

And then in the most classy way possible -- not what tragedies will continue to occur if people don't help -- but show what's at stake. So if you answer all those questions, that will give you your mission story.

Let me pause there before I go into the donor story and see if you guys have anything to add. Jeff, what resonates with you on that one?

Jeff: That totally resonates. It's interesting how you described it because when I joined the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research in 2005, it was a brand new, newly formed organization. I don't remember how many people were on board, probably seven or eight of us that got together, and we were raising $50,000 a year.

Without even knowing it, and without even articulating it in the way that you just did, which I think is a brilliant way to do it, we did follow a little bit of the same path. And I think what I would add that's important is when we went in to look at our philosophical reason -- look, it's Prader-Willi syndrome. It's an extremely rare disorder. There's a lot of problems. There's a thousand problems that we can go solve. And there were organizations that existed that were trying to solve everything.

We had one very specific thing we went after, and that was: we need more research on this disorder. It's not "we need this project funded" or "we're going to cure this disorder" or "we're going to address this one particular challenge these kids have." All of those things were going to be the long-term outcome of what we 100% focused on, and that was there's not enough people paying attention to this. There's not enough researchers paying attention to this.

So what does success look like? Well, that was 2005, and I think we funded three projects. I went back in 2012, and again, I've been to all the conferences, but this particular one just blew me away. When I walked in there to our annual conference, the room was full and we must have had 20 or 30 or 40 presentations on projects running. And now today it's probably double that.

Kristen: What I was thinking is the American Cancer Society about 10 years ago -- their big campaign was, I think it was "Creating More Birthdays." And I thought that was great because there's so much that you can talk about when it comes to cancer, and there were so many different bullet points they could put in their commercials. But all they did was show kids at birthday parties and show adults at birthday parties and say, "We want them to have more birthdays."

Jeff: I think that's right on. It's got to be that simple. Because when we're out there -- and I know you're going to talk about the donor story next -- but when we got up on stage, it wasn't "Prader-Willi kids have insatiable appetites, and so we need to find a drug that is going to address that." Or "Prader-Willi kids have massively high anxiety, and so we need to find some mental health treatments that are going to address that." All of those things are true, and there's a hundred more of them.

But we would go in front of donors and say, none of those things can be solved until we get more people paying attention to this problem. We just boiled it down to that.

So when you look at your charity and what you're doing, a lot of times we get so focused on the tactical things we put into our plan that you kind of have to back away and say, no, let's think about this more philosophically. What's at stake if we don't do this?

Well, I'll tell you what's at stake. My daughter was born in 2002. In 2003, we went to our first conference and watched three presentations from three researchers. 2004, we went back to the same conference in a different city and watched the same three presentations from the same three researchers. I won't have to explain to you what happened in 2005. Same thing. And then it's like, okay, this isn't going anywhere. That's why we formed the organization we did.

So I think that's what's at stake. When you look at your particular charity -- American Cancer Society, whatever it is -- there's a thousand research projects they can go fund. But what can you boil it down to that you think people can resonate with? For us, that's what it was. Anyway, Danny, I kind of sidetracked there, but let's get into the donor part.

Danny: Well, you didn't sidetrack at all. I think both your examples are great examples of mission stories. Jeff, what I love about the one you created is that you got really transparent on the plan. To your point about all the research, you respected the donors and the audience by being very specific on where things are. And again, contrast that with sometimes it does feel pie in the sky for people, so I think that's a great job of a mission story.

Another one -- the one Kristen said is really good. Another one that people might know that's a lot larger is Charity Water. Great example of a mission story. What do the people we help want? They want clean water. The problem is that they don't have access to it. So yeah, that's mission.

Let's switch to donor. A donor story is what it sounds like. You start off and you say, "What do our donors want?" From step one of the character -- what does the character want? Instead of saying "what do the people we help want" in the mission, we say "what do our donors want?" You're making the donor the hero here.

Then the question is, for the problem: what's standing in the way of the donor making the world a better place? That's the problem we want to provoke.

The third step, establishing a guide with empathy and authority, is to say -- it's a little similar -- how can we empathize with the donor, and why can the donor trust us to help them with what they're trying to accomplish?

Then very similar, step four: what's our plan to help solve that problem in the world? It's a little different, but what's the plan to help that donor solve the problem they care about in the world?

The call to action is again: have we asked them to donate? Have we asked them to volunteer? The thing with the donor story is that usually there's something called a transitional call to action. Essentially what that is, is sort of like asking somebody to take a small step if they're not ready to commit to donating or volunteering. Sometimes it could be a freebie -- commercial clients would call it a lead magnet, like a downloadable something to help you accomplish what you're looking for.

Jeff: I'd call that a silent auction at an event.

Danny: That's a great example.

