Imagine being transported into someone else's shoes, feeling their emotions, and experiencing their journey firsthand. That's the power of personal storytelling, a tool used for centuries to connect people and inspire change. In this post, we'll explore the benefits of personal storytelling for your nonprofit and why it's a strategy worth investing in.
What Is Personal Storytelling?
Personal storytelling is sharing a significant emotional experience with a start, middle, and ending. To say it differently, a story is about a personal account from point A to point C. Stories allow others to see what they see.
Video storytelling heightens this experience by narratively transporting you into the main character's shoes. Indeed, when done well, your brain mirrors the main character's feelings. Science also tells us humans make decisions based on emotions, rationalizing after the fact.
Why not touch the heart of your audience to move their mind to donate, sign a petition, or think differently about a subject?
The Benefits of Personal Storytelling
Storytelling is not sharing facts or statistics or explaining what you do. In fact, these things only matter to your audience once they have a story delivering the context for the facts.
Personal storytelling opens the door of empathy for someone to connect and build relationships. This is why we're a fan of personal storytelling at BairStories and have built our business around it. Emotional storytelling can bring many benefits to your nonprofits, including:
- Making emotional connections: Personal stories are an effective way for nonprofits to connect with their audience on an emotional level. They can create empathy, understanding, and shared experiences between the nonprofit and its supporters.
- Encouraging action: Personal stories can inspire people to take action, whether donating, volunteering, or advocating for the cause.
- Increasing visibility: Personal storytelling can help nonprofits gain more visibility and awareness by sharing stories that showcase their work and mission. This can lead to increased media coverage, social media engagement, and word-of-mouth marketing.
- Humanizing the organization: Personal storytelling can help nonprofits humanize their brand and break down barriers between the organization and its audience. Sharing stories highlighting the people behind the nonprofit can help the audience better understand and relate to the work.
- Creating a sense of community: Personal storytelling can also help build community among nonprofit supporters. Sharing stories illustrating the organization's impact connects people to the nonprofit's mission.
Examples
Charity: Water - This nonprofit organization uses personal storytelling to showcase the impact of its work in providing clean water to people in need worldwide. They create videos that feature personal stories of individuals and communities whose lives have been transformed by access to clean water.
Environmental Initative - As one of our client's Environmental Initative leadership teams is open and has invested in personal storytelling from their work and highlighting the work of others through their annual awards show.
Conclusion
Personal storytelling is a valuable tool to connect with your audience, inspire action, and increase visibility.
