Impact Objective Clarity Across Audiences
Stories are magnetic — especially when they’re the right story told the right way to the right people at the right time. One ion pulling won’t do anything, but millions pulling together creates a powerful pull and a huge impact.
When your stories and impact objective are magnetic, fundraising becomes much easier and more successful.
While it’s tempting to blame unsuccessful fundraising on a lack of resources, whether it’s time, money or staff, our attitudinal research study shows a different reason. Case and point: Mission-driven organizations of all sizes, investment approaches and annual budgets (from $25,000-$1 million) struggle to attract capital and inspire action.
Most of our respondents agree that investing in strong storytelling is essential to reach the investors and donors they want, but only 18 percent see the impact of their current storytelling approaches.
What causes this gap between intention and results?
The clarity decay curve is one of the most significant barriers to storytelling effectiveness and successful fundraising. We found that clarity drops by half when messages travel from leadership to internal team members, which puts understanding the impact objective at risk. Considering that clarity drops to 13 percent when it reaches external stakeholders, it’s no wonder why many impact organizations don’t meet their fundraising goals.
If you want to raise funds, you need to address the clarity decay curve at every level of your communication chain. Without clarity, your story becomes just noise. In our last blog, we discussed how your brand story must connect with internal and external audiences who care deeply about what you do. In today’s post, we’ll talk about how to modify your impact objective if you have multiple external audiences that need to connect with your organization.
Same Story, Different Audiences
Regardless of which audience you’re sharing your story with or which format, there are strategies you can use to ensure it resonates.
Deliver your story when your audience is in the right emotional space to be open to your message. Think about going on a first date. Asking your date to marry you right away would overwhelm them or even push them away.
If your objective is a mutual investment, it takes time, consistency and repetition. Meet your audience where they are. The right kind of visual story will pique their interest in the next step. Video can be a powerful tool at each stage of the sales process, such as awareness, interest, desire and action.
Your audience must be exposed to your story 8-12 times before registering. Frequency is essential. Memories are short. Occupying mind space with your desired audience has a short shelf life and must be replenished.
The goal is to inspire them to take one step, not all the steps. Remember the hero’s journey. While it’s vital to know your organizational DNA and lead with authenticity, you also have to forget about yourself because your story is not about you. Show your audience what their hero’s journey looks like — and what they stand to gain by being part of your brand story.
Solarge Case Study
Let’s look at a quick example to see how a story can resonate with different audiences.
Problem: If you think of renewable energy, you probably picture solar panels. And yet most solar panels have a bad environmental product score. Why? They are not recyclable and are mostly produced in environmentally unfriendly factories. Ironically, this means that in many European countries, even when builders want them, they often cannot include solar panels because of sustainable building regulations.
Solution: Solarge is a Dutch start-up that locally manufactures solar panels from recycled plastic, giving them a far better environmental score for builders. The panels also weigh a fraction of traditional glass panels, which opens up entirely new applications. Not having to be mass-produced in giant coal-powered factories means they can be produced locally and don’t need to be shipped internationally.
Solarge’s overarching story is about its triple green solution: green lifecycle, green energy, and green inclusion. However, like many of you, Solarge’s message had to be tailored to various audiences. Here’s how they did it while maintaining the integrity of their impact objective.
Audiences:
- Installers: Lightweight solar panels take less manpower to install and open up new markets your competition can’t touch.
- Commercial building owners: Triple green solar panels with low MPG scores make it so you can now add energy savings on your roof in record payback time.
- Investors: This category-disrupting innovation requires significantly less upfront capital investment and captures the rising sustainability demand.
Secrets to Fundraising Success
At ISSIMO, we spend a lot of time behind the scenes with impact organizations, helping them tell better stories with clients like responsAbility Investments AG, Triodos Investment Management, Jonathan Rose Companies, and the GIIN.
Over the last few months, we’ve shared research insights and provided a framework for successful fundraising — including that it has nothing to do with having more time and money. The secret is telling the right story in the right way to the right people. Here are our top 8 secrets to fundraising success:
- Speak to both the head and the heart.
- Identify your organizational DNA and lead with authenticity.
- Find an audience that already cares deeply about your mission.
- Center your audience as the hero and you as the guide in your brand story.
- Tailor your message to where your audience is at.
- Aim for simplicity on the far side of complexity.
- Solve the clarity decay curve with consistency and repetition.
- Tell stories that resonate on a deeper human level.
Follow these steps, and raising funds can be easier and more efficient than ever.
To learn more about each segments’ behaviors and how you can tell the right story, check out our entire executive summary. And to explore the data yourself, check it out here.