And then for the donor, instead of with the mission where we're saying "how will the people we help have better lives," the donor success -- step six in the story -- is: have we described what the donor's world will feel like if they contribute or volunteer? And then the stakes are very similar as far as showing them what's at risk.

So a great example of a donor story -- it's actually a very small organization. This will show you the power of a donor story. It's something that personally happened to me. I'm 42, and a couple of years ago I did start experiencing what we all call the midlife crisis. I was feeling like I don't know if I'm making an impact in the world. I think we've all felt that way at some point.

I actually saw this organization here in Atlanta, and they rescue abandoned babies. Sometimes infants -- just horrible things that would happen. I saw this story, and that was the donor story. That was me saying, "I want to rescue babies." Like, who doesn't want to rescue a baby?

This particular organization -- I'll do a shout out, they're called The Hope Box. They can wear a t-shirt in a grocery store and -- you want to see donor story in action -- everybody's like, "Oh my God, oh my God." Because the donor is making the world a better place. So it's a slight difference from a mission story, but that's an example of what a donor story looks like and the questions you'd want to answer.

Jeff: And I think it makes sense. What you're doing in that case is making a more tactical connection. For us at FPWR, because our goal was to advance research and get more people studying the syndrome, a donor comes in the door -- they're probably connected to somebody, a loved one or a family friend who has this disorder -- and they get tactical. "This kid has this problem. Is there a project I can fund?"

So we would take it down a level and say, here are the projects we're running that you can go fund that address these problems. The bigger picture for us is we want more money because we want more researchers studying the problem. The more brains connected to it, the better. But, "Hey, Mr. Donor, we know that you're interested in this particular one."

And I see that work in a lot of different ways. Specifically at events, when you start talking about the big picture, you can still drill down at an event into the specific programs you're operating.

Danny: You absolutely can.

Jeff: Where you can plug in.

Kristen: When I worked for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, we would do that. We would have pre-made plaques. When people were raising money in real time, we would stop the program or ring a bell or call everyone's attention and get on the mic and say, "So-and-so just raised enough money to send a kid to camp." We would give them a plaque that had a picture of a kid that got to go to that summer camp and what they love about going to camp.

That tangible connection that people had -- it not only was great donor stewardship, but then it inspired more people. "Well, I want to send a kid to camp" or "I want to fund a wheelchair for an adult with ALS" or something like that, where they can make that kind of connection.

Danny: Exactly.

Jeff: And so looking at it from both sides, to your point earlier, you're right, because when we went through StoryBrand as a business, it doesn't get this complicated necessarily. But it does here. And I still think it works with the charity model, to say as an organization, you've got some sort of philosophical goal you're trying to reach. You're trying to change the world in some way. There's a transformation that happens as you go through this, but there's also a lot at stake if you don't get the support you need.

I think it's fair to say, what happens at FPWR if we didn't get the funds in order to invite more researchers? We don't do more research. We don't have more brains connected to it. We're not solving the problem down the road. What happens at American Cancer Society? If you don't fund them, more people are going to die of cancer. I mean, it's one of those things I think it's fair to say that.

But let's get tactical with the event here for a second. Danny, we've talked about this, and we just did a recent podcast on what we call the run-of-show. What does that look like? Events are one of those things that, as one of our previous guests said, it's the opportunity to connect and begin a relationship with a donor.

So you have the opportunity. They're in the room. I always laugh -- this is like the best marketing tool ever. I mean, as marketers, you guys are marketers, I'm not, but you would imagine: here's an opportunity for you to have a captive audience to listen to your story, and they actually paid you to do it. So that's something you've got to take advantage of.

You've got people in the room, Danny. Maybe we need to back up and talk about leading up to the event. But what is your advice -- how can a charity take this type of framework and use it to really hit home with those people at the event?

Danny: I think the first thing is to prepare. Even taking the questions from this episode and sitting down as a leadership team and saying, "We can tell a mission story, we can tell a donor story, we can tell both stories" -- like Kristen was saying, your organization probably has both a mission story and a donor story in its arsenal.

So I think the first thing is getting clear and confident as a leadership team. I've been doing a lot of messaging and donor development consulting and sales consulting, and everything always comes back to story and starts with story. But one of the most powerful parts of this is not so much "what are our words?" or "what is the final story?" -- that's very important -- but a lot of the change when you go through an exercise like this is the one that's internal to the leadership team. It's seeing you and your employees and your volunteers walking out with confidence around what the story is.

So that's really the first step: take a moment -- not a week before your event, not three months before your event -- get clear on what your story is.

From a tactical perspective, obviously you're going to have folks on stage. You're going to have folks walking through different parts of your venue. So then it's a matter of how can we tell different versions of our story depending on the layout of the venue, what's happening?

Sometimes you're going to need to tell your story in five seconds -- maybe it's a poster board. Sometimes you're going to have a great MC. Obviously, you're going to have different moments on stage to tell your story. Maybe one version is a 30-second story. Maybe one version is a three-minute story.

