[Transcript]

00:00:02:05 – 00:00:30:13
Ruth Baum Bigus
Welcome to KC Cares, Kansas City’s nonprofit voice. We are telling the stories of Kansas City nonprofits. KC Cares is the intersection of the nonprofit and the profit communities making Kansas City a better place to live, work and play. This KC Cares episode is brought to you by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. WW Dot Hoffman dot org. Well, today we have an increase of all guests.

00:00:30:14 – 00:01:01:16
Ruth Baum Bigus
Nothing expresses a nonprofit’s purpose better than it does but the device of storytelling. With today’s technology, there are so many options on sharing your story. But what’s right for you and your organization? How do you know which one to choose? How do you even craft your storytelling? Well, for our monthly Ask the Expert series, we’re chatting with KC Care’s own producer, Bobby Keys, who is a master storyteller, videographer and website master with great experience under his belt.

00:01:02:05 – 00:01:04:12
Ruth Baum Bigus
Bobby, welcome to the show.

00:01:04:14 – 00:01:06:09
Bobby Keys
Hello. Thanks for having me, Ruth.

00:01:07:01 – 00:01:31:08
Ruth Baum Bigus
This is so fun to get to talk to a master who is often behind the scenes. So I’m not sure, not a lot of pressure, but a lot of good information. We thought to share with our nonprofits and even profit organizations can benefit. So we hear we hear the term storytelling thrown around a lot. Can you kind of flesh that out?

00:01:31:09 – 00:01:33:01
Ruth Baum Bigus
What do we mean when we talk about that?

00:01:34:03 – 00:02:07:04
Bobby Keys
Yeah. So storytelling in, you know, for nonprofits and for profits is basically just communicating who you are, your brand, you know, the people behind it, telling the story, how you impact the community warrior. You know, if you’re if you’re a small business, you tell the story of how you impact your customer. You know, so and that’s, you know, through various various ways video, case studies, newsletters, blogs, you know, social media.

00:02:07:12 – 00:02:17:22
Bobby Keys
But it’s always, you know, something that has ideally a compelling character, you know, a clear message, relatable characters, and then, you know, a call to action.

00:02:19:28 – 00:02:26:25
Ruth Baum Bigus
So you’re sitting down, you’re the marketing director or maybe the development director or even the executive director.

00:02:26:29 – 00:02:27:09
Bobby Keys
Who.

00:02:27:27 – 00:02:35:07
Ruth Baum Bigus
How do you start how do you start to craft a story that eventually will be very compelling?

00:02:36:18 – 00:03:03:15
Bobby Keys
Yeah, that’s a good question. So, you know, the way I do it is you always have to think of one the end goal. And to your whoever you’re trying to reach, your target, your target audience, your or your your buyer persona, as I call them. But you, you know, think about who they are and how how they’re going to be inspired, how you’re going to engage them.

00:03:04:28 – 00:03:27:05
Bobby Keys
You know, a lot of a lot of people just kind of throw, you know, this is who we are. This is what we do. You know, out into and think that’s a story they try and feed that the people and a lot of times that falls flat. You usually have to come up with a compelling character or a reason that you’re there.

00:03:27:22 – 00:03:58:11
Bobby Keys
Typically, like I would say, you know, if you’re a nonprofit, think of an impact story that know you’ve experienced in your time at the nonprofit, somebody you’ve helped, you’ve helped, you’ve helped somebody you know, a family that you you have affected. Think about that and then use them as the main character. Then you come up with kind of like your story framework.

00:03:58:24 – 00:04:18:23
Bobby Keys
I always like to tell a story in an in order in my my framework. It’s easy for me to start out with. What was life like for this family, for this child, for these people? You know, what was it like before you were involved? What are the hardships? What are the pain points that they you know, they experience?

00:04:20:02 – 00:04:40:28
Bobby Keys
What it would look like in a perfect world if, you know, if they had the solution you’re providing as a nonprofit or small business. Talk about the change that you’ve seen. You know, from the beginning of your time with that family. Like over time, I’ve seen this child, you know, since they came here. Now they’ve come to our nonprofit.

