A Practical Approach to Telling Your Non-Profit’s Story
- makeitmatterprogra
- Jan 5
- 4 min read
Want to tell a better story in 2026 to help others know your non-profit matters? Here's how.
Here's what you'll learn in this article:
A practical approach to start telling a better story about your non-profit today.
3 steps to telling your non-profit’s story.
Additional services and resources to Make It Matter.
A non-profit’s evidence is what it does, and its story is why it matters.
Non-profits face a lot of obstacles. In addition to typically tight resources, they also often face outsize expectations from the public to solve humanity’s problems for $20, while also making a splashy video about their efforts. While the outsize expectations are problematic, there is also something to be gained in being clear about what you are doing and why.
Unfortunately, a lot of non-profits aren’t clear about their mission and vision, which makes it difficult for the public to engage. Avoid this lack of clarity in 2026 by having your non-profit’s story ready.
Three simple steps to telling a compelling story about your non-profit’s.
Having a compelling story about your non-profit is broadly useful to your non-profit whether onboarding staff or talking to potential donors. Here’s how to get your story ready for the new year:
Know the Elements of Your Story
To create a compelling story for your non-profit you need to know the basic elements: problem, role, and audience.
What is the problem you want solved?
What is your non-profit’s role in solving the problem? What does your program do at its core?
Who benefits from what your program does to solve this problem?
With these three building blocks you can create a compelling story for your non-profit that tells people what you are doing to solve a problem and who is helped by having that problem solved.
For example, here’s how a story could look for a fictitious non-profit called Youth Learning Connections.
What is the problem you want solved?
Address worse educational outcomes among youth.
What is your non-profit’s role in solving the problem? What does your program do at its core?
Youth Learning Connections (YLC) provides free extracurricular educational classes to youth.
Who benefits from what your program does to solve this problem?
Youth still experiencing the effects of learning loss from the COVID Pandemic with limited access to extracurricular education resources.
Put it together
With the basic elements of your story at hand, you will want to put it together in a compelling narrative. Choose words and a format that fit your audience. You can also create different versions of your story for different audiences (e.g., donors vs. volunteers). The important part is keeping the elements the same and varying how you tell the story.
To put it together in a compelling narrative you’ll want to cover the following:
Line one captures the problem, role, and audience.
Line two captures and ideal example of your program working.
Line three highlights an opportunity from line two to elevate your program.
Line four highlights the current need of your program to pursue that new opportunity.
Line five is the call to action for how people can support you in meeting the needs of that new opportunity.
Continuing with our fictitious example:
Line 1: Every day Youth Learning Connections is providing free educational classes to youth to address growing research that today’s youth are at risk for worse outcomes related to declining educational engagement.
Line 2: One day the facility was quietly humming with youth engaged in classes for coding and starting a business.
Line 3: Because of that we knew we were giving youth an outlet that needed to be shared.
Line 4: Because of that we asked participants about becoming youth ambassadors to help us connect with more local schools and collaborate with potential funders.
Line 5: Youth Learning Connections needs your support to connect with other schools and engage talented and successful community members to support classes.
3. Simplify for Impact
With a drafted story reach out to colleagues for feedback on how to simplify and add impact. You can also ask key donors and volunteers who engage with your organization what they think. The aim is to get broad input that you can readily apply, not to get bogged down in constant fine tuning. If people are worried about that level of fine tuning, remind them that the story can evolve over time, you can also try different versions with different audiences to inform your decision-making about which is the best fit for your program’s needs.
This story can be used in a variety of ways to help your program such as: an elevator pitch, on your website as text or a video, to inform social media posts, and in talking with staff, volunteers, donors and other stakeholders.
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