And the interaction with your guests -- you want your team to be prepared on what the stories are. Every conversation, in my opinion, even in life, is a bit of a story. When there is a problem, our brains are scanning the environment looking for ways to thrive in our life. Every piece of language, every word that comes out of your mouth is your brain's way of saying, "Is this going to help me overcome my issue and give me what I want?"

Which goes back to: are we talking about the mission story and the help that the people want, or are we talking about what our donors want? And knowing that every interaction that we have, they're all asking, "Why am I here?" They're looking at you on stage. That's why this story framework is so important -- because if we provoke that problem, if we say "what's standing in the way of this pain being relieved?" or "what's standing in the way of the donor making the world a better place?", the faster that we can get to that, the more impactful the story is going to be.

I think most nonprofits do a great job with videos. Customer testimonials are one of the best things that you can do as a nonprofit. And again, I like Jeff's example of what's the real problem, the real ask? I think a lot of people that want to donate to nonprofits want to know the story behind the story. So I do encourage nonprofits to dig a little deeper into the story and to be as forthcoming as possible about where they sit on the issues -- like, "This is the part of the problem that we really want to solve."

Jeff: Well, I think you can connect that back. It's kind of a post-event thing, but I went a year ago with my daughters to Rwanda through Rise Rwanda Ministries. Philosophical problem: there's a particular region of Rwanda, we're trying to improve their quality of life. That comes across in a variety of ways. They've started schools there. They're putting in clean water. They've got some co-ops running with some of the women in town. I can go on and on about everything that they're doing.

And then the donors get to connect to what's important to them. Is clean water important to you? Great, you're going to build these water filters. So that's what we did. We had this kind of bucket system with water filters, and we got to deliver them. We got to go into a village with 30 of these and just watch lives change. And we Instagrammed it -- probably not as good as you would have done, but it was a good attempt. My high school daughter showed me how to do it.

But we got to go back and show people: this is what you're supporting, this right here. That's how real you can make some of these stories. I don't have to fly two families over from Rwanda and put them on stage at your gala to say, "Here are two families that got transformed." They don't look transformed -- they're in the United States. It looks transformative when you go there and you're in their living room and they're crying and they're telling you their story and they're so grateful for what you've brought into their home that's going to improve their quality of life.

So I think that, to me, is something that as you're thinking about how to tell these stories at your gala or golf tournament or whatever it is you're running -- I'm not assuming you're running a gala -- think about, "Okay, this is what we do, and our job is to improve quality of life," whatever it is for this particular region. Here's five two-minute videos showing how that happened. You don't even have to professionally produce them, and if you do buy a professionally produced video, those are great too, but it can be that simple.

Kristen: It can be as simple in the classroom, having the teacher do a video with their iPhone saying, "This is how it's going to help us do better in our classroom, how it's going to help me teach better, how it's going to help the kids learn better." It's not just about providing the equipment. It's like you said, the impact that it's going to make in their day-to-day life, and that can be done very easily by just somebody telling their perspective of how it's going to make a change for them.

Jeff: And so the framework we've talked about -- I would highly recommend anybody listening to this, read Donald Miller's book, Building a StoryBrand. It's an easy read. And then from that, you can start to sit down and maybe you do a workshop. Maybe you don't do a formal workshop, but you go through the construct.

When we did it, I think you're going to find how powerful and how excited you're going to be to go into your event with some of this messaging. That, "Hey, to your point with Charity Water, there's X number of million people in the world that don't have clean water." And I've been to events -- not Charity Water's events -- but I've been to events where they put out dirty water on some of the tables, and then "this is what people drink." The guests obviously aren't going to drink it, but you want to get the clean water? You got to go over there. Just to remind people that there are people in this world drinking that stuff. Or just showing them a well.

Anyway, that can be everything from some of the things we did with you -- like giving a one-liner. Danny, describe what are some short paragraphs or statements that you feel people are going to need to iron out before their event that they can use when they're talking to donors?

Danny: The first thing we usually recommend is looking at your website -- simplifying it and making sure there's a big, visible button for the most dominant thing you want people to do. For most of you guys, that's going to be "Donate."

Really any marketing material -- flyers -- make sure we're leading with provoking the problem, showing the solution, showing the benefit, showing the transformation. Your flyers, your materials.

The other thing to think about is there's really two types of messaging. There's marketing messaging, which is one-to-many, and then there's your donor messaging, which is usually one-to-one. Know that there are some differences there. You might need a pitch deck that's more for your donor development team. You might need your donor team or development team to have a one-liner or a 15-second statement that they make when they're making a cold call. You're going to need emails on the marketing side and on the development side.