00:04:41:06 – 00:05:04:15
Bobby Keys
They’ve seen we’ve seen a change. I remember the day that they changed. I saw the sparkle in their eye when this happened. Think about those that the moment that you affected their life and how that changed. You can throw in some data points as well to help reinforce who you are and what you do. And then, you know, tell about your what’s what’s coming up in the future.

00:05:05:05 – 00:05:25:09
Bobby Keys
I mean, you can get into there’s different types of story frameworks, but, you know, that’s always the the for me when I’m shooting video, that’s always the easiest one to go to. You know, what’s what’s life like before you, you know, you know, what are some of the other problems and agitate those problems? What are the problems they face?

00:05:26:11 – 00:05:52:27
Bobby Keys
What are the solutions you provide? What’s the data? Is there any is there any data to reinforce what you do? And then what does the future look like? And then, you know, if you’re speaking to a donor, you always want to use them as the hero of the story. You as the donor can help, you know, such and such get to a better place, you know, by X amount of bicycles, you know, you know, feed X amount of children, you know.

00:05:53:16 – 00:05:57:02
Bobby Keys
So that’s that’s I guess, a loose way of doing it.

00:05:58:15 – 00:06:25:01
Ruth Baum Bigus
That’s a whole lot of steps. So I want to go back. You were talking about a compelling emotional story before and after, and then you have data points. How do you know? What is that balance? As our expert, how how would you advise someone? I know we probably have both sat through videos at a number of events where it’s like, can you get to the next frame?

00:06:25:01 – 00:06:33:08
Ruth Baum Bigus
I’ve seen so much data, I’m swimming or you have me crying. Tell me you know how I’ve moved the needle. So how do you do that?

00:06:33:28 – 00:07:05:17
Bobby Keys
Yeah. You know, it all depends on who your target audience is. If you’re if you’re appealing to, you know, the general donor, you know, you want less data, you want more story, less data. Because you’re right, it does it does get monotonous. And you can just vomit data points to where it’s like, okay, you lost the story. If you’re appealing to more of a corporation, they’re going to want to see more data about the impact of your, you know, you have on the community.

00:07:06:11 – 00:07:43:29
Bobby Keys
So that’s that’s, you know, with something like that, with case studies. And it’s just another way to tell a story. Outside of video you use, you could use data, grants, use data. So it’s always it always depends on who you’re trying to reach. Honestly, that’s really going to mold your story. And that’s where you’ll find that balance. And if you are watching a video back or you’re looking at it and you do feel go with your gut, if it’s like if you’re creating the story and you’re and you’re creating the case studies or the blog articles or the newsletter, and it is you just like that’s a lot of data to pull it out.

00:07:44:08 – 00:07:49:26
Bobby Keys
You know, hit the crucial parts, hit the crucial parts that reinforce what’s your mission in your causes?

00:07:51:18 – 00:08:21:00
Ruth Baum Bigus
Well, a lot of our nonprofit friends can’t necessarily afford to have a high quality produced video. Yeah. You know, for every for the donor, a stakeholder, the staff. So is there a way to kind of balance that? And my follow up question would be is, what’s the right length? That’s always something I hear debated. How much is too much in a video and yeah.

00:08:21:28 – 00:08:54:04
Bobby Keys
Yeah. So okay. So I’ll give you seven ways that nonprofits can tell their story. And one of them is video and documentaries. That to me is the most effective way. There’s just too many statistics around video that shows how engaging it is for the end user. Yeah. So but yeah, documentaries and videos are a great way to as nonprofit can tell their stories, case studies, you know, kind of in-depth stories of individuals and communities that have been impacted by your nonprofit work.

00:08:54:18 – 00:09:24:10
Bobby Keys
They can be video or but you know written usually those will be in a a PDF form or a website. You can go just a small little case study of how, you know, how we impacted this family or this community. Testimonials. Testimonials are another way for you to tell your story. That’s a great way for somebody else to tell your story and how it, you know, it impacted your life and you know, how your nonprofit impacted their life.

00:09:25:08 – 00:09:49:03
Bobby Keys
That is that’s you know, that’s one that’s at the top. You know, if you can get testimonials from from families and and even donors from other donors, that is huge. And that could be that can live on your website. It can be in videos that can be in social media, that can be in a newsletter as well, which social media is another way to tell your story?

