08 | 3 Steps to Build a Ministry Story Bank that Engages Donors

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a treasure box full of ministry stories—organized, searchable, and ready to share whenever you need them?

In this episode of The Story-Driven Ministry, I’ll walk you through 3 simple but powerful steps to help you collect, document, and follow up on impact stories from your ministry. Whether you have five stories or five hundred, this system will save you time, reduce stress, and help you engage your donors in a deeper, more meaningful way.

You’ll learn how to:

• Become a Story Finder who actively seeks out powerful testimonies
• Set up a searchable system for organizing your stories
• Create a habit of following up so you can share story updates that inspire trust and generosity

If you’ve ever found yourself scrambling to remember where that “perfect story” was saved, this episode is for you.

Ready to clarify your ministry’s message and engage donors? Schedule a free call: https://irisstorytelling.com/getstarted

👉 Grab your free Ministry Newsletter Guide to easily write those updates that your donors want to read: https://irisstorytelling.com/guide

Connect w/ me:
lisa@irisstorytelling.com
https://irisstorytelling.com

Transcript

wouldn't that be amazing to have this treasure box full of the stories that you've collected over the years? And they're all in one place. They're organized. You know

to go and what to reach for and how to find the story that you need.

listening and connecting with me today.

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And today I want to talk more specifically about collecting impact stories.(...) So you are deep in your ministry.

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And I know a lot of you have just kind of held in your heart, cherished all the stories that you're hearing, the impact stories from the people that you minister to,

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you know, the lives impacted, the lives changed. And that's something that you just hold so dearly and near to your heart. It's something that helps you keep going.

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It's something that motivates you when you're feeling down.(...) It's something that energizes you when you're burnt out. You know, these stories, each one is a person.

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Each one, you can picture their face, right? You know their name, you can picture their face. They have a history and a story of their own from, you know, where they came from, their family, etc.

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And you know, these stories are super, super special.(...) You know, it's important to share them. It's not just for you. These stories are not for you to keep close to your heart. And that's it. You know, these stories are incredibly powerful and special, and it's important to share them. You know that the stories, these stories that you love so much that your donors also want to hear them, that it's going to be something so powerful to really bring them in and help them join you. But it can feel overwhelming. It can feel like maybe you just don't even know where to start.

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You have some pieces of stories here, some pieces of stories there, some, a lot of stories might be in your head, you know, just things that you remember. Or you might have some stories in an inbox, in your email inbox. You might have stories, maybe some are written down somewhere saved on your desktop.(...) Maybe you have some on a Dropbox folder, but

And you just, it's just kind of unorganized, you know, and you know, there's a lot more stories.

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But you're not sure how to collect them, how to organize them, how to make sure you have some sort of like treasure box full of these stories that you can open up and look in and take a story and share it whenever it fits that need. Whenever the moment is right, you can just open that treasure box. Wow, here's a story. This is the one that would be perfect in this situation. It would be perfect for the fundraiser event that we're getting ready to have. It would be perfect for this email that I'm sending out for donors. It would be perfect for, you know, this conversation I am having with this potential partner, you know.

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Hi, the story would be perfect to share with them.

So that

wouldn't that be amazing to have this treasure box full of the stories that you've collected over the years? And they're all in one place. They're organized. You know how to where to go and what to reach for and how to find the story that you need.

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So let's get organized. Let me share with you three steps to help you collect more stories and organize them.

ready to get organized? It might sound boring, but I promise you it will be so worth it and it's going to save you so much time, so much stress in the future, in the long term when you have tons of stories to sort through and maybe you're looking for a specific one. How are you going to find that specific one if you don't have a way to organize it well?

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Or how are you going to have an arsenal, a treasure box full of stories if you don't look for them?

step number one to collect more stories.(...) You must become a story finder. If you want more stories, you have to look for them.

7, 7, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. If you want more stories, more powerful stories of impact that you can share about your ministry, you must find them. You must look for them. You must seek.(...) You must become a story finder. This means you're not waiting until someone drops a story in your lap. You're not waiting for your partner who's on the ground talking with people just comes in just hands you the stories that might happen some of the time. Maybe you're lucky and you have a partner that loves storytelling and will give you a lot of stories, but most of the time you must seek them out. You must look for them. A lot of times people don't know that their stories right in front of their face.

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So you kind of have to put on these like glasses right and view from a different perspective from a storytelling perspective.

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So you put on these story glasses and you start seeking out the stories. You must ask a lot of questions and as you become a story finder, really it starts with finding main characters.

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Main characters for the story. So the people that you are impacting start with each individual that you're impacting. So you're looking for main characters.(...) You are asking what their name is. If you don't know, learn about the names of the people that have been impacted.

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Ask about how they were connected with your ministry.(...) Where they were before.

