When? Time as a factor in your nonprofit storytelling

In this episode we explore the fifth part in our series on the building blocks of nonprofit storytelling—When. Learn why timing matters in your fundraising, from year-end campaigns to creating urgency with matching gifts, celebrating donor milestones, and telling powerful follow-up stories. Plus, practical steps to plan your storytelling calendar.

Mentioned in this episode:
Fully Funded Academy
The Bible Project: Looking Back at 2025 and Ahead to 2026
10 Years and 500 Episodes: The Story of BibleProject Podcast
Charity Water: Helen

Transcript

Hey, welcome to the Life Admission Podcast. I'm Kay Helm and we are in a series on the six building blocks of storytelling: who, what, where, why, when, and how. And today we're talking about when. When do you need money? All the time. 

## [00:00:15] Year-End Giving

But there are seasons when you need more money, and there are seasons when people are more inclined to give. So the most obvious of those is the year end campaign, the last couple of months of the year. And there are actually people that that is the only time of year that they give.

And so you want to make sure that you do not. Miss that ask. Don't make the mistake of saying everybody's busy or everybody else is raising funds, and it's a lot of work. And I'm busy too. you can actually schedule this ahead of time. Plan it out, get it done in August, September. Let the thing roll, be there to respond, be there to thank people, but.

You plan this ahead of time, it's not as much work for you and you need to do it. So there are other episodes and we'll go into more detail on year end, giving their guides, they're everywhere. And, fully Funded Academy does a real good session on exactly how you should plan your year end campaign. So I won't get into details, but just know that.

That's a time you do not want to miss because, I'll give you some stats to back up what I'm saying here. this is a great time of giving because people are aware of their budgets. Some people are getting bonuses. There are people who, need to give away a certain amount of money. To reduce their tax burden.

You wanna be there to pick some of that up. it's a really great time to ask, but according to Next, after they're a fundraising research lab, they said 37% of online fundraising revenue for nonprofits Comes in during the final 45 days of the year. Vanguard says 10%. Charitable giving occurs in just the last three days of the year, and that's why we keep telling you, keep asking right up to the deadline.

## [00:02:23] Other Deadlines & Drives

There are other deadlines though, that are more specific, that are, maybe you have certain times of year when you are doing more, when you need more funds, and so you could do the year end. That's a great time to kind of say, Hey, if we get the money now, then we can help.

It helps us plan for the rest of the year. Like you don't have to. Have an urgent need in order to have a deadline. You can say, we are doing our budget meetings and we need to get commitments from, X number of new monthly donors and so do a monthly donor drive or something. whatever's appropriate for what you need.

So I'm not trying to specifically give you a plan right now. I'm just saying think about time and how it affects. Your, your mission. So maybe you pay school fees for kids and they have to take, exams a certain time of year. Well, you need those exam fees on top of what you're already. raising to keep them in school or to provide other needs.

And so you may need to make sure you have more funds. So that's a great time to raise. exams are coming, so we want to encourage the kids and send a donation, so you could do all kinds of creative things around this. And so when you plan your communication strategy for the year, really what I'm saying is look.

## [00:03:46] Get Your Fundraising Needs on the Calendar

At the calendar, mark out those important days where you need more money or when they are giving seasons, like the end of the year, like the beginning of the school year. And it could be, maybe where you work has a different beginning of the school year than we do here in the us. That's fine.

You could do both. what I'm saying is whatever works for you, get it on your calendar. Because before you ask, you need to tell stories. So there's a rhythm of storytelling, you know, so there's, it's, it's reporting, storytelling, asking, thanking, report, storytelling. So, so you wanna have this rhythm of the storytelling and the asking, and the thinking, and when, when you need money, you need to be asking, but.

You can't let that be the only communication with your people. You have to be storytelling. So build all of that into your calendar so you know what you're doing in, week to week. Am I telling a story or am I asking? And that'll make it easier because you'll have a clear picture of where you're going through the year.

