How to Make Your United Way a Bestseller
Nothing beats curling up on the sofa with a good book in front of the fireplace, especially during these cold nights in Michigan. If you are looking for a good book, one place to turn is the bestseller lists. Let’s take a look at some reasons why books are bestsellers and how you can use bestseller thinking at your United Way.
Not Numbers
When you look at the cover of a bestselling book, does it say things like “17 chapters” or “238,471 words”? Of course not! No one would choose to purchase, or not purchase a book, because the number of chapters or words, but many United Ways spend a lot of time and effort to share the number of partner agencies, number of funded programs, number of volunteer hours spent on allocations, etc. Our research has found that these types of operational numbers have little to no impact on someone choosing or not choosing to donate to United Way.
Not Processes
Does the cover of a bestselling book say it was printed on 80-percent post-consumer recycled paper, or printed using soybean ink? No – because publishers know that descriptions of the processes used to produce the book don’t influence anyone to buy the book. Although the allocation process consumes a lot of staff time and effort for United Ways, donors have little interest in the details of the process. Ditto for the campaign process.
Tell A Great Story
If operational numbers and processes do not make a bestseller, then what does? Many bestsellers tell a great story. For United Ways, the formula for telling a great story is simple: explain what issue you are addressing, share a couple actions you are doing to address the issue, and share the results of these actions.
Start by talking about an issue you are addressing like hunger, poverty, homelessness, graduation rates, etc. Explain why the issue is important and how the issue impacts your community. Then share a couple of actions you are taking to address the issue. These actions could be anything from funding programs to providing direct services like VITA. Finally, share some great stories of people who were helped by the actions and are no longer experiencing the issue.
We call this formula Issue-Actions-Results or I-A-R. To learn more about I-A-R, check out our webinar “How to Communicate Your Impact: What to Say and How to Say It.”
On All Your Covers
Bestsellers have great covers that attract buyers. When you think about your United Way, what is your book cover? If the book cover is the first thing people see when looking at a book, what is the first thing people would see when looking at your United Way? For most United Ways, your book covers would be your website, social media, and campaign brochure. You may have other book covers, but to be a bestseller you will need to share your I-A-R on your website, social media, and campaign brochure at a minimum.
One Story
Bestsellers typically focus on one story or topic. You would be unlikely to find a bestseller with 37 chapters, each on a different topic. To be a bestseller, your United Way should focus on one issue, which we refer to as an issue focus. Issue focused United Ways choose an issue, like poverty, homelessness, graduation rate, or kindergarten readiness, and then they lead and convene the community to make a measurable change on that issue. Instead of a campaign goal, their success is measured by the number of families no longer living in poverty, people who now have a home, students who graduated from high school, or children that are ready for kindergarten.
For more information about an issue focus, check out our free video “United Way Survival Guide.”
Make Your United Way a Bestseller
If you want your United Way to be a bestseller, follow these five steps:
Stop talking about operational numbers
Stop detailing your processes
Tell your issue-actions-results story
Communicate on all of your book covers
Tell one story well
“I thought to myself, why not write a bestseller? In the first place, more people buy them and more people read them, You make more money and it doesn’t take any more time to write a bestseller than it does to write a book nobody buys.” – George Burns