Is Your Story Big Enough?

One-day internal workshop for nonprofits designed to revitalize fundraising, membership, and engagement around your cause.

You’re not delivering the numbers you need to produce. Why have people stopped listening? Here’s a little secret: Donors don’t really give to a program or organization; they invest in the bigger story. In other words, donors give to issues where they feel a direct personal connection. Your work must mean something to them, or else their dollars go to a cause that does.

There is a new alternative: and it only takes one-day to start getting traction. The Big Story Workshop – is a dynamic customized session for your core team – designed to re-energize fundraising, membership, and outreach appeals. One client generated over $1 million dollars thru a capital campaign based on their bigger story. Another client preserved $20 million in funding when they returned to the bigger story. Getting to the real story can make all the difference.

The Big Story Workshop is designed to:

1. Uncover the emotional engine that transforms current and potential supporters into “true believers”, and receive the leverage that comes when others are telling the story for you.
2. Gather core leadership to renew excitement about the future that comes when there is broad-based clarity, consensus and confidence in the bigger story.
3. Apply story concepts to high-stakes fundraising, membership, or outreach effort. (You pick one priority and specific initiative you want the workshop to focus on).
4. Re-frame your work in more unifying terms that can build widespread acceptance rather than words or mental models that separate, divide, or alienate.
5. Learn a new strategic mindset for Brand Storytelling that can unleash the intangible and often untapped emotional assets that really power and drive your cause.

Why This Workshop Works

Hi, I’m Michael Margolis, the President of Get Storied. For the past decade I’ve been a pioneer in the fields of brand storytelling and social enterprise. I’m on a personal mission to reframe the conversation for how most of us think about and approach the business of “change”.

I recently published a storytelling manifesto – Believe Me: Why Your Vision, Brand, and Leadership Need a Bigger Story that introduces a new mindset to leverage storytelling strategically and authentically towards the bottom-line.

This one-day workshop distills ideas from my Storytelling Manifesto Believe Me in a format designed to get you internal alignment and immediate results. We’ll move past the status quo and identify core opportunities for your nonprofit to reconnect with the bigger story.

“Right on cue, from the moment I started to read Believe Me, I found myself following Michael’s words and realized how much this short but powerful book was going to influence me, my organization and all our partners involved in social entrepreneurship…”
- Beverly Schwartz, Vice President, Global Marketing, Ashoka

Organizations get stuck internally all the time, which is why my process is focused on internal alignment and consensus building. I’ve previously delivered consulting and led internal story workshops for a wide-range of clients including: AARP, Ernst & Young, Marriott, NASA, National Audubon Society, PBS, The Nature Conservancy, UN Foundation, and YWCA. I understand that more than half the battle is about creating internal clarity and consensus. Commitment and the energy to implement directly follows.

What You Can Expect

This workshop is custom designed for core leaders of your team or nonprofit. The approach will be designed around your existing strategy and campaign goals. We’ll tailor the session to give you immediate results and peace of mind knowing that you’ve got a story that is genuine and attention-grabbing.

So if you’re about to launch a new membership campaign, that’s what we’ll design around. If you need to raise a certain amount of money over the next six months, we’ll focus on that. Regardless, your team will come away with greater clarity, consensus, and commitment around the new story strategy.

Informed by your goals, your team will learn the following:

• Apply an audience empathy technique which puts you in the shoes of your donors or members; and gets you to tell the story from their vantage point, not yours!
• Discover the essential truth through a special process that identifies story themes at the heart of your brand and mission that unite and invite, rather than divide and separate.
• Create contrast frames through a new thinking method clearly communicates the old and new story, and cost of being “stuck” in between.
• Identify story assets through a set of guiding principles that evaluate strengths and vulnerabilities at the strategic vision level, and how to translate them into breakthrough fundraising and membership appeals.
• Develop a co-creation strategy for designing the right “calls to action” that get your audience invested as a direct participant in the story, with a role in helping create the next chapter.

“I feel that I have just participated in a transformational ‘restarting’ point for our agency. We now have the fundamental tools and motivation to reframe our identity.”
Jill Matro, Program Services Dir, Big Brother Big Sisters of Honolulu

This Workshop is a Good Fit If:

• Your nonprofit is in the midst of ambitious change, growth, or re-positioning yet not everybody fully embraces or understands what’s really at stake.
• You’ve trying to introduce a new vision for the future, yet you’re coming up against resistance, fear, and misunderstanding that is jeopardizing results.
• You need creative strategies for fundraising and marketing that go beyond the transactional ask, and instead create lasting relationships with constituents as investors and stewards.
• You are trying to shift public perception for your work and the issues you champion; yet old storylines and past associations are still stuck in people’s minds.
• You’re tired of tabling the “difficult conversations” for a “later time” that never seems to come and leaves everyone treading water instead of clearly moving forward.

Requirements for Success

This one-day workshop is designed to create breakthrough results and immediate traction with fundraising and membership objectives. It requires a serious commitment and follow-through in order to achieve desired outcomes.

Here are some additional criteria for success:

• You need to assemble the right people who are empowered to move things forward and build consensus at the leadership level. This is an in-house workshop, with key officers of your organization, and possibly board members.
• You need at least six people, and limited to a maximum of twenty participants. The more intimate the group the better, but you should think about who needs to be in the room to ensure a successful outcome.
• You’re really committed to moving forward and taking action on breakthroughs that emerge from the workshop. This means the leadership is open to new ways of telling the story, especially when they see that it really makes sense.
• You must share extensive background materials on both the historic and future stories (e.g. annual reports, strategic plan, financials, fundraising materials, marketing collateral, etc…). Confidentiality is strictly maintained, and can be re-iterated through a non-disclosure agreement.
• You complete a pre-workshop survey designed to identify your existing goals, challenges, and opportunities – and what untapped story assets you have at your disposal.

Your Next Step if Interested

This workshop is not for every organization. It’s designed to challenge assumptions and deliver immediate actionable breakthroughs for your fundraising, membership, and outreach objectives. Your organization needs to be ready for the conversation.

If you’re interested, let’s schedule a complimentary Big Story Strategy Session. In this conversation, we’ll discuss your needs, challenges, and opportunities, and see if the Big Story Workshop would indeed be a good fit for your team. Email me to schedule the session.