And so that's the first thing is when, when do you have the needs? When are the seasons of giving for your ministry or for your work that you're doing? 


## [00:05:11] Creating Urgency

the other deadlines that you wanna think about, they're not really deadlines, but, you can use deadlines. In things like, a matching gift.

So everybody that gives in the next 36 hours, your gift is gonna be matched, right? So you're using a timeframe to create urgency, to create some excitement and to get a match and people can say, if I give in this window, my gift goes farther. So that's a, use of time to, create that urgency and get people to actually take action.

So it moves 'em from a maybe to a yes. that's what you want to do with the time. 

## [00:05:50] Time as Opportunity

the other thing you can do though, is to think about time in another way, instead of just thinking about deadlines, think about it as opportunity. So there's an opportunity, there's a, door that is opening for us and it's.

We, maybe we don't know how long it's gonna be open or it's only gonna be open for this amount of time. And if you can explain that really clearly to your donors, they're, they're gonna help you walk through that door. You're gonna say, you know what, if, if we take this opportunity, even if you didn't plan for it earlier, you say, 

This opportunity has popped up and our board has met, we've prayed over it, and we see that this is an opportunity that will allow us to do X, Y, Z, or, or to take advantage of this, or to expand this, or we've been praying for this opportunity and now's the time, whatever way you need to phrase that to fit your situation.

The key is to speak really clearly to your donors, clearly, honestly, transparently, and you may have to get into how you came to this conclusion that this is the time, to act on this thing. So it's just about being clear and, bringing, making sure you're bringing your donors along in this discussion about why this is really important to do.

Now, is it gonna really, uh, increase your capabilities? Is it, gonna allow you to reach more people? Is there an emergency that has come up? really what I'm thinking, emergency, it's Less about opportunity and more like the cost of waiting.


## [00:07:30] The Cost of Waiting

And so that's another win WHEN in, in your storytelling and in your fundraising is, what happens if a deadline passes and we didn't make it. What happens if, it's time to pay the school fees and, they aren't there. And so we can't. Get as many kids in, in school, what happens, the power grid in the country that we're working in has failed and there's, a blockade or there's a siege.

We have to change the way we do things or fuel prices have shot, way up multiples of what we had planned for. And so we're gonna need some extra donations to get us through this. are you gonna help in this? Look, 

we've got people there, we've got our contacts, we're in contact with our people. we can make this thing that needs to happen, happen, but there's a cost if we don't do it. And so you've gotta be able to show that that cost of waiting or what's at stake if this doesn't happen now.

And so that's a part of the urgency. And, and again, you're not using this to manipulate people, but. You're just, letting them understand, right? Clarity. Clarity is a gift. You want to give that gift to your donors. You wanna be very clear, clear and honest, and, and be able to answer questions, as well.

And, remember that cost isn't just financial. It's always human. It's always human. And you want to be able to, to be very clear about that. 


## [00:09:07] Celebrations & Milestones

let's go back to your calendar though, and look at the fun stuff because you have fun stuff that happens on your calendars. You have anniversaries, you have celebrations, you have, markers of time, milestones that you've met.

And if you've been around for some stretch of time, you can look back and you can say. Look how far we've come. somebody who did that really well recently was, the Bible Project. And so if you look at their year end, there's two. Episodes that they did on their podcast that celebrate 10 years of the podcast.

And there's one specifically about the podcast where they actually go back and they talk about, how they started recording in, this little Space underneath a stairway in their office and, and that you could hear all the background noises and sure enough you can go back and listen to their.

First episodes and you can hear people coughing and talking, doors opening and shutting in the background. And the audio quality wasn't all that great. And then you can say, look how far we've come, what we've learned. And so you can do that in, in your work as well. You can say, when we started we were doing this, but then we learned this and this and this, and you guys stood with us.

We're so happy you're still with us. you've got donors that have. Been with you and so you can celebrate their anniversaries. Hey, it's your giving anniversary. You first started giving monthly on such and such a date and we just wanted to send you this card or video or phone. Call you on the phone and say thank you.

