Dave McClure, Executive Director of the Youth Service Bureau of Illinois Valley, knows the power of stories in fundraising. Every week he writes a story and sends it out to 1400 e-letter subscribers.

Before I share one of Dave’s stories from a recent e-letter here’s my own story of discovering the power of stories.

In the early 1980’s the nonprofit where I served as personnel director contracted with a management trainer to have him do a series of workshops for managers and supervisors on management issues.

One day he did a personal development workshop. Throughout the daylong seminar he alternated between making points on his topic and telling stories. When he was making a point my colleagues’ attention drifted.

People literally leaned back in their chairs as their attention drifted. Then when the trainer would tell a story to illustrate his point, my colleagues would lean forward, captivated.

Through the course of the day, I observed this pattern repeated over and over again. Make a point—the audience drifted. Tell a story–the audience leaned forward as if the story had hooked them like a walleye hooked by a fisherman.

Stories are the powerful third pillar of fundraising.

In two previous posts, I covered the first pillar—systems–and the second pillar–people. In the first post I described how systems make repetitive tasks easier and support the flow of funds to transform the lives of those served by your nonprofit.  In the second post I covered the roles of six groups of people who sustain fundraising for your nonprofit.

Stories teach donors and volunteers how the work of a nonprofit transforms lives.

Stories create powerful bonds of generosity between nonprofits, donors, and volunteers. Community nonprofits freely give help to those on the edges of our communities and stories draw volunteers and donors into being part of the stories of transformed lives.

While I was consulting with YSBIV, I taught Dave the power of stories in raising funds. Here’s a condensed version of a story Dave wrote in a recent e-letter:

I was working for DCFS in 1978 as an advocate on contract helping case managers who had too many cases.

One day Carrie, a young DCFS worker, introduced me to Benny who was thirteen. He was painfully thin and very nervous. His most distinctive feature was his stutter. I could barely understand him. As often happens, the boy in front of me did not match the story that preceded him.

The story from school is that Benny appeared to panic though unprovoked, became very agitated, and would run from the building, run to exhaustion in fact, often with the police in pursuit. Run in front of cars on occasion.

He was adopted. DCFS opened the case in an attempt to save the adoption they had approved thirteen years earlier. Their answer was to assign me, an English major with no training and time on his hands.

I took him fishing.

The first thing I had to do was learn how to understand him between the stutters.

I tried to get him to relax. Fishing helped. I’d take him to places that were notoriously bad for fishing so that we would have long uninterrupted periods of silence and bobber watching. It wasn’t easy for him. I called it Fox River therapy.

I insisted he keep his eyes on the bobber. That way he didn’t have to make eye contact. He could talk without looking at me, which was easier for him.

He wouldn’t talk about his parents. In fact he wasn’t used to talking at all. He had a nervous laugh that accompanied every statement, funny or not. He began to ask me questions, which was only fair, and then responded to my answers with more questions. That’s when I thought we were getting somewhere.

One day he asked me this. “How much vuh-vuh-vuh-vuh-vuh-vuh-odka do you think wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-one person can drink in-n-n-n a d-d-d-d-d-day?”

“Depends on the person but I’d say one bottle would be way too much.”

“Ma-ma-ma-ma-my Dad dri-dri-dri-dri-drinks two.”

That was the first thing he ever said about his Dad. “How does he act after drinking so much?”

“Muh-mean.” That was the end of the conversation.

After I learned to understand Benny better we moved up the Fox River to where the fishing was better, by the Route 52 Bridge. We bottom fished with heavy line, big weights, stink bait, and chicken livers.

We hooked some monstrous carp up there and it was so fun landing them. His nervous laugh turned into something more genuine as we were hauling in those big lipped ugly fish and admiring them.

Much later, while fishing, Benny disclosed to me that his Dad, who was a night watchman, an alcoholic, a recluse, and quite possibly a psychopath, abused him unmercifully in the basement, both physically and sexually. He combined it at times with similar abuse of his wife and his brother, making it a family affair.

I told the caseworker and in short order Benny was out of that family. He was thirteen and it was the last family he ever lived with permanently.

I continued my contact with Benny as he lived with and failed to stay with one foster family after another, and then he was placed in a group home out of town and my frequent contact with Benny ended.

But I have kept contact with Benny throughout my life.

He knows the YSB front desk number but has never caught on to my personal line. Usually the receptionist cannot understand him. Sometimes they hang up (Benny tells me) but that’s rare because we have had over the years very good and very kind receptionists at YSB. Usually they ring me and say, “I have this man on the line I can barely understand. He’s asking for you.”

“Put him through.” And then I talk to Benny.

His life has been brutal.

He left DCFS guardianship at age eighteen and soon after I responded to a call from Benny from a bad motel in a collar county. He had to get out. When I got there I found him with the clothes on his back, a hot plate and a charred pot, a sack of flour, a bottle of oil, and sugar packets. He’d been eating fried dough for days. I took him to a shelter.

Years later he called me from Chicago. He’d been evicted and lost all his stuff. He needed his social security number and birth certificate. I was able to get them for him from his old DCFS file. After that I kept a copy in my desk. Still have it. He’s called me several times needing to start over.

He has suffered substance abuse problems, paranoia, depression but his most consistent problem is poverty.

At no time, during his youth as a ward of DCFS or living as a single adult, has he received significant meaningful treatment to process his past abuse and trauma.

He has lived in poverty, disembodied from family of any kind, crippled by his stutter, haunted by his past. The child welfare system did little to help him, save sparing him from his monstrous adopted father.

Because of Benny I became determined to create programs at YSB to help abused children that kept treatment, meaningful trauma-informed therapy and therapists, in house, working alongside YSB case managers.

And each time YSB found a way to put more staff in the community with the opportunity to encounter, listen to, and hear the plight of troubled kids, on the chance kids might trust them and disclose those terrible secret traumas, we did it.

YSB consistently chose more staff over cash reserves.

We did that because kids like Benny needed us.

And I know with your support YSB can do a much better job than the system did for him.

Wisdom for the week: Green Light Fundraising pillar three: When people hear stories from the work of your nonprofit, they will lean forward to listen, volunteer and donate.

*Photo:  Three Pillars. Some rights reserved by troismarteaux