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Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
How to Unlock the Power of Storytelling for Your Nonprofit
00:31:17
In this episode of the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast, host Dr. Rob Harter welcomes storytelling expert Vanessa Chase Lockshin, founder of The Storytelling Non-Profit and ...
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- [00:02]
Dr. Rob Harder
This is Dr. Rob Harder with the Nonprofit Leadership podcast, Making youg World Better. What does it take to be an effective nonprofit leader today? What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles? How should nonprofits fundraise in an economy that is constantly changing? All these reasons combined led me to start this show, and it's my hope that through this series, people can learn not only what it takes to be an effective nonprofit organization, but to hear from effective leaders who. Who are successfully making a positive impact in their communities. We hope you enjoy the show as together we hear how they are making their world better. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. How are things going for you? You know, I've had lots of conversations with colleagues in the nonprofit world across the country, and I know this has been a real uncertain time since the beginning of the year, particularly when it comes to the funding landscape right now. And so if you're one of those that is just struggling through, trying to figure out, how are you going to adjust to the new reality and perhaps adjust your budget, adjust how you're raising funds? Hang in there. I know it's hard. Leading nonprofits is a very difficult thing. And when there's challenges when it comes to development and raising funds, that just adds to the layers of complexity and difficulty. So hang in there. That's why we need each other, right? We're. That's why we're in a community together. In fact, you know, as I think about the topic today, you know, nonprofits do such good work, and oftentimes you get so busy in the work, and you get so focused on doing so many different things. And particularly if you're in a smaller nonprofit, you wear a lot of hats as an executive director or whatever role you're in as a paid staff, you can wear a lot of different hats. And it's hard to really stay focused on the key things. And one of those key things that every nonprofit leader should be really focused on is telling great stories about your nonprofit and the people you're impacting, the people you're serving, the lives that are changing because of your nonprofit organization. And that's the topic today. With my guests, I've got Vanessa Chase Lockshin, and she wrote a book on storytelling in nonprofits. In fact, that's her nonprofit as well. And it's all about how do you tell a good story? Like, how do you get better at telling stories? How do you know what to select and how to share it? And what about the differences between offline sharing and online sharing? Does the impact of social media make such a difference now that we got to keep our stories much shorter. 30 seconds or a minute, no more. And how do you tell a little bit more of an in depth story that really has context and more richness to the story? Well, these and other questions I ask of Vanessa because she's been doing this a long time. She now consults with other nonprofits, helping them to do better with their storytelling, in particular when it's integrated into fundraising. So if you're wanting to improve your storytelling ability, this is a great podcast for you. And so we're so glad you're here. Thanks so much for tuning in. Now onto the show. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox. DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. So glad to have Vanessa here on the show. Vanessa, thanks for joining today.
- [03:06]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Thanks for having me.
- [03:07]
Dr. Rob Harder
Absolutely. Well, as we said before, we hit record, you know, telling stories in and through your nonprofit, such a critical skill to develop over time because I have found in my own experience leading nonprofits for many years, being able to tell the story of your nonprofit and to tell the story of the lives of are impacted by your nonprofit is just, it really is what grabs people's attention. I believe it's what donors get excited about, board members get excited about, other staff members. And so this is, I know one of your specialty areas. You've written a book on it. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about stories today. What are the fundamental qualities in your mind that make a story great? Let's start there.
- [03:44]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
I think there's a couple of things. One of the things I always think about that differentiates, I always feel like a story from a testimonial or a story from like a summary of something is that stories are told with emotions and details. Like that is the richness and nuance of a story is when there's details and emotions and little things that people can kind of anchor into and feel or remember about what they've read. And I think that's always useful to kind of specify as like, what makes kind of like a good story. Because so often I see stories out in the wild where they're just kind of like the chronological what happened to somebody? Like somebody was dealing with this problem, they came to our organization, they did this thing. Now here's what's going on with them. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, that is like very much like the linear timeline of maybe what somebody's experienced with an organization from a program standpoint, but it doesn't really capture, like, the emotional experience of what was going on. And to me, I think that that's the big thing that we all want to do, is capture some of that magic in the stories.