Thank you for five years. Thank you for one year. Thank you for 10 years of giving, of standing with us, praying for us, encouraging us, showing up when we asked you to volunteer. All those things that people do, celebrate it. you do hard work. So when you have opportunity to throw a party, do it.

Celebrate. I mean, even if it's like confetti for one, Hey, today you're my favorite donor. because I remember that time when you did that thing. And so we are in this together. We're, we've been walking a long time and I just want you to know how much I appreciate you. I mean, that's, that's gold.

That's gold. People love getting messages like that. again, don't use it to, to manipulate, truly celebrate your people. and so, when you're, you've sponsored a child from, when they started school and now they're graduating, that's party time. You need a picture and a celebration and, and happiness on that day, we can celebrate because we've done this together.

you provided the opportunity, the young person did the work, and, and, and now we're happy. And so it's, it's just a good thing when you can celebrate with people. So time, time is not a, transaction.

And, and, and it's, it's about relationship time. Helps give meaning a lot of times to what you're doing. You reflect on. Like I said, how, how far we've come or what we've been able to accomplish together or, look at how things have changed, look at how we've grown. You think about those things all in terms of the passage of time, like the passage of time is kind of the framework you hang the story on, but then the story has to be about people and a lot of times you can make these stories very much about the donor.

And that's a, really nice thing to be able to do where it's not like a savior story, but it's a, story about, relationship and, steadfastness persistence. Faithfulness, our values in action, those types of things. When you talk about those things, it can be really powerful. So I would encourage you, I'm gonna, add a link in my show notes to that, Bible project podcast, just 'cause it's, it's such a great example, recent one that I can think of.

But I mean other organizations that do this really well. There's a series of stories on Charity Water’s website where they talk about a woman named Helen. And when they first met her, they were showing up in the village to put a well in. And then she talked about, they came back to see, how things were going.

And they told another story from her point of view where she talked about what having that clean water had done for her, her community. And she, she told this story about, she says, now I'm beautiful. because she was able to, to take care of herself as well as all the other people that she was taking care of.

And, it was just a really neat story because it was an angle on clean water that if you haven't lived without it, you might not get. 


## [00:14:04] Follow-Up Stories

But because they went back and told a repeat story that had follow up stories, in our ministry, in, when I worked with tributaries, we. Went back and did follow ups with the people that we trained, and that's where we got our best stories.

So you think about the passage of time, it's not just, we showed up here somewhere and we did a training, but it's, we came back a year later and we asked people, what have you done with the training? How, how have you been using what you learned? And tell me what's happening in your role and kind of where, where your.

Working in the community. And how has that changed since we were here last And, that's where we got, you've heard me tell the story before, about the, the pastor who talked about, he had trained his community, started with his family, talked about, dementia and Alzheimer's and, How, how to help the people that were exhibiting those symptoms.

And he didn't have a way to diagnose, but he recognized the symptoms because of our training. And he said, we can come with understanding into this situation. And he shared it with his family and he shared it with his church and he shared it in the community. when he told us about this and follow up, he, he throws his shoulders back and he says, now they call me the defender of old women.

I love that. And that story became like the story for our ministry for a few years. Like that was the story because everybody we talked to knew somebody with dementia, knew somebody who was caring for somebody and knew what a difference that made to be able to respond appropriately in those situations.

And so that's the type of thing you want to be able to do. Go back and repeat a story. With, and here's an update. That's a great way to use time in your storytelling. 


## [00:16:01] Your Action Steps

So this week, look at your calendar, reminisce over your journals, and do some planning. Just sketch it out. I need you to tell stories here.

I need to ask here, and we're gonna reminisce around this, this, and this. And the next episode of Life and Mission, we're gonna talk about the final building block. And that is. How the methods that you use and the ways that you talk about that with your donors. But until then, I'm Kay Helm and this is The Life and Mission podcast.

Find your voice, tell your story. Change the world.