00:09:49:21 – 00:10:18:25
Bobby Keys
They can be small, little bites that you use throughout the work that you gather throughout the day. It could be of the people, the volunteers, the staff members, the people who are the beneficiaries of your nonprofits. Just little bite sized, bite sized videos, bite sized, you know, content that’s consumable, easily consumable and easily communicate your message in a hurry.

00:10:20:11 – 00:10:44:12
Bobby Keys
You can do blogs. That’s a great way to tell your story. And newsletters. That’s another great way to tell your story. You know, it keeps people engaging and you know, you should be communicating regularly and updating your content on your website with blogs, and you should be reaching out to your donors regularly with newsletters. So fit those stories in there and they don’t have to be long.

00:10:44:13 – 00:11:08:19
Bobby Keys
They could just be little bits of bite size information that ultimately drive people to your website. If you’re, you know, if you’re using a newsletter or even social media because that’s the goal of a lot of these this content is to drive people to your website. You can do infographics, infographics, those are relatively easy to make these days with Canva.

00:11:08:28 – 00:11:34:16
Bobby Keys
It’s a great you know, it’s a great platform to be able to produce, design content, produce and design content. And they have templates that you can use for infographics, events. Events are another way to tell your story. Open houses, tours, volunteer fairs. Yeah. It gives people a chance to see your nonprofit firsthand.

00:11:35:06 – 00:11:49:01
Ruth Baum Bigus
You gave us some great information and a list of where people can even just start to look at that. I want to take a step back and that’s when you’re crafting the story. Who should be at the table to do that?

00:11:50:13 – 00:12:12:18
Bobby Keys
So you all your director, your nonprofit director should be there. Your marketing director should be there. Your program director should be I think it should be everybody, because everybody’s going to be affected differently by the different people that you engage, right? By the various people that you engage with in your nonprofit. So everybody is going to have a story.

00:12:12:24 – 00:13:00:28
Bobby Keys
Everybody’s impacted different ways. So I think those, you know, even volunteers grab a volunteer, a key volunteer, a key program director or somebody who’s who’s in charge of a manager, your executive director, board members. You know, and then sometimes if you are I’ve worked at nonprofits in the past that that deal with children you involved their family. And so you get your get their family on board, too to give it the okay to tell the story of the child and how they were affected, how it affected their family, the changes that they’ve seen and what that future looks like, know that’s that’s you kind of got to get all parties involved.

00:13:01:06 – 00:13:02:15
Bobby Keys
But those are just some of the people are.

00:13:04:03 – 00:13:32:03
Ruth Baum Bigus
All right. I’m going to be the devil’s advocate since I work in the communication end. And I’m the person who’s, you know, at the table trying to say, okay, we’ve got this together and now I have all this here. Should I start with an outline? Should I have something kind of crafted where these things kind of feed in, or should I just have those conversations first and then kind of draw you know, create that outline of this story?

00:13:33:29 – 00:13:53:03
Bobby Keys
So I think it’s going to I think it’s always going to be a mix. And, you know, it’s the creative world, right? And it’s always fluid. There’s always going to be changes. But if you have some type of process of, you know, what’s the goal? I always start with the goal and reverse engineer everything. Who are we trying to reach?

00:13:53:12 – 00:14:15:04
Bobby Keys
What you know, and how do we reach them, you know, what’s the best way to reach our target target audience? Is it via social media? Is it the infographics? Is it, you know, a blog newsletter, white paper? You know, how how do they consume and how are they going to to receive the message that you’re trying to send?

00:14:16:24 – 00:14:38:25
Bobby Keys
And then from there, you know, we start with the stories, then we start developing those stories. But yeah, I mean, always come with an outline, basically with the goals at the top. What is the goal of this this video or this newsletter or this, you know, whatever we’re doing, what is the goal and how are we going to how is it going to impact and inspire the people we’re trying to reach?

00:14:40:06 – 00:15:01:18
Ruth Baum Bigus
We’re talking with Bobby Keys. He is our Ask the Expert. Expert, and we’re talking about storytelling in the way nonprofits can create their story and where they can share it and how to share it. I kind of jumped over a question I asked you earlier. All right. How long is too long or how short is too short if we’re talking in a video or digital medium?

