SPURspectives

Given the current economic situation, it’s more important than ever that nonprofits demonstrate their value through stories that show quantitative and qualitative community impact.

Just saying your nonprofit “makes a difference” is no longer enough to motivate many donors, and feel-good stories won’t save you from budget cuts.

The bottom line: While pathos is a powerful tool, you also need to be telling stories that demonstrate the financial and social logic of what you do.

Nonprofit value in 100 words or less
You should develop a pool of community impact stories you can draw on for your marketing, fundraising, and public relations efforts – and those stories should be short and direct.

Boil each story down to the essentials, with a goal of conveying concrete value in around 100 words. Here’s why brevity matters:

• People are bombarded by information. Respect their time and make the most of their attention when you have it.
• Policymakers and business leaders – even those who are already in your corner – want to hear the bottom line. Tell stories that focus on outcomes and impact, not processes.
• You want your staff, volunteers, and advocates to use these stories, too (just like your core messages). When stories are short and to the point, they are easier to remember.
• Great stories are more likely to be shared through social media networks if they are “bite sized.” Make it easy for your fans and followers to make the stories their own and pass them on.

By boiling down the conversation to basics, nonprofits can help shift the dialogue about why they need support from “charity” to “investment.”

Ways of looking at impact
A useful model for three ways of looking at nonprofit impact can be found in Beyond Charity: Recognizing Return on Investment, a report from the Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington in partnership with The World Bank’s Community Outreach Program.

The report looked at impact from three perspectives:

• Cost savings to society – how nonprofits save money by preventing and solving problems, including immediate savings (e.g., community based health care that reduces emergency room visits) and long-term savings that accumulate over time (e.g., job training programs that move people from public assistance to sustainable employment).
• Multiplying impact – how nonprofits multiply the impact of government, corporations, and foundations; supplement funding sources with donated goods and services; and harness the power of volunteers.
• Strengthening community – how nonprofits connect people to each other and to resources to create a safety net, improve quality of life, engage the community, and stimulate reform.

Every nonprofit should have stories showing these three types of impact as part of its communications plan, all designed to support and illustrate the organization’s core messages.

Many nonprofits who find it easy to identify stories that support the second and third categories may struggle when it comes to demonstrating cost savings to society. But finding a way to frame cost savings – both short and long-term – is an important part of demonstrating value.

Here’s an example from Beyond Charity that deals with an issue that doesn’t always find sympathetic audiences – providing services to ex-offenders – and frames it in clear economic terms to show that what may sound like an “expensive” program actually provides significant cost savings.

THE IMPACT:
When the transitional housing program at Friends of Guest House helps a woman released form prison re-enter society successfully, it costs the community 65% less than if she went back to prison for one year.

THE STORY BEHIND THE IMPACT:
Friends of Guest House provides transitional housing and support services to women leaving prison in Northern Virginia. Incarceration at the Northern Virginia Department of Corrections costs approximately $20,000 a year, compared to $7,200 for a six-month stay at Friends of Guest House. Nearly 100% of women who go through the Friends of Guest House program find employment.

Friends of Guest House also has powerful human interest stories to tell about women reclaiming their lives, and those stories are an important part of their communications strategy. But the clear focus on financial impact in this 100-word example demonstrates that support for the program isn’t just about doing something that feels good – it’s a wise use of public and private dollars because it provides immediate cost savings, plus long-term economic impact (the women in the program end up gainfully employed, not back in prison or on public assistance).

Determining the economic impact for the causes you champion may not be second nature, but by framing outcomes in financial terms, you add immediate value to your “ask” – and lasting value to your nonprofit brand.

–Amy Southerland

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Tags: non profit, social media, stories, value