- [04:46]
Dr. Rob Harder
Love that. No, I think you're absolutely right. I think about some of the stories that I still remember, you know, some of the ones that stand out from listening to other people that are effective at doing it is. It's the details that seem maybe insignificant initially, but then they. The ones that draw you in. And so I think that's a great way to start. Then, when it comes to storytellers creating strong connection with their audience, that's tricky. In fact, maybe what I'd like to ask it this way, what are the key devices that you feel like you could mention? And to achieve this connection? But also, we're spending more and more time on zoom, just like we're doing now, you know, on video conferencing. Is there a difference? Connecting with people through video versus just a live audience? So let's talk about that difference, too.
- [05:27]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Well, I think one of the good places to start with building connection, especially with when we're talking about fundraising stories or using stories for a fundraising purpose, is thinking about the common values that we have with that audience. Like, what are kind of the shared things that we can all just kind of, like, nod our heads along with and be like, yeah, like, of course we agree with that. Like, you know, I always think about some storytelling work I did for a rape price at center probably about a decade ago now, and one of our kind of, like, unobjectionable truths that we knew people would agree with, that was a really key part of all stories we told, which was that no survivor that came to the organization should have to wait for help. Like, they should be able to get counseling help as soon as they wanted it to. And it was one of those things where it was like, yeah, like, we all agree about this. Like, it's a really unobjectionable, like, fact that we can just kind of embrace. And I think having those things and stories can sometimes frame a story really well and get people invested in it more quickly because they're like, oh, yeah, like, this thing is already true for me. I already agree with this. So, like, the story is more interesting or I want to hear more about it. In terms of writing, like, a hook for a story. The thing that I often tell people to think about is really bringing the most interesting or engaging piece of information to the top of the story. So often I see people bury the leap like the best and most interesting tidbit or piece of information way down in the middle of the story because they think they have to build up to that. And sometimes, sometimes if you write it that way, that's fine. Like, I certainly write first drafts that way myself. But. But when I go back and edit and think about like, how can I make this better, how can I improve this appeal or the story that I've told, I always think about, where is that kind of like punchy, interesting piece of the story right now? And can it exist higher up to catch somebody's attention and cage them sooner? And if so, like, what does that look like? Can I restructure the story to make that work? And I think that that's a really useful editing tip to think about. You know, there's so many ways to get into telling a story. The other one that I really like is just kind of taking an out of context quote from the story. And sometimes that might be like your most interesting quote or most powerful quote and starting with that and saying, you know, like, like having, you know, the quote and then saying, you know, this is what Vanessa, one of our program participants, said about XYZ thing. And that can really get you into the story much more quickly rather than kind of having to like build up to the action of what's going on. But I think to your point, just about like kind of the multimedia nature of stories these days, whether, you know, we're telling a story on paper through email, or we're using visuals and sound and other things, you know, sometimes the more mediums that you have to use in the storytelling process, the more engaging your story is probably going to be because you can kind of create a little bit more of a sensory experience with it. Whereas with sending a direct mail appeal letter or writing an email, you do have to really rely on the words themselves to kind of evoke all of those things. But if you have a video, you know, you can, can have different voices, you can have B roll in there, you can have music, all of these things can kind of help create the container that that story is in and create the experience that you want people to have with it.
- [08:29]
Dr. Rob Harder
Okay, I like that. And we're coming back. I've got another question about video storytelling versus, you know, just written and, or live telling. But let's talk a little bit more. Maybe you'll get to this, but the techniques when it comes to like, if you're selecting a character or person you want to highlight in a story and really bring them to life in a story. What are the techniques that you recommend people to use? Bring that in that story to life so it feels like they get to know the person.
