Think tanks. Foundations. Advocacy groups. Membership bodies.
They’re a curious bunch, really – these ‘B2B nonprofits’. On the one hand, they proudly wear the nonprofit badge. On the other, they happily speak the language of business. Committed to the cause, but removed from the frontline.
It’s a challenging backdrop for telling your story. And the signs of struggle aren’t hard to spot – jargon-heavy messaging, same-as-all-the-rest mission statements, narratives that leave more questions than answers.
In short, the wrong story is being told.
Why your story matters
The maxim “a confused mind never buys” is one that B2B nonprofits would do well to remember. Because when the story is unclear, the audience looks elsewhere.
Donors find someone else to back.
Leaders find another programme to attend.
Corporates find a different partner to work with.
The worlds of policy, advocacy and membership are more crowded than ever. Leaders have more choice than ever. The organisations cutting through aren't necessarily doing better work.
They’re telling a better story.
The five story traps
From our experience, there are five traps that B2B nonprofits fall into when telling their story:
1. Failing to define the space you want to own
Every story needs a strategy behind it. The technical term is positioning – the intentional act of defining how you want your audience to perceive you, vis-à-vis the alternatives. The biggest challenge of messaging isn’t knowing what to say – it’s knowing where the message is pointing. Without that direction, your story will be always be the victim of the latest opinion.
2. Telling a story for no one in particular
Your audience wants to see themselves in your story. They want to be acknowledged; spoken to. And yet most think tanks (and charities more broadly) struggle with specificity. In their desperation to leave no one out, they end up speaking to no one at all. They tell a story that leaves the audience wondering: “Is this even for me?”
3. Too much solution, not enough problem
The knock-on effect of ignoring the audience? You don’t speak to their frustrations – to what they are looking for. Instead, the story focuses on YOUR problem (your cause; the mission you're on) without ever acknowledging THEIR problem (their challenges; where they want to get to). It can leave your audience wondering if you really what they’ve been looking for.
4. Making yourself the hero of the story
This might come as a surprise, but you’re not the hero of the story (at least, you shouldn’t be). The story might be yours to tell – but the hero should be your beneficiaries or the audience you're trying to reach (donors; policymakers; etc). Your role in the story? To be the trusted guide – that's it.
5. Sticking to the sector script
Cut-and-paste mission statements. Industry jargon. Over-used metaphors. These are the things that makes your story sound like all the rest. The problem is, your audience has heard that same story – or a variation of it – countless times. If you stick to that script, expect them to skim-read your story…and struggle to remember it afterwards.
Finding a story that sells
When it comes to rewriting their story, most organisations reach for the wrong starting point. They focus on tweaking what’s already there, or getting in a room to dream up something new.
It’s understandable – but it’s also why so many brand stories fall flat.
The organisations that get this right take a different path – one that might feel counterintuitive at first:
They start with insights
Telling a story that sells starts with insights. It begins with asking the question "what do we know?”. From there, it moves to asking “what space can we own?”. Only once those are answered to we get to (“what story should we tell?”. Skip ahead, and you fall into the traps above. Do it in reverse, and you end up in an exhausting loop of rewrites that never land.
They tell three stories in one
The story itself, when you get there, is rarely one thing. It's three distinct but overlapping layers – each one doing different work:
- THE Story is focused outward on the world. The problem that exists. The change that needs to happen. The cause you are committed to.
- OUR Story is focused on your organisation – who you are, what you do, how you do it, and – crucially – why it matters.
- THEIR Story is focused entirely on your audience – who they are, where they’re stuck, and where they’re trying to get to.
The part that most organisations get wrong? They lead with OUR Story, when the most compelling place to start is almost always THE Story or THEIR Story. Begin with the world you are changing, or the audience you are helping. After all, you're not the hero of this story.
A view from outside the jar
As in-house leaders, it's easy to get too close to the story we are trying to tell. We struggle to read the label from inside the jar. We end up overthinking and overcomplicating.
That’s not a failure of intelligence or ambition – it’s failure of perspective. And a new perspective is never far away, if we are willing to look for it.
So, if your messaging isn’t working as hard as your organisation is, perhaps it's time to get fresh take on the story you're telling.
Because the right story can open doors that would otherwise stay shut.
