What if the work at your nonprofit is about making nothing happen?
How, then, do you tell stories of your impact?
Today, at the Partnership for Food Safety Education Conference, we are diving into this topic.
Here’s the premise of their work: Tens of thousands of health and food safety educators across the U.S. work to inspire people like you and me to take their advice and protect our health with safe food handling and hand hygiene.
What?!?
That was a lot of words and it’s likely I didn’t inspire you, yet.
The truth is, health and safety educators across the U.S. truly care about keeping you and your family safe. But when they do their job well no one gets sick. Nothing happens.
The same can be said when your work is to advocate for a law to be passed or when your work is about keeping water or air clean. Your impact is powerful and sometimes invisible. Which might make you feel you have difficult stories to tell.
Back to Food Safety – I’ve chosen more personal word choices to explain their work.
How about if I told you:
Each day you cook a meal for your family you have the power to keep harmful bacteria from making your family sick.
OR
Image via Food Safety News.
Kendall and her adorable smile are five years old. She’s on track to be anything she wants to be. But, she was born three months pre-mature with an infection that could easily have killed her. Kendall’s mom, sick from unknowingly eating contaminated cantaloupe, had caused her unborn baby to become critically sick in her womb.
OR
If your mom asked you to wash your hands before dinner thank her for teaching you excellent hand hygiene. Statistics show that just 1 in 5 people admit to washing their hands after using the washroom and only 30% use soap. Yikes!
__________
Making things personal for your listener or reader is a powerful and connecting way to talk about your mission.
Talking about a real person when you share an example of your impact is often the very best way to stand out in the clutter of the barrage daily communication.
You want your community to take notice and take action.
Making it personal for them to do just that is the path to get there.