- [08:53]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
The number one thing I always think about is the authenticity of the person whose story I'm trying to tell. Like, I don't want them to just. I feel like their, their story is just kind of like being run through a machine by this organization and it's coming out the other side and it doesn't feel like them. It doesn't feel authentic to what they experience themselves or how they would talk about it. And so when I sit down and I interview people for their stories and try to get at like, what they've experienced and how they want to talk about it, I really listen carefully for a lot of the word choice that they use. Like, are they talking about something from a positive frame or a negative frame? Do they use certain words? Is there a certain emotional quality to the words that they're using to talk about an experience that they've had and making sure that I can mirror that in the story itself. Because people connect with authenticity. That's a really important part of marketing and fundraising, is that authenticity. And that also builds trust with our audience as well, having those authentic voices as a part of storytelling and fundraising and marketing. So that's always one part that I look at. I think that the other thing is that coming to story interviews as like, in some ways, like, prepared, like having some questions that we want to ask somebody is always a good place to start. Doesn't have to be a lot of questions, but I always come to them with, you know, a handful of questions that I want to ask somebody and then think about just being an observer in the conversation and seeing like, what else kind of comes up and where could this conversation take us. Like, there's always unexpected things, I think, that happen when I talk to people about their experiences. And I think being open to, like, some of the serendipity of that and being able to capture that in the story itself allows you to ultimately portray the person in their story in a more like three dimensional way. You know, that you, you may not be able to otherwise, but I think in terms of like, characters themselves, like, what do you want to look for and what do you want to think about? You know, I always think about, you know, how can we pick somebody's story who, you know, is representative of what a lot of people go through in our organization? It's not like a Real outlier in terms of experience, like we want again, like authenticity of what people are going through. Somebody who, you know, maybe has been with the organization a while to some degree, who can speak to a lot of different facets of what the organization is doing. And I would say this last one isn't applicable to every organization, but making sure that as somebody, if they've been through something traumatic, feels informed and ready to talk about it so that we're not retraumatizing them in the process. It's really, really important. And I've definitely had clients over the years who feel like. Like people should tell us their stories, like we've helped them, like they. This is part of like this cycle of like all of us doing good and nobody owes an organization their story. It's a real privilege to get stories from people. And the more I think that we as nonprofit professionals can be respectful of that and make, I think, safe spaces and also like trauma informed spaces for people to talk about their experiences. It's going to be a more positive experience for everybody in the process.
- [11:55]
Dr. Rob Harder
I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah. Staying trauma informed, when you're telling stories, it's really critical, particularly if you have a nonprofit. Yeah. You're serving vulnerable populations or people with difficult stories. I think that's a really wise piece of advice to really just be careful how you're telling the story because you don't want to re traumatize anybody or that they hear it later. Right. And certainly if they post it online, you know, the story, it gets picked up maybe, and then it's on their website and. And then the people they're serving are traumatized by. Yeah. So that's really good advice. Okay. Now speaking of that, when it comes to tension or conflict, a lot of storytellers would say that's really critical in telling a good story. So when it comes to fundraising, say, and just telling stories from a nonprofit's perspective, how do you recommend people to present tension and conflict again? So it's genuine and authentic, but also a real key part of the story itself.
- [12:43]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
I always think about the fact that conflict is what is helping us build the case for support and fundraising without there being like a problem in the story. There's really no problem for donors to solve with their money. Right. So we've got to. We've got to give them something good that makes them engaged in that process and engaged in what the problem is. There's a couple of things I think about though. You know, I always think about like what is the problem, you know, and how can I kind of frame that and talk about that in the story? But I also think about answering this question, why is the problem a problem? Which is kind of a funny question to think about. But, you know, there's so many things, like, we can tell people, like, you know, like, this person has trouble, like, feeding their family every month, or, you know, hasn't been able to make ends meet due to, like, economic pressures around inflation or, you know, like, whatever somebody might be going through. And I think a lot of times we think, well, like, people can connect the dots about why this is a problem. And in some cases, that is true. I think that is legitimate to assume that in some cases, however, it's not always the case. And it's really valuable to just say what you want to say sometimes in the story and to just make it really clear for people what the tension or what the problem is there. I think the thing I always see people run into with fundraising appeals, especially like with writing, is that they often are relying too much on the audience to come to the same conclusion they've come to already. And sometimes if we are not making it as clear as possible for our donors and our supporters to come to the same conclusion that we've already come to, they're not going to come to it. Like, it's not going to be the same for them. And so rather than just kind of like beating around the bush and like, inferring things and hoping people will understand what the tension and the conflict is there, just being direct is like, one of the best things that we can do, especially if it's a written story.
- [14:24]
Dr. Rob Harder
Such a good point. I think you're absolutely right on that. Yeah, totally. Okay, so when it comes to stories resolution, what are some of the key elements you think that should be included, particularly when it comes to a call to action for donations? And I've talked to a lot of my coaching practice and I work do consulting. Oftentimes when we communicate to our donors and just to our board members and just to the community as a whole, we don't do enough specific calls to action. And I think that's what really is important when it comes to nonprofits, particularly when you're trying to raise money, you have to have a clear call to action. So maybe talk about that. How do you bring that about in the story's resolution?