00:15:02:26 – 00:15:26:12
Bobby Keys
Yeah. So some of it’s going to depend on where it is, you know, most of the time, you know, if it’s living online and you’re sending it via email, you’ve got it on your website, you want to stick to, you know, anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, right? You don’t want to typically go over 3 minutes because people will tune out.

00:15:26:12 – 00:15:57:25
Bobby Keys
There’s a higher rate of tuning out after 3 minutes. When it comes to events, sometimes you have you know, a lot of nonprofits have these big events, fundraising events. You know, everybody is dressed up. And then there’s a video that is a centerpiece of the ask a and those have gone, you know, I’ve shot them up to 7 minutes some maybe even a little bit more, but people start to tune out, right.

00:15:58:03 – 00:16:19:06
Bobby Keys
You want to keep it? I would say you want to keep that within 5 to 7 minutes. You know, if it’s got to if it’s going to go longer, you better make it compelling. You better. You better craft that story and and and make sure, yeah, it’s not full of data. It’s got a good mix of story data, visuals, music.

00:16:19:27 – 00:16:38:18
Bobby Keys
But you don’t want to go past that. I, you know, with I’ve seen the glaze over people’s eyes when it gets too large, it’s like, okay, you know, because, you know, you want to take them on an emotional roller coaster, but you don’t want to wear them out. You want to keep that energy flowing. So right when the video’s down, boom, then you go into the ask.

00:16:39:20 – 00:17:06:17
Ruth Baum Bigus
But yeah, I’ve been at those events where you start pushing the dessert or you ask for the next cup of coffee and it’s more the anticipation of, okay, now they’re going to do the ask, is there a some people are apprehensive of that ask is there anything to do in our storytelling to make that more comfortable for that part of an audience?

00:17:07:22 – 00:17:36:29
Bobby Keys
I think honestly, I think that people are expecting it, right? You know, asking for money, whether it’s, you know, your nonprofit or you’re even a small business and when it comes time to negotiate the dollars or to ask for the money, that’s always an uncomfortable feeling. But to me, the best results are when you just do it. You know, we need your help and we need to raise this X amount of money to keep moving forward.

00:17:37:07 – 00:18:02:28
Bobby Keys
You know, but I don’t think you you really have to phrase it like that. I think, you know, when you when you put it on, like, you know, the the the hinge of we’re not going to make it unless you donate. And to me, that’s a turnoff, right? So if you can say, you know, we need, you know, in order to help X amount of X amount of people this upcoming year, we need this, right?

00:18:02:28 – 00:18:24:27
Bobby Keys
You’re giving people a goal. You’re being very specific about what you need and it’s not hinging on you making it. You know, our nonprofit is going to move forward. But here’s our goal for this year. Last year, we helped 20,000 people. This year, we want to help 30,000 people. And here’s how we’re going to do it with your help, you know, so it’s you know, it’s all how you frame it.

00:18:25:05 – 00:18:31:28
Bobby Keys
And it’s, you know, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I think that always goes back to, you know, storytelling.

00:18:33:07 – 00:18:45:20
Ruth Baum Bigus
In other words, probably a tactic is it’s your fault if we fail. Yeah, it should be. We can do so much more. Yeah. Please join us. Yeah. In going. Going on.

00:18:46:08 – 00:18:47:12
Bobby Keys
Yeah.

00:18:47:12 – 00:19:16:13
Ruth Baum Bigus
So you craft these videos. I know you do that because I’ve seen some of them. They’re wonderful. At what point in a process do you show it to your customer, which is the nonprofit? And let’s say it just is like, Oh my God, it’s not what we want. Is there a way? I guess maybe my question is, is there a way to avoid that along the way so that the video storyteller is not going, Oh my God, we’re past budget and now they want me to do this?

00:19:16:13 – 00:19:44:18
Bobby Keys
Absolutely. Is that is that is something that every video producer starting out runs into. And I’ve learned over the years that you have to have a plan and you have to set expectations. All of that is done in the pre-planning. And if you if you start out and have these meetings and you say, what is our goal? You know, who are we talking to?