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What has your ministry meant to them? So you must ask a lot of questions.

You must be curious and ask a lot of why questions.

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This person keeps showing up to your outreaches but isn't quite connecting. Why is that?

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Why do they keep showing up time after time?

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Or I don't know, it could be anything. You just notice things you observe and you notice this person used to do this thing or they maybe looked this way or behaved a certain way and you start noticing that they start behaving a different way. So why is that? Get curious and reach out and ask.

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It's so important to not just observe from afar but really get connected and close and ask those questions. Whether that if you're not on the ground with the people that you're impacting, then ask the partners or the staff, the volunteers who are on the ground and connecting with those people in person. Ask them, ask questions.

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Seek out these stories.

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You can even, I would strongly suggest scheduling times to meet with the people that you've impacted if you can. Meet with them, learn more about their story, whether that's in person,(...) whether that's a video call, whether that's a phone call, whether maybe they want to text, maybe they just open up a lot more if you just text back and forth. Whatever way that is best for them to communicate, just start that communication.

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You have to ask questions if you want those stories.

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also want to make sure that you come,

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you reach out to them in a very sensitive way so that they don't feel like you're just trying to extract a story from them for your own gain, but really as a way of connection that you really care about them. And I know that you do. I mean, these are the people that you're ministering to.(...) This is the whole point of your ministry. So I know that you care for them. So just make sure that they feel that when you are connecting with them and trying to get more information, more story from them.

Hey, real quick. If you're listening to this and thinking, "Our donors aren't engaging well, how can I check if our messaging is clear?" I want to invite you to download my free

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It's a simple tool to help you identify what's working, what's not, and where your message might be losing people, especially when it comes to donor engagement or supporter growth. You can grab it now at irisstorytelling.com slash checklist.

So step one, become a story finder.

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Step number two, document everything.

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This might not be the most fun aspect of it, but I promise you it will save you so much stress and worry and time. So it will save you so much time in the long run if you get organized and document everything.

So you must have a way to organize the information and stories in one place. I'm not talking about having some over here in your email and some over in your Dropbox and some on your desktop. And I'm talking about one place. You want one treasure box full of stories, one place to have all of your stories. And it needs to be easily searchable. Okay. Right now, maybe your ministry is small and you just have a handful of stories.

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There's not very many, so it's easy to remember and you don't really have to organize much. You're like, yeah, I have maybe five stories.(...) So why do I have to like set it up so it's easily searchable and all this stuff?

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Well, I would say as your ministry grows and you start collecting more and more stories, you might begin to have hundreds of stories or more.

can't bank on remembering all of those stories or remembering names. I mean, you might be better than I am at remembering names, but I mean, I'm terrible at remembering names.(...) But even so, once you start collecting more and more in hundreds, if you don't have it in an easy platform that you can search, how are you going to find things?

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are you going to find that one story that you remember? I don't remember her name, but I remember it was some crazy story. It had a monkey in it and such and such and such.

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If you don't have that story in a platform where you can easily search a keyword like monkey, then you're going to be going through every single story that you have saved. If it's in a document or whatever, trying to find the story of the monkey.

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Let me save you a ton of time and say, set it up in some sort of spreadsheet that you can actually search keywords.

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what you want to do. You want to set up a spreadsheet with several categories that you can really search and filter and organize really easily.

example, some categories could be obviously their name, birth year, location,(...) if you have several locations, type of ministry. Maybe you have several different ministries or branches. So organize it by ministry, age range, the story description, where you actually write in what the story is,(...) gender, photos. If you have photos of them that you can use and that you want to use. And then if you have stories that are sensitive and you can't share their real names,(...) add an alias,

Add in an alias so that you can remember what alias you used and you can continue to use that alias. And it's not like I'm sharing this one story about Mary, but her alias is Stephanie on this platform. And on this email, I use Stephanie as her name.

On social media, I use Rita. And then in the video, I use, you know, this other name.

You want to make sure that your alias, you use the same alias consistently.

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But how are you going to remember what alias you use if you don't write it down somewhere? And if you don't have it categorized and documented with that specific story?

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so step number two is document everything.

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Step number three is follow up.

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You must be able to follow up on people's stories because they're not done. That's not the end of their story. As long as they're still living, there's more story to tell. So even though you might have a beautiful story of someone who, you know, before they

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came to your ministry and the change that they had in their life after working with your ministry and stuff like that,

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you definitely, you still want to follow up and get updates on them. Not just for you and internal, but it might be something that you do want to share. For example, you share a story.(...) Maybe it's a film, right? Someone's impact story and it's beautiful and it's wonderful and people just really connect with it.

