When I speak at the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference, I am usually the only speaker talking about grants and storytelling (with the exception of the awesome Frank Velasquez), as the other speakers like Steven Screen, Tammy Zonker, and Cherian Koshy (plus many other fundraising rockstars) are focused on the more “traditional” types of storytelling nonprofits are thinking about for their fundraising—stories in appeal letters, on websites, in social media, in donor newsletters, etc. I’ve always seen the connection between their storytelling mechanisms and mine…or so I thought.

I’ve been in the grant space my whole career… first as a grantmaker, and now for well more than twenty years as a grant seeker. I have always loved hearing about impact with quantifiable data, but a client or community impact story is what will make me verklempt. Putting that into practice, I *know* the difference between telling a story in a government grant proposal using data and focusing more on the heart connection for some foundations.

Yet, not until I was given the fundraising hat on behalf of the Clayton Rotary Club for my community’s River Santa program did I really feel the difference, because the stories aren’t examples about outside organizations. They are stories about my community.

River Santa is in its 10th year, an amazing event started by Doug Tulloch. He is one incredibly energetic and motivated community member, who created an annual, magical day for hundreds of children while also growing the event over time to raise tens of thousands of dollars each year for the local school backpack programs, food pantries, and emergency service providers. As a community member, I already knew of the event, and our family has regularly given gifts when Doug asks for donations on Facebook. But the only story I was truly aware of was that of gift giving to the hundreds of children.

After I began leading the fundraising, I quickly came to understand the true depth of the impact on so many local people and organizations. It is far more than the 750 gifts given to local children aged 0 to 12 in our very rural, seasonal, and tourism-reliant community on the St. Lawrence River. The full impact of River Santa is that it also ensures those children and families the support they need to thrive during the “off season.”

And so the challenge became, how could we, the River Santa committee, help our larger community—businesses and individuals—understand the true impact of this event? I can fill out corporate grant forms for the few large regional/national businesses who have online grant applications—no sweat for a grant pro, right? I can lean on the incredible talent of my own team, especially Megan Martin, to build images and content for social media. But can I, and the collective we, tell the story of River Santa impact in a way that engages the full community?

The story is still unfolding, and while my grant professional skills are helping me gather all the facts and think about the story, I’m having to think more like my awesome speaker family from the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference to ensure that River Santa raises the $50,000 needed for this year’s event. And more than anything, what this really teaches me is how we need to ensure that all of our fundraising efforts (the people, the grants, the social media posts, the websites, the letters, and the events) are telling the same story and moving our organizations forward toward the same goal. We are well on our way with $33,450 in cash and in-kind donations committed with more than three weeks until the event, and the rest is going to be an indicator of how strong and consistent our storytelling is.