00:19:44:18 – 00:20:09:04
Bobby Keys
Here’s our plan. Here’s what it’s going to look like. You know, you provide style frames. You provide the basic framework of the story and what the what that goal is and how you’re going to get there. You know, if you’re assuming that you’re meticulous about the pre-planning, it really does. It really does. You know, keep you from scope drift.

00:20:09:10 – 00:20:32:15
Bobby Keys
Right. Which is which is a killer that’s going to you know, it’s going to kill your budget. It’s going to kill the timeline. It’s going to kill the story. You know, because then you start it. It creates a panic, right? If you if you just kind of willy nilly and like, I’m going to shoot this, I’m going to do this, and I’m just going to, you know, give them this, this, this, this content.

00:20:32:24 – 00:20:53:00
Bobby Keys
If you keep the the nonprofit directors and the key principals involved the whole time, you know, it will help you help eliminate that that, you know, going back and saying, we don’t like this, you need to start over. There’s so many people that just willy nilly just start, you know, throwing stuff against the wall and it just I guess it’s like the wild, wild west.

00:20:53:00 – 00:21:11:03
Bobby Keys
And they, they, they, they hand them a video and people are like, well, what’s this? You know, this isn’t what we talk about. Everybody’s got a different vision of what the end goal, what the end product is going to look like. It never fails. Ever, ever fails. It is always, oh, okay. Well, I didn’t think of it like that.

00:21:11:03 – 00:21:43:16
Bobby Keys
I like it or no, that’s not what I had in mind. I don’t like it, you know. But you know, the key is to preplan, plan some more and then keep the client involved. You don’t want to. You don’t want to you don’t want to get in a situation to where you’re basically sending a video out to a client and and you didn’t get the key stakeholders involved early enough.

00:21:43:16 – 00:22:20:18
Bobby Keys
And then ultimately, you know, they end up sending it to their higher ups. And they haven’t been they haven’t been communicating this process the whole time. Then the higher ups, you know, maybe it’s a team of ten people now all of a sudden they have opinions about what the video should look like and, you know, they come back with all these changes and, you know, that’s something you want to avoid that’s that’s part of the pre planning got to get the key stakeholders involved early early in the process show them the framework I always start out with I call it the backbone of the story.

00:22:20:18 – 00:22:50:12
Bobby Keys
Right. You’re always going in, you’re shooting the story of the year. Typically with us, it’s interviews, it’s talking heads of the of the the key stakeholders, the directors and and the people, the beneficiaries of the nonprofit. Right. So you get those stories. You let them tell the story. You lay that out in a cohesive timeline. You send it to you know, you send it to the nonprofit, to the client, and you send it to the client.

00:22:50:22 – 00:23:10:19
Bobby Keys
Let them look at it. Let them understand that this is the backbone of the story. Now we’re going to start adding B-roll. Now we’re going to start adding a few graphics if we need to. So, you know, pre-planning and keeping them involved, you know, is is huge. And in keeping it from scope, drifting.

00:23:13:03 – 00:23:42:11
Ruth Baum Bigus
That did it. Now you’ve lost your hair over this. I know there have been nightmares. You know where you run into that. So what I extrapolate from what you’re sharing is that you know, nonprofit, try to have your act together before you meet with your digital storyteller, your videographer, whoever is helping you produce it so that it’s really clear who is, you know, who’s the you know, the buck stops here person on the team that can say, okay, this is what we’re doing and we’re going to move it.

00:23:42:22 – 00:23:51:25
Ruth Baum Bigus
We’re going to move it forward. I want to know what are the biggest mistakes that nonprofits make as they go into storytelling like this?

00:23:51:25 – 00:24:20:18
Bobby Keys
Ooh, that’s a good one. The biggest mistakes are not planning. That’s probably the biggest one. You know, that’s that’s where things just go awry. And they don’t have to they don’t have to plan everything out. A lot of times people that aren’t in the creative world, they don’t know what they don’t know, you know. So it’s not like they can come to the table and just say, we’ve got this whole plan, you know, this, this, this, this should happen, this should happen.