- [15:00]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. You know, 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago, when I started this work myself, I. I got the sense that a Lot of people felt like, well, telling a story is, like, the end point. Like, we've told the story, they should know what to do. Like, no, like, again, like, that's making the assumption that people are coming to the same conclusion as us, which they're not. So, you know, have it, like, thinking about from the start, like, before you ever write something, like, what is it you want people to do as a result of this story that they're reading or watching is. Is a really valuable thing that you can. You can think through. But if it's a fundraising ask, you know, being, you know, clear, specific, and tangible are kind of the baselines for a fundraising ask. You know, telling somebody, you know, your $50 donation can help somebody like Vanessa access food for their family this month, or, you know, your $50 donation means that we can provide an hour of counseling to people who come to our support center. Those sort of things are really valuable. I know a lot of organizations feel like they cannot kind of come to that level of specificity and tangibility about their work, which. Fair enough. Like, that. That's not every organization. But there's still things that you can say that are tangible about your work. Like, you know, don't use that as an excuse to kind of cop out of the exercise. You know, like, I think about, like, an organization I worked with for a number of years as a consultant. They help children with special needs and complex healthcare needs, and they did a lot of different work to provide families with grants and money to be able to help their kids. And I always thought about, like, well, what is, like, the phrase that we use to characterize all of this to help people, to help it feel, like, tangible enough but not so specific that we're saying, like, $50 does this thing. And so the language that we often used was that, like, your donation helps kids have the resources, support, and equipment they need to thrive. And those were kind of, like, broad enough categories that it captured a lot of what the organization was doing, but it never pigeonholed us into anything super specific with an appeal. And so I think it can be really useful to just think about, like, how do you characterize the impact? If you had to say it in a couple of words, what could you say there to make it a little bit more specific and tangible for people? When you get to that call to action?
- [17:12]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yeah. Okay, I like that. We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's donations? Well, look no further than DonorBox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations and simplifies giving for your supporters. With DonorBox, you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is www.donorbox.org. okay, now as we started thinking about coming up with a plan where you think throughout a given quarter, let alone a year, and if you were to coach a nonprofit team, hey, you need to create a storytelling kind of plan, if you will, for the whole year, how to consistently good stories about your organization to continue to keep that engagement high. How do you do that? What would you recommend? What's most important in doing that? And then again, going back, let's go back to that issue of how much of these stories should be videos and put on social media, like those quick little Instagram stories and, or whatever platform you use. Or how much should be like a professional video occasionally that really captures the story of a person if they're willing to be on camera and really tell somebody's story in a very powerful, almost documentary style of telling a story. Talk about that. What have you found to be most successful for nonprofits when it comes to that?
- [18:51]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, I mean, I think it's like anything in our nonprofits work, right? Like, we don't just want to do it for the sake of doing it. Like, we want the work that we're doing to be impactful and effective. And so with storytelling, I always tell people orient themselves towards like, what is the purpose of storytelling for the organization? Like, is it brand awareness? Is it programmatic expansion? Is it fundraising? Like understanding why you're telling those stories is, is the most helpful place to understand. And then think about like you know, kind of bird's eye view over a quarter, let's say, like what are the opportunities you have for storytelling? You know, and that's probably going to be fundraising campaigns, it's going to be donor communications, it might be social media communications, things like that. And understanding like what those opportunities are can help you even think about like what stories do we want to be telling in there? And I think the other piece to think about is, and this is maybe a little bit more of a strategic communications piece too, is what is kind of the narrative over that quarter? So what is like the story over time that you're telling about the organization, about its impact? And narrative is like I always think it's such like a nebulous thing sometimes for people to grasp because it really, narrative really is the result of stories, communications, like other kind of brand assets that people engage with over time. And it's really their impression and takeaway from their experience with your organization. But you know, if we are kind of like thoughtful and proactive in it, like we can be shaping narrative, we can be shaping people's understanding of the issues that we're working on, of the impact that we have. All of those things, we just have to sit in the driver's seat with it rather than just like thinking piecemeal about communications and fundraising and just kind of like putting things out there, but not really thinking about, like how they all fit together over time. And the value in thinking about that, about like, how do things fit together is that over time, especially leading into something like year end fundraising, you're able to get a lot more traction with your messaging and get a lot more momentum going into campaigns because you've been engaging people really specifically with something that you want to talk about leading into a campaign. So ultimately can be really beneficial for organizations to just think about like, what is that plan and how can we kind of like reverse engineer people into a campaign?