Really, anything in your organization that has words -- you want to take this story and implement it. There's a great -- I love Kristen's point about just the cell phone. There's a study with marketing I've seen where the best performing marketing is one that feels real. So don't get caught up in things feeling super polished, especially if you have a cause that's a little bit of a "get your hands dirty" thing. Take the cell phone and turn it around and show something. Show reality. People really respond to reality.

I think even coaching people on what to say, how to introduce the organization. Another piece of messaging that I think is really impactful is your guiding principles. We've been talking a lot about external messaging, but if you want to motivate your employees and your volunteers and get them rallied around the cause -- they're already with you because they are -- but your internal messaging is actually one hidden gem to all of this.

I think there's a book -- and Jeff, I think you've been through this too -- it's actually called Hero on a Mission. You can walk through that, and then you're really motivating your team internally to deliver the external message.

Jeff: So Business Made Simple is the business version of that, and we did go through it as a team. It does exactly what you describe -- it starts to align everybody internally around the same aspiration, the same problem, and the same way that you're going to tackle it. On the external side, you're using StoryBrand to communicate that out to your audience, your customers, your donors, whatever. Internally, you've got to communicate that internally and get everybody on the same page. So we loved it.

Hero on a Mission, I think, is his personal version of that.

Danny: Yep.

Jeff: And I have not read that one yet. I'm sure it's great. But I think you're bringing up a good point that this is kind of a two-sided coin. You have to be internally aligned as well as externally organized about what you say.

Danny: Yep.

Jeff: And look, it's hard. I'm just going to tell you guys, coming from somebody who read the book and then we sat down internally and started to craft out what our StoryBrand would be -- I think they have you do a one-liner or a mission statement? What's the thing you do in the workshop? You come out with a sentence at some point.

Danny: Yeah, they come out with it. They do a workshop and it's a one-liner, and then it's called a brand script, but it's sort of color by number. If you guys remember that -- again, we're going back to like, are you at least 35? But you essentially fill in the blank with all the little questions I asked earlier. If you go through the workshop, you fill in the blank.

But that's why sometimes people go through that and they're great, but the reality is that messaging is hard, like Jeff's saying, and you've got to dig really deep.

Jeff: So I would encourage you to find someone like Danny to help you if you're not sure that you have the confidence to do it. I'll just tell you, like I said, we went through it and we got on the other side of it and we still didn't like it. And then we brought in Danny and some of his team, and it just got way better from there.

Don't get freaked out by it. You don't have to be good at this. There are people out there that will definitely help you clarify it. So think about that. And then think about how they'll also help you say, "Okay, so we've got all this down, got my messaging down." If you need branding around that, I think that can play a role as well. They have to align.

You get all that together, and I think when you roll into your next event, you're going to be blown away with the type of messaging you can create that is going to impact people.

Kristen: And even if you're an established organization with an established mission and you've been doing this for years, I think that this is a great exercise to go through regularly to refresh and reinvigorate your mission and your values around your mission.

Jeff: Yeah, things change. I mean, I'm on the board of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and same thing. Things have changed, times have changed. You have to always be going back and saying, does the message that we're bringing to the community and to our potential donors, does it resonate anymore?

Danny: Yeah, it's a great point. And I'll kind of end on this. In the for-profit world, I always say messaging is not a one-time event. That's kind of the nice thing about paying for a workshop -- you walk away feeling like, "I didn't pay a lot of money, but at least I got my feet wet into messaging."

But as Jeff knows, and folks that have been through this process, if you really do it right, it's very involved because you go talk to customers. And obviously in the case of nonprofits, you have to talk to donors, you have to talk to the individuals that you're really trying to help. Not going with what you think they need, but really getting clear and asking them what they think they need. What I'm describing as customer insight is just really talking to customers, talking to donors.

That's another thing in messaging: the first pass that you come up with, you'll put it out there, your development team will use it, and you're going to need tweaks. But the power in all of this is that you know how the system works. You know how the human brain works. You know that people need to see a problem before they respond. You know that they need to be presented with a plan. You know that they need to see what success looks like. You know that you need to show social proof.

So the big key with all of this is the clarity and confidence, just getting going and being an organization that says, "We work on our messaging every quarter." But also just having -- like Kristen said -- just breathe deeply and know that you're already ahead if you're working on this. But also know that you're going to need to make adjustments and tweaks as you continue to go down the path.

Jeff: That's great. Thanks, Danny. That was awesome.

Kristen: And so yes, and I'm sure all of you are excited to get started on your messaging. So pull over, order the book on Amazon, and you guys can get started.

Jeff: But let's go ahead and wrap this one up. This has been an awesome episode talking about messaging and how it can impact not just your nonprofit and fundraising in general, but also more specifically your fundraising event. So thank you guys. This will be the end of this episode of the Elevate Your Event podcast, and we'll be back soon enough with some more great advice for you. Have a good day.