Stelter Senior Content Specialist Mari O’Grady joins our blog today to help you write a donor story that will inspire your readers to contemplate just how impactful their own legacy could be.
In Stelter Strategist Jana Cobb’s latest blog post, she addresses the current decline of confidence from Americans in the value of higher education. She provides ideas for showing your donors all the good work your institution does and highlights the important aspects of building trust between your organization and your donors.
Smart suggestions, but you may be asking: How do I do it?
Create Shared Identity and Values
Your donors can be powerful ambassadors for sharing the good work your institution does. When writing their testimonial, resist the long-standing tendency to tell their life story. Instead, focus your story on their connection to your institution and, even more importantly, their “why”.
Why did they decide to leave a legacy gift? Why is your organization so meaningful to them? Find out the exact moment your donor felt inspired to create the gift. What happened? Where were they? What moved them in such a way that they wanted to take this step? Find their “why” moment and anchor your story to it.
When a story creates an opportunity for a shared identity between the donor and your readers, your audience will be easily drawn in. If you go even further and share your donor’s inspiration for making a legacy gift, you may spark a shared value or passion from the reader which will again increase your chance to make a meaningful connection.
Don’t give in to these temptations when creating your donor stories:
- Sharing the dollar amount of the gift. While you may be excited about the large gift your featured donor made, you also run the risk of alienating readers who could give but may now feel it isn’t good enough.
- Telling the donor’s entire life story. People naturally scan long text rather than read every word. Hone in on details that will help the reader see themselves in the story, even when giving it a quick skim.
- Focusing too much on the gift type. Don’t overwhelm your reader with technical gift details or give the impression that a certain gift type is the only way to achieve the outcomes the donor story highlights.
When you can create an emotional connection with your reader, and then create a shared identity or shared values, you will have taken a huge step toward crafting a successful donor story. After all, donors are often moved to action by emotional reasons and then use logic to back it up.
Fostering Trust by Celebrating Autonomy
You can create a positive relationship between your institution and your donors when your messaging speaks to them as equals. Doing so lets them know they are working with you, side-by-side, in a quest to achieve your institution’s mission.
Bringing this into the fold of storytelling can create a key psychological benefit for donors by giving them a sense of autonomy. Word choice and framing are especially important here. Are you couching your donor’s gift as something to benefit your institution? Or have you written your story in a way that shows that the donor chose to give because they felt strongly about directly impacting a person or program?
We know that people give to people. If you approach storytelling with this mindset, your descriptions and your word choice will start to shift. It becomes less about what the donor can do for your institution and more about who or what your donor will be able to impact far in the future.
Here’s an example of an institution-first sentence:
Dan’s gift will strengthen Utopia University for generations to come.
Here’s a rewrite of that sentence, giving Dan autonomy and recognizing the true beneficiary of his planned gift:
Dan achieved his goal of making a transformative impact on future Utopia University students by creating undergraduate scholarships through a gift in his will.
This shift puts Dan in control of his philanthropy while also emphasizing his motivation for giving.
If you tell your donor stories in a way that creates shared identity and values, makes an emotional connection, and puts donors in control of their decision making, you give yourself the best chance of inspiring readers to contemplate just how impactful their own legacy could be.
In doing so, you can build trust with your audience and provide social proof that the work your higher education institution does is valuable, trustworthy and can make a better world.
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