Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

When Multiple Photos are Better than One

by 1 Comment

Thanks for coming along for the ride as I learn how to get more visual in nonprofit communications!

Let’s say you have a bunch of photos from a nonprofit event. How do you use them to tell your story?

Often, the best thing to do is to find just one photo, of one person, that says what you want to say. Your audience will focus in on one person better than two, three, or a hundred.

(That’s especially important when you’re trying to raise money. One story will win donations. Many? They’re likely to be forgotten.)

When is it better to use multiple photos? When you can combine them to tell a story.

What Makes a Story a Story?

A story is not just one darn thing after another. It’s not a timeline or a list of events.

A real story has a character you care about, who wants or needs something and can’t get it. They try and try. They get into trouble, and maybe they get help. And at last, you find out whether they succeed.

Here’s a very simple story about someone I care about. His name is Rocket J, and he’s a cat.

The Cat and the Closed Door

One morning, Rocket J wanted to go out. It was a very cold morning, and his concerned person, Dennis, thought that Rocket J would be better off inside. “No!” the cat said. “I want to go out!”

He came up to me with an earnest expression. He went over to the door. He turned round and round until his silly human finally got the idea and let him out. Then he ran to the street, just to show he could.

Indoors, his blonde brother, Sunshine, looked out the window quizzically. “I don’t think that was very bright of Rocky,” he said. “Look how cold it is out there! I’m just going to sit on the furniture and look out at the world.”

Your Visuals Can Do Better than Mine!

I took these photos on my iPhone, selected them, and uploaded them to Facebook with the comment, “Outdoor cat and indoor cat.” I’m not the world’s greatest photographer, as you can plainly see, but my Facebook audience loved the story.

Besides taking better photos, I know you can improve on what I did. You can:

  • Edit photos you have stored on your computer or phone.
  • Change the sequence, if you need to, so the action becomes more clear.
  • Pick the right number of photos so all of them are shown at one glance. (You can create an album on Facebook if you want to let your most interested viewers go look at them all.)

What are your  tips for better visual storytelling?

(They don’t have to involve cat pictures.)

Nonprofit Writing: Follow the Golden Rule

by Leave a Comment

Golden Rule

You know it and I know it: a lot of nonprofit writing is just painful to read.

We donate to our favorite causes. In return, we get newsletters full of jargon, emails full of typos, fundraising letters that sound like they’re written in French–because the organization says “We, we, we.”

As people who work for nonprofits, and to ensure their success, we can and should do something about this! Make sure your organization asks itself these five tough questions:

1. Are you listening long enough before you write?

2. Do you think longer and more complicated is more impressive? (Your readers don’t!)

3. Are you writing memos when you should be telling stories?

4. Are you burying the lead? (Does the reader know from the start why he or she should read on?)

5. Are You as Good a Communicator as Shakespeare’s Fools? (Will people invite you to speak truth fearlessly to them because you leaven it with humor?)

None of us wants to cause pain to our supporters. But that means we must think what our supporters want to read! The golden rule of writing is to write unto others the way you wish they wrote unto to you.

What Your Nonprofit’s Emblematic Story Says about You

by Leave a Comment

Your organization may have many success stories to tell. I hope it does! but what is your emblematic success story?

emblem, n. an object or its representation, symbolizing a quality, state, class of persons, etc.; symbol. 

Spiderman emblemSome emblems are visual. When you see the image at the right, you think, Spiderman–hero–using his powers for good.

Some emblems are stories. Can you tell a story about your organization and a time it succeeded that will let people know who you are and what you’re all about– as clearly as the costume does for Spiderman?

An Emblematic Story about Preventing Homelessness

The Somerville, Massachusetts anti-poverty agency CAAS prevents people from being evicted and becoming homeless. When I worked there, I heard this story.

A Brazilian family came to the Portuguese-speaking Housing Advocate at CAAS, Sylvia, for help. They had fallen behind on their rent, and their landlord wanted to evict them. They wanted to stay.

Sylvia looked at the rent the landlord was charging them. She was horrified. “This rent is much higher than the market rate!” she told them. “No wonder you couldn’t pay it!”

“We didn’t know that,” the family said. “We don’t speak much English. The landlord comes from the same part of Brazil that we do. We thought we could trust him. We didn’t think he would take advantage of us.”

“But he did,” Sylvia said. “You don’t really want to stay there. You want to move somewhere with a reasonable rent that you can afford.”

“Fine,” the family said, “but who is going to take us as tenants when we’re five months behind on the rent?”

Sylvia swung into action. She arranged free legal services for the family. In court, the judge ordered them to pay what they could immediately, and he gave them three more months of living in the same place before they had to either pay in full or face eviction. That was three months extra for them.

After the hearing, the landlord was fuming to his lawyer in the hall. “You told me I would get these people out right away!” Sylvia sensed the chance to make a better deal for the family. She grabbed them and their lawyer and the landlord and his lawyer and started negotiating. Finally, they agreed:

  • The family would pay what they could, as the judge had ordered.
  • They would stay in their apartment for only one more month.
  • The landlord would forgive all the back rent.

And Sylvia helped the family apply to Catholic Charities for assistance paying first and last month’s rent at a new place they could afford. Instead of facing homelessness, they would be housed stably for the long term.

What Your Emblematic Story Says about You

Now, consider what you know about CAAS from this story.

  1. The agency hires staff who speak languages besides English.
  2. It serves clients who were born in the U.S. and clients who were born in other countries.
  3. It partners with other agencies to get legal and financial help for the people it serves.
  4. It doesn’t just stop at the problem that’s being presented (the threat of eviction). It recognizes and tries to solve the underlying problem.
  5. Housing advocates at this agency think creatively and advocate boldly.
  6. Like Spiderman, they use their powers for good.

What is your emblematic story? What does it say about your organization?

Yes, I’d like weekly email from Communicate!

Get more advice

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.