Mission-Driven Storytelling for Nonprofits: How to Tell Your Nonprofit Story More Compellingly & Effectively
- Date & Time: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
- Time: 9.30am – 11.30am
- Location: Hotel Downstreet, Studio B, North Adams
As a passionate staffer or leader of a nonprofit organization, you are often called upon to tell your organization’s story in a range of venues and modes: from writing materials for your website or donor fundraising letters, to speaking on stage at galas or awards events. But how do you get your story to truly connect with your audience in more compelling ways, especially when it’s more challenging than ever to increase awareness, let alone raise funds?
In this 2-hour interactive workshop, join storytelling coach and facilitator Hari Stephen Kumar for a hands-on introduction to practical storytelling techniques that will inspire and motivate your audiences to take action. You will learn:
- Why stories work so well to connect with audiences – and what NOT to do in storytelling.
- How to center your organization’s story around your constituents as the main characters.
- How to connect the programmatic details (the what and how) of your organization’s activities with a clear and compelling why (the motivating tension) that drives the story.
- How to include just the right amount of detail when telling your story in scenes – show don’t tell, yes, but what does that actually mean for your stories?
- Practical and visual story crafting tools that you can take away back to your organization to use for working on your next set of stories.
This is primarily a storytelling workshop, so come prepared to verbally share aloud with each other and to the larger group as we will practice storytelling techniques together. Most of the principles and techniques we will cover will also apply just as well to written storytelling.
About your facilitator:
Hari Stephen Kumar is the founder and CEO of Convivo, a training and coaching company with the mission of helping people connect by building authentic communication skills. He is a facilitator and storytelling coach who is passionate about creating transformative and joyful learning experiences. Hari brings 20+ years of expertise in training and facilitation across wide ranging careers in both academia and the tech industry, with graduate degrees in engineering (M.S. Boston University, 2000) and in communication (M.A. UMass Amherst, 2011). He has worked as an engineer and trainer at tech companies (MathWorks, Slack/Salesforce) and as a scholar and college instructor in the humanities and social sciences (UMass Amherst, Amherst College). In 2020, he founded VoPro Pros, a nationwide all-volunteer organization focused on voter protection, now over 2500 members strong. Hari is also an immigrant with routes and roots that include India, Yemen, Arizona, and 27 consecutive winters in New England. Hari is a volunteer with Berkshire Bounty, is an active member of the 1Berkshire Youth Leadership Program Steering Committee, and serves on the board of the Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires.