Stories and Data Combined Stir Sympathy for Tough Cases

“You can’t demonize people once you know their backgrounds,” says the Rev. Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries. “You can’t demonize people once you know their backgrounds,” says the Rev. Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries.

July 22, 2012 | Read Time: 7 minutes

When Glenn Martin walked out of a New York State prison more than a decade ago after serving a six-year sentence for armed robbery, he was 30 years old and eager to turn his life around.

However, he faced plenty of roadblocks. While he had earned an associate’s degree in prison, his criminal record made it tough to get beyond menial jobs like working as a dishwasher or deliveryman.

“The first three years were extremely hard, and there were so many times when I just wanted to throw up my hands and say, ‘I can’t do this,’” says Mr. Martin.

But, he adds, “nothing was harder than prison, and I kept reminding myself of that, and that’s what kept me going.”

Through the Fortune Society, a New York group that helps former prisoners return to society, he eventually found a job working as a receptionist at a law firm.

Sharing the Journey

Today Mr. Martin serves as Fortune’s vice president for development and public affairs, raising money to provide advocacy and aid to people who face the kinds of challenges he once did.

Telling his story or showing the charity’s clients how to share their own journeys is a potent fundraising tool, he says.

But as government budget cuts and the bad economy continue to take a toll, charities like the Fortune Society and others that serve society’s most marginalized people—such as drug addicts or prostitutes—have found that they cannot rely too heavily on personal stories. They also need to find new ways to blend emotional anecdotes with the hard data about their programs’ results.

‘Their Ears Perk Up’

One especially effective approach has been to emphasize how a nonprofit’s work rehabilitating troubled people can save governments money.

“The return on investment might not be a direct cash dividend, but it’s a drug-free community with less money going to the prison system and more money going to schools and other areas,” says Sarah Walker, of the Addiction Recovery Center, in Medford., Ore.

When donors realize that the money they give to the organization will benefit their own quality of life and reduce government spending, says Ms. Walker, who raises money and handles other program tasks at the center, “that’s when their ears perk up.”

That kind of pitch helped the Addiction Recovery Center gain six new donors this year who have each pledged to give at least $1,000 annually, says Matthew Vorderstrasse, another of the center’s fundraisers.

To persuade donors to give regularly, he sends them a quarterly financial report that illustrates how their dollars have been spent and the cost savings and benefits to people in and around Medford.

Real People, Real Change

But Mr. Vorderstrasse doesn’t rely solely on numbers in making his case for support. Like Mr. Martin, he sometimes points to his own experience as an example of the charity’s impact.

He was a drug and alcohol addict as a teenager and is now about to graduate from college at age 26 and go to graduate school.

“It’s important for people to realize that addiction treatment is dealing with real people who can change,” he says. “It gives [donors] hope that this is a good investment.”

Other nonprofits that work with people who don’t immediately inspire sympathy agree that blending dollars-and-cents data with emotional stories is smart.

Numbers matter, but they don’t really move people, says the Rev. Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries, a 25-year-old Los Angeles nonprofit that helps gang members turn their lives around.

His organization invites potential donors to tour Homeboy’s headquarters and its offshoot businesses, such as the bakery and cafe it started to give clients a place to work and get job experience.

The heavily tattooed former gang members lead most of the tours, and any trepidation a visitor may have felt “quickly melts away,” says Father Boyle.

“Nobody needs to spend more than 15 minutes here listening to the ‘homies’ tell their story to completely understand what’s at stake and why they should give,” he says.

“You can’t demonize people once you know” their backgrounds, he adds. “Human beings can’t sustain that for very long.”

Themes of Redemption

At the Fortune Society, Mr. Martin says he doesn’t try to encourage donors to feel sorry for people who have been convicted of crimes.

Instead, he tries to build fundraising appeals and events that emphasize universal themes like redemption, fairness, education, forgiveness, and family. That is made easier in part because half of Fortune’s staff members have spent time in prison.

At the nonprofit’s annual galas the employees mingle with guests to share their stories. Or the charity’s staff members invite potential donors to the graduation ceremony of a client getting a GED diploma and talk openly about their own struggles to get a degree years earlier.

“Donors appreciate putting their money into an agency that practices what it preaches,” says Mr. Martin.

One donor was so moved by the experiences of the people she met at one of Fortune’s housing sites that she gave the charity $470,000.

Persuading Lawmakers

Personal stories are useful not just when courting private money but also when advocating for public policies that help former prisoners or lobbying for government programs that finance Fortune’s work, says Mr. Martin.

Mr. Martin sometimes tells lawmakers that Fortune’s help in finding him a job after prison made the difference in assuring he didn’t get involved in the kinds of activities that could get him arrested again.

“Just that alone is huge,” the fundraiser says. “It makes it harder for a person to look at you and say, ‘No, I don’t believe in this,’ because you end up being the human manifestation of the proposal we have on the table.”

Avoiding Exploitation

But Mr. Martin says such personal stories are inappropriate in certain settings or can make the person he is speaking with uncomfortable.

“There are times when I don’t say it if I think it’s going to change the dynamics of the conversation or if it’s not going to lend itself to whatever we’re trying to pursue at that moment,” he says.

Charities like Fortune also encounter practical and philosophical problems when they rely too heavily on asking their former clients to pitch in with fundraising.

Some people who have transformed their lives don’t want to revisit their lowest moments, or let anyone in their work or personal lives know about their past struggles.

Kristy Childs, founder and executive director of Veronica’s Voice, a Kansas City, Kan., charity that helps prostitutes build new lives, relays her own stories as a sex worker but never those of her nonprofit’s clients. The organization raises money through special events and conferences where Ms. Childs is often a guest speaker.

While the people who turn to charities like hers have stories to share that are dramatic and often galvanizing, asking former prostitutes to talk about their experiences in fundraising appeals is exploitative, she says.

“I watch some agencies trot out these survivors of sex trafficking, and a lot of these gals feel it’s just another form of being prostituted, because it’s really these agencies toting them around for their own agendas,” says Ms. Childs.

She believes charities like hers bear a responsibility to protect their clients from the limelight, making sure they have healed from the trauma they lived through and understand the consequences of divulging their personal histories.

But it may not be easy to prevent people who have been served by a charity from speaking out. At the Fortune Society, Mr. Martin says, many of the nonprofit’s clients are so grateful for their transition to a better life that they are eager to show their gratitude.

But often, Mr. Martin says, Fortune’s clients haven’t considered whether they have healed enough from their personal traumas to go public with their tale and need to be dissuaded from speaking out about their experiences. He says, “You really have to ask if they’ve stabilized themselves first.”