Stop Scrambling to Prove Your Organization’s Worth
Why Storybanks?
Whatever the opportunity, you need the people on the other side to believe in your organization's work. Your communications team is stretched so thin—you can't ask them to drop everything (again) and react to this opportunity. So you're sitting at the kitchen table, it's 9 p.m. and you're cobbling together old examples or writing from memory instead of the real voices of the people you serve.
I've seen nonprofit leaders make the shift that enables them to walk into any meeting or apply to any grant or post on any channel with confidence by building a storybank. We build our storybanks inside Canva, the tool almost every nonprofit uses or can access for free. So today I'm going to share the three reasons why our answer turned out to be building a Canva Storybank.
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Reason 1: Readiness
Investing in a storybank means that you have the stories you need before you need them. So when I build Canva Storybanks for my clients, I start by inviting constituents of the organization to record remote interviews whenever possible. I do this after first building trust with the program team or whichever staff member has a direct relationship with the constituent, depending on if they're a:
Interview subjects include:
Program participants
Alumni
Staff
Board members
Donors
Partners
With each constituent, I also build trust and rapport ahead of the interview. I hold space for them to share, and I treat them as the rightful owner of their story. And if the Executive Director can join the interview, it adds a whole other dimension to the experience. One Executive Director I worked with shared this.
"When Joey interviewed our program alumni, watching him create that space for authentic storytelling reconnected me with why I do this work. When you're sitting on these interviews, you believe in your impact all over again. You know your prospective donors and funders will believe it too."
Reason 2: Efficiency
A Canva Storybank helps you attract and retain supporters efficiently by bringing together all of the components your team needs to product impactful content. This one-stop-shop approach lowers the cost of telling your story over time.
Storybanks include:
Raw interview clips
The photo dump from your last event
Finished assets—newsletters, graphics, and videos
The tools that turn the raw material into the finished assets—brand templates, key messages, strategy documents
So, that client success story from three months ago? That becomes your perfect proof point for that grant proposal you're working on. And a reflection from a volunteer becomes that hook for your next fundraising email.
Reason 3: Culture
A Canva Storybank builds a strategic storytelling culture in your organization by gathering everyone around the storytelling process:
Story Collectors—people who collect the stories
Story Crafters—people who shape them
Storytellers—people who share them with their networks
Because of your Canva Storybank:
The Program Manager who gets this gorgeous email from a participant knows exactly where to put it so the comms director can find it and knows exactly how to ask for permission to use it.
The Communications Director who wants to be more strategic and less reactive finally gets the space to be the leader that they are.
The Development Director has the stories they need to invite donors in so that when the ask comes, it's easier to say yes.
The Grant Writer who needs to differentiate their application from the slush pile knows where to find the raw, authentic testimonial. And because of your Canva Storybank
The Board Member who knows that they should be fundraising but is like low-key afraid of rejection has a new video that he can share with their networks that makes them feel proud and eager.
Storytelling that Makes Your Life Easier
Do you have storytelling efforts happening under your watch that are really more about checking the box than achieving your strategic goals? A storybank is a tool that you can use to unlock a different kind of leadership, the kind that doesn't burn you out or force you to fight for your organization's worth over and over again—at least not without the right tools.
But before you contract somebody to build your Canva Storybank or tap your team to do a DIY, I wanna help you prepare. This video is the first in a series where I'll give you a step-by-step roadmap for the three phases of building your Canva Storybank, collecting stories, curating them, and crafting them. Join the list in the description below and let me help you build a case for your mission and work, story by story.
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