Book: Stories That Raise Money

Your donors may be willing to give more. The problem is, they have to care first.

I’m Chris Davenport, author of Stories That Raise Money and founder of the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference. After years of working with fundraisers, I kept seeing the same struggle: appeals that felt flat and fundraising messages that tried too hard to convince people to give.

That usually happens when we ask before we’ve made someone care.

This book shows you a simpler path: Story. Offer. Ask.

Use a story to help the donor care. Make the offer clear so they can picture what their gift will do. Then make a direct ask.

When the donor cares first, the ask feels natural. They’re no longer deciding whether your organization deserves money. They’re deciding whether they want to help the person, animal, or cause you’ve put in front of them.

And that makes it much easier for a donor to say, “Yes. I’ll give.”

Story Offer Ask Map

The Story Offer Ask Map takes the big ideas in the book and puts them on one page you can use while you work.

Start with your donor asking, “Why should I pay attention?”

Then work through three steps:

Story: Give them someone and a moment to care about.
Offer: Show them what their gift will actually do.
Ask: Make it clear what you want them to do next.

The Map gives you prompts for each step, space to write your own answers, and quick warnings that help you spot what is missing.

Keep it beside you while you write your next appeal, email, or fundraising message.

Field Guide: Getting Permission

Once you know how to tell a story that makes donors care, you need permission to actually use it.

Getting Permission helps you handle that part well.

You’ll learn how to ask someone to share their story, what to explain before they say yes, and what to do when they say no or only agree to part of it.

The field guide also includes ready-to-use Story Permission and Release forms, including a form for minors, plus a consent log to help you keep track of what you can and cannot use.

You’ll also get additional permission forms online that you can download, customize, and put to work in your organization.

Field Guide: Getting Your Team to See Stories

A lot of fundraisers think they don’t have enough good stories...but they do have good stories.

Your team has the stories. You’re just not getting them.

Every day, staff see moments that could make a donor care. But when you ask them to “send you a good story,” most have no idea what you mean.

Getting Your Team to See Stories fixes that in one 20-minute staff meeting.

You get the exact agenda, script, meeting sheet, staff handout, and follow-up email.

Your staff don’t have to become writers. They don’t have to fill out long forms. When they spot something, they send you a name and one sentence.

The result: more good stories that help donors care and give.

Field Guide: Getting the Story

Never interviewed someone for a fundraising story before? Getting the Story walks you through the whole process, from finding the right person to walking away with a story you can actually use.

You’ll learn who to talk to, how to ask them, how long to schedule, how to set up the room, what questions to ask, and what to do when the conversation gets awkward or goes off track.

You can even bring the guide into the interview with you. It includes prep sheets, interview questions, prompts, and a capture sheet for saving the best moments afterward.

You don’t need interviewing experience. You don’t need to know the perfect questions.

Just follow the process and come away with real moments and details that help donors care.

Field Guide: Before You Ask 

You finish the fundraising message, read it again, and still wonder, “Is this actually good enough?”

Maybe it’s an appeal. An email. A social post. A giving page. A major donor meeting. Or the two minutes you have from a gala stage.

Before You Ask gives you a way to check it before your donor ever sees or hears it.

In about 20 minutes, you’ll run three checks:

Does the story make someone care?
Can they see what their gift will do?
Is the ask clear enough to act on?

The guide shows you what’s broken and what to fix first.

You’ll also get a one-page check you can use again and again.

The result: less guessing before you ask, and more donors who actually give.

Story Bank

Fundraisers have struggled for years with the same questions:

Where do we keep our stories? How do we organize them? And what should we write down when we find one?

The Story Bank was built to answer all three.

This isn’t an ordinary spreadsheet for storing names and notes. It’s built around the storytelling framework in Stories That Raise Money, so it helps you capture the pieces that make a story useful for fundraising.

The Story Bank also tracks how ready each story is, whether you have permission to use it, and even tells you what piece is missing and what question to ask next.

The result: one place to keep your stories and a better way to turn them into fundraising.

Field Guide: Keeping What You Collect

A Story Bank only helps if people actually use it.

Keeping What You Collect shows you how to take the Story Bank spreadsheet and make it work inside your organization.

You’ll learn how to set it up, what belongs in each column, who should have access, how to get stories into it, and how to find the right story when you need one.

It also shows you how to keep the Bank alive with about 10 minutes a week, track permission, spot missing story pieces, and filter your stories by what you need right now.

There’s even a paper running log for those moments when a story shows up in a hallway, at a site visit, or anywhere you can’t open the spreadsheet.

The result: your best stories, the ones most likely to make donors care, are easy to find whenever you need them.

Nonprofit Storytelling Conference Membership

Fundraising never gives you just one problem at a time.

You may be writing an appeal today, trying to get a major donor meeting next week, planning an event next month, and wondering what you’re going to do for year-end.

And every time something new lands on your desk, you have to figure out what to do.

The NPSC Membership gives you one place to turn, with 12 full months of access to practical fundraising training, tools, examples, and real conversations you can use when you’re working on the fundraising that is in front of you right now.

Bring Chris & Josh
onto Your Team

Year-End, Handled. Create your best Year-End campaign.

Your year-end campaign is going to go out.

The question is:

“Is this really the best we can send?”

That question gets harder to answer after you’ve read the appeal twelve times, rewritten the email again, and stared at the giving page until you can’t see what’s wrong anymore.

Year-End, Handled gives you four months of Nonprofit Storytelling Pro, focused on helping you build and improve the fundraising that matters most between now and December 31.

Chris Davenport and Josh Alcorn work alongside you on your actual fundraising.

Bring us a blank page, a rough idea, or a nearly finished campaign. We’ll help you find the story, shape the offer, strengthen the ask, write and review your appeals and emails, improve your giving page, and decide which major donors to contact, what to talk with them about, and what to ask them to give.

You’ll have live access to us throughout the week for reviews, strategy, writing time, and help when you get stuck.

There’s no course to finish and no curriculum to fall behind on.

If your appeal needs work, bring the appeal.
If you don’t know what story to use, we’ll help you find it.
If the offer feels weak, we’ll work on the offer.
If you’re nervous about a major donor ask, bring that too.

And year-end won’t be the only thing on your desk. If you’re working on a donor email, thank-you letter, event message, major donor note, or another piece of fundraising, we can help with that as well.

By December 31, the goal is simple: your fundraising is written, reviewed, sent, and working as hard as it can to bring in money.

Here’s what your colleagues say about Nonprofit Storytelling Pro and working with Chris and Josh

You don’t have to reach December wondering what you should have changed after the results are in. You can have Chris and Josh looking at the work before your donors do.

Bring Chris & Josh Onto Your Team
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