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Maybe down the line, years later, you can do an update on that story, on that person(...) and something that you can share with your donors who already know that person because you shared that video of their story. And wow, it's like they feel like they know them and they're so excited to see the update and where they're at and how they've been growing. Maybe they started a family and they're serving the Lord and they're doing all this stuff.

amazing, but you're not going to get that unless you follow up and get those updates and put those updates in your spreadsheet with that person's name.

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Right? You're not adding a new story. You're adding an update to that same story you already put in your spreadsheet.

once you do these three steps, you story find,

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you start, you become a story finder. Two, you document everything and three, you follow up. Imagine as you do that story after story, year after year, you're going to start getting a very large treasure box full of amazing stories.(...) And then you can go back, you know, and find the stories that fit where you need them. You're getting ready to do a big fundraiser event at a church and you're like, man, I really want a female story that's maybe around this age, but it's this specific location.

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And you're like, I don't know if I have any, go back to your treasure box, go back to your spreadsheet, look it up,

it out by the ministry location and female story and look through those stories and find the one that works for that event.

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Or you think, man, I just wish that I'm talking to this person one on one and a personal story they shared actually relates really well to that one story that I have about such and

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such. Go back and look for it, use your keywords, search for it so you can find it easily and that will pop up. Wow, this story fits perfectly for my conversation with this one person.

Or you're like, man, I really love that story. It was a female story. I can't remember her name, but it's that one story that has the monkey.

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All you have to do is go to your spreadsheet, type in the keyword in your search and it will pop up so easy.(...) So I know that sounds like a lot right now. You're like, man,(...) you don't understand how much I have going on in my life and this,(...) this would be great, but I don't have the capacity. This is a lot. I would say I hear you. And if you have a volunteer or you have interns that can do this, I highly recommend that you put this together.

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It's going to save you hours and hours of time in the long run. As you collect more and more stories, it's going to become a lot, which is what you want. You want a nice big treasure box full of beautiful, powerful stories.

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But if you have them all spread out throughout your inbox and your Dropbox and your desktop and somebody else's computer, then it's going to be a mess and very hard to find.

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But if you put it, do the time now, get it organized into one spreadsheet, into several categories, document everything. It's going to save you so much time and you're going to be so grateful. You're going to down the line when you're looking for a specific story, you're going to be like, oh, I'm so grateful that I spent the time initially to set this up because

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it's so easy and I found the perfect story and this is amazing.

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And you're going to say, Lisa, thank you for telling me that because I needed it.

I know, I know it sounds like a lot right now, but I promise you it's going to save you so much time.(...) I mean, just imagine 10 years down the line where you have stories saved in all these places, several computers, several different apps, and it's unorganized and unsearchable. You cannot search them.

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You want to find that one story with a monkey.

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It's going to take you hours, if not days, to find it. Going through opening up every document, looking on this computer and on that computer in the Dropbox. Where else did I store stories?(...) It's going to take you forever to find it. Do yourself the favor now and set up a very organized spreadsheet to collect all your stories.(...) But don't just stop at organizing a spreadsheet. You must seek out the stories.(...) Become a story finder and you will start collecting more stories and seeing them come in and seeing the work of the Lord that's happening that you didn't realize is happening, but you started seeking them out. And all of a sudden, wow, look at everything that God's doing. God's doing more than I even knew.

So again, steps.(...) Step one, you're going to become a story finder.

everything.

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Everything you can think of. And I will say, hey, if there's blank spots in that spreadsheet, you're like, I don't know her name. I don't know the exact, I don't know the birthday. I don't know this. It's OK. Leave it blank. You can fill those spots in later,(...) but still make those categories. And if you don't know, they can be filled in at a later time when you find out.

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So step two, document everything. And step three, follow up. You must keep following up with these stories and getting updates as you can.(...) Right?

Put this on your calendar to start a story spreadsheet. It's going to make your life so much easier.(...) You'll have that a bank full of impacting stories that you can pull from at any time to engage your donors and grow your support. If you have any questions about any of this,(...) please reach out at lisa at irisstorytelling.com. I'm super excited to help you with it.

just hope this has been encouraging and that it will help you as you start collecting more stories.

Now if you're saying, Lisa, I just need help. I need, I know that stories are so important. I know that storytelling is important. I don't know how to apply this to my ministry. I feel lost. I'm not a storyteller. I'm not, you know, I just need help. I would love to help you. I will walk through with you one-on-one coaching calls, steps to really use the power of story in your messaging and outside of your messaging to help your ministry message be clear and directed to increase engagement in your donors, to make fundraising more easy, just easier.

show you how simple it can be to share the powerful stories of what God is doing through your ministry.

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ready for that book, a free consultation call with me at irisstorytelling.com slash get started.(...) We'll have a quick chat just about where your ministry is at, where you're at, the struggles that you're going through, the challenges and how story can really just help you engage donors and grow support so effectively.

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Again, that's irisstorytelling.com slash get started.