- [21:06]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yeah. Okay, good. When it comes to then building like say a library of stories, I think your book talks about this to build a story library and trying to find new leads for new stories. How do nonprofit leaders go about that? And maybe another question related to that. I'm thinking about smaller non profits, right. That don't have a dedicated marketing person or someone who this is what their main job is. How do you recommend them to gather these stories, find new leads and do an effective job if it's just a handful of people on staff that are paid?
- [21:35]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
I was just having this conversation with a client yesterday during their retreat. So it's very timely. Yeah. And they're, they're a pretty small organization. I think that this is one of those things where storytelling becomes a team sport and it becomes everything, like all hands on deck in some ways, even at a large organization. And you know, I, I've worked at organizations where there's, you know, 200 people on staff. And you know, like I, as a fundraiser was so removed from frontline work, like I was never going to be the one to get those stories directly. Right. Like that just was not my role in the organization, nor was it something I could like get at easily. And so even if for a large organization there is a need for everybody to kind of collaborate across departments and across roles, it's really helpful to think about what you're looking for specifically in stories. Like, the problem I see a lot of organizations run into is they will just ask staff or they'll ask clients. They'll say, like, you know, share your story with us. And it's. That's like the beginning and end of the request. And a lot of people don't think, like, oh, like, I have a good story to share. But if you ask something more specific, like, you know, share your Medicaid story with us, like, we're, you know, we're putting together a campaign about, like, why Medicaid matters, like, share a story with us about how Medicaid has helped you in your life. Like, people can think about that a little bit differently and come at that, you know, with more clarity about, like, what they could offer in that situation. And so this kind of comes back to the idea of, like, planning your stories and thinking about what you might need for the quarter or the year ahead. If you are the person kind of doing that thinking and that kind of strategizing, you probably have a better idea than of what it is you need. And you can make those more specific requests to colleagues, to volunteers, to clients to get out there and ask for those things. So I would start with that. That's a really good place to start. And then in terms of building up over time, you don't necessarily need, like, hundreds of stories or dozens of stories for it to be effective. But I always remind people that even when we share a story once, people don't always remember it a year later, a month later. We can repurpose these things in different channels, in different ways, and we can continue to use those stories to drive home the points we want to drive home. And so it's really more beneficial to think about the quality of the stories that we're gathering rather than, like, the quantity of stories that we need for the work to be effective. But it's one of those things where, like, if you kind of consistently work at it, we can in fact kind of gather more stories over time and have more of that content, story content available to use, which is really helpful for organizations. So I always tell people to think about opportunities where you're together with team or with people from outside of kind of your own work bubble in the organization where you can make requests like staff meetings, weekly meetings, seeing people at lunch. Like, these are all good opportunities to ask people for stories that you might be looking for, have conversation, and also just be listening. Like, people tell you interesting things. Be like, oh, that sounds like A really interesting case that you're working on. Like, would that be a story that we might be able to share in a newsletter or something? And so some of it's just about shifting your own mindset in those kind of conversations and opportunities.
- [24:44]
Dr. Rob Harder
I like it. You said something interesting I want to follow up on. When have you told a story too much? Or when can a nonprofit tell a story that's particularly powerful? That because I know this, even as an executive director, CEO of a nonprofit, it's tough. You get a great story or two and you tell it a lot because it's such a powerful one, particularly encapsulates your whole mission. When do you get to the point where you've told that story too many times? What would you say to that? Is that possible?