00:24:20:18 – 00:24:52:24
Bobby Keys
This should happen. Usually that, you know, it’s good, but that ultimately gets thrown out because they don’t understand the video the the the video process. Right. So, you know, not planning, not getting the key people involved, not understanding what their goal is, is is a big problem. They have to understand what their goal, you know, what they ultimately want to do, where that video wants to live, if they’re shooting video, you know, there’s other ways to tell the story.

00:24:52:24 – 00:25:13:23
Bobby Keys
But if they’re shooting video, they want to know who they should know where they want to push this, where they want to put the video. And it’s my job to to help them understand that as a you know, as a, quote, unquote, expert, you know, I help guide them and walk them down that path and say, you know, here’s where you should, you know, based on your goal, here’s where your video should live.

00:25:13:23 – 00:25:35:20
Bobby Keys
Here’s where we should concentrate our efforts. You know, here’s who we’re talking to these people. Here’s the type of content we should be providing over thinking. It is another problem that nonprofits have. You know, it’s not always it doesn’t always have to be this big, grandiose production. It can be this could be something that shot on your phone.

00:25:36:00 – 00:25:58:15
Bobby Keys
It could be just little stories about what are you doing today? You know, what if such and such doing a day in the office and how is that helping, you know, our our target, you know, our people, you know, you don’t have to it doesn’t have to be a huge, huge, you know, five camera shoot with, you know, lights and an HD truck.

00:25:58:15 – 00:26:31:04
Bobby Keys
I mean, it doesn’t have to be that big. It could be something simple. Yeah. And not utilizing it after you get it is another is is a huge mistake. You know, a lot of times and this is how I got into website development. You know, that’s mainly what I do is shoot video and build websites a lot of time after I’d shoot a video and this is a while back where video was more cumbersome, you would shoot a video and nonprofits would spend money, spend time days shooting this.

00:26:31:04 – 00:26:57:14
Bobby Keys
I mean, you know, weeks of production. And you give them the video and they use it once and then it’s done. And I’m like, Well, that should be living on your website. You know, you want to drive traffic to your website all the time, and that video can be a centerpiece of your website. So, you know, getting nonprofits to understand and a lot and then and then back to story websites, they would know how to do that.

00:26:57:14 – 00:27:16:06
Bobby Keys
So I would say, oh, well, give me the video. I know how to build websites and I throw it up there. But that’s, you know, and these days it’s relatively simple. You can do it up on YouTube. But yeah, utilizing, utilizing the content that you create and making it evergreen. So yeah, those are some of the problems that they’ve.

00:27:16:17 – 00:27:37:16
Ruth Baum Bigus
But you’ve offered solutions, which is great and will of course have some of these great tips on our own social media. So you can follow up and we would be remiss if we didn’t let people know where they could learn about all your efforts expertize besides our Casey cares online dot org it’s Bobby Keys media and the website is.

00:27:37:24 – 00:27:57:12
Bobby Keys
Bobby Keys medium.com you can go there check out some videos websites. I’ve got blog articles, you know, about nonprofits and how they can tell their story. You know, different ways nonprofits can tell their story, what’s crucial and then, you know, other other tidbits of information that you might find useful.

00:27:58:15 – 00:28:12:04
Ruth Baum Bigus
And feel free to reach out to us as well. If you’ve got a question, we would certainly get the expert back in touch with you so that you will know all things. Bobby, I’m so glad we got to sit down and have you be the expert.

00:28:12:10 – 00:28:14:08
Bobby Keys
But I appreciate you having me.

00:28:15:05 – 00:28:39:05
Ruth Baum Bigus
Absolutely. And thank you for joining us on Casey Cares, Kansas City’s nonprofit voice. We’re produced by a nonprofit called Charitable Communications. This Casey Care segment was brought to you by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. W WW UCF McChord to be a guest on KC Cares or underwriting opportunities, please visit our website. That’s KC Cares online talk and Spread the love.

00:28:39:05 – 00:28:54:27
Ruth Baum Bigus
You’ll find us on Facebook and Twitter at KC Cares Radio and on Instagram at KC Cares online. Don’t forget, you can catch us Saturday mornings at 8 a.m. on ESPN, 15:10 a.m. and 94.5 FM. Thanks for joining us on KC Cares.

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