3 critical pointers on storytelling

Everyone talks about storytelling and almost no one does it especially well. Understandably, because good storytelling is hard. Here are three pointers that will catapult you to the head of the pack:

• This is NOT a story: (1) Something bad happened. (2) My organization swept in and fixed the problem. (3) The end. Dull, huh? 90% of non-profit stories fit that mold.
• Don’t cast your organization as the protagonist. Making your organization the hero of the story makes it hard to avoid the above pitfall. Try telling it from the perspective of someone who is coping with the problem. Make them the hero and not the victim. There are lots of people in a story, lots of roles for your org.
• Use storytelling to highlight what sets you apart. There are 20 organizations that rescue dogs in floods. That’s not a great story to tell. Seth says that as follows:

It’s the different stuff where you will be noticed, and the different stuff where you tell your story.

Like everyone else, we are very much on the storytelling bandwagon these days. But that’s not part of the Sea Change story — cause we are one of many.