- [25:08]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, it's a good question. I think it is probably. You know, I think about clients that I've worked with over the years, especially ones who have been in like capital campaigns and they will often have like, I don't know, like faces of the campaign. They'll have like a handful of people and stories that are a part of that campaign for a few years. And that I think there can be effective in some ways because there is some brand recognition around it, some familiarity with the stories. Like, like, you know, I worked for a pretty large social social service organization in Vancouver years ago and I think about the way that we ran our holiday end of year campaigns. We would pick one or two stories to be kind of like the main story of the campaign and direct mail and advertising and every everything. And that story would be everywhere. That person's picture would be everywhere. On bus ads, like in the newspaper, on radio ads, indirect mail and email. And so I think we also too sometimes feel like have people seen this too much? But you know, oftentimes people need to see things multiple times to respond. And sometimes that familiarity of like, I've seen that picture, that picture was in my email and there's that person over there on the bus. Or you know, like that can help people feel like, oh yeah, like I wanted to make a donation to that organization and hopefully get them over to where we need them to be. I think over time though, like, if it's not like more of a tightly contained campaign, like you're in campaign, for instance, I think that like over a couple of years, like it's also useful to just think about like the story itself. Like, is it still overall in alignment with like the messaging and the brand of the organization, like, has that shifted? And like, maybe the story doesn't make as much sense for some things we really want to be talking about now. And that's fine. Like, we can put the story where it needs to go and, you know, find other ones that feel like they are a better fit. But, you know, on the whole, I think that organizations usually end up benefiting from telling the story a little bit more often than they think they should.
- [27:03]
Dr. Rob Harder
Okay, no, that's good. That's helpful, because I do. I. I've seen. I've done it myself and I've seen others do that. So. Yeah, that's great. Great answer. But I do think you said something also very interesting because I've seen this to be true, too. When you do tell a story effectively and you. And actually post it in multiple ways, you know, print media, social media, maybe it's on your website, you tell it an event, it does take, what, six or seven times for people to finally like, oh, that's the story. Oh, yeah, that's what. That's what you're doing. That's your mission. I do think there's some ineffectiveness up to a point. So I'm sure there's a. You crossover after a while and you're like, okay, get some new stories. All right, last one. Maybe with social media and really, I think video communication and email and all these things are just different ways we communicate. But I also know when it comes to, like, communication of stories, social media has, in a sense, pushed to tell these stories much shorter. In other words, you can't really tell a story more than two minutes maybe really a minute on social media. So a lot of people go about, you know, chopping up the story into multiple, you know, vignettes. Some people just keep the stories really short, and then you can always click on it and then find that they're listening to the entire video, say, on their website. What are your suggestions about that? Is it better to have a lot of little minute here, clips of stories, or is it still effective to have some of those longer stories that have more of a context behind it and a little bit more buildup of the story itself? Because I do think a minute can be tough to really get all the elements you're talking about in a story when it comes to social media stories. Anyway. So what's your thoughts on that? What's your recommendation?
- [28:34]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
I think that sometimes part of the challenge is that, like, all of these mediums ask something very different of us in terms of telling the story. Right? Like direct mail and email. Like, we have a lot of words for real Estate to be able to tell the story. You know, these days with like reels, for instance, on Instagram, like, we maybe have like 30 seconds or maybe longer, depending. Like, I know I think they can be up to two minutes now, but you know, still, like, people's attention is not that long. And so there's a need for us, us to kind of factor that into however long we want these stories to be. I think that part of, part of what this calls for a lot of times is like the skill of discernment on our part is like looking through the story, the notes we have for it, and discerning, like, what are the really catchy good pieces of this story that we want to include. And over time, figuring that out, I think you can also to just like, look at what your audience is responding to and tap things over time. See, like, do you get more watch time from people or watch playthroughs for certain types of things versus others. I think those that's all really valuable information. We can kind of feed back to ourselves about what kind of story content we want to be creating. Also say, too, I have a client who's using a really interesting AI tool right now on video making short form videos. It is specifically developed for nonprofits. It's called Arbor. And it uses AI to analyze longer video clips and help you narrow them down to short form, which I think is pretty interesting. Yeah, so there's, I think there's also like, lots of tools like right now like that that can help us figure out, like, how do we want to tell a short form story for social media.
- [30:09]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yeah. Okay. Well, this is good. Well, for my listeners who want to get to know you a little bit better or learn about your book, where would you send them?
- [30:16]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Yeah, you can find more about me and my work over on the storytellingnonprofit.com and you can find my book, the storytelling nonprofit over on Amazon.
- [30:23]
Dr. Rob Harder
Okay, perfect. Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for all you're doing to help us become better storytellers. But also, thanks for taking time to be on the show.
- [30:30]
Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Thank you.
- [30:32]
Dr. Rob Harder
Hey, friends. Well, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found on itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google podcasts, and wherever you listen to other podcasts. I also want to encourage you to, like, subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You can also join the nonprofit leadership podcast community, find other resources and interviews of past guests, all on my website, nonprofitleadershippodcast.org well, thanks again for listening. And until next time, keep making your world better. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox, Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.