Step Onward Foundation is a Texas-based nonprofit organization on a mission to break the cycle of homelessness. They provide emergency funds to help families with young children and at-risk young adults to avoid eviction and stay in their homes. They also provide funding for essentials such as food security, education, and transportation costs to help families and young adults maintain or regain their independence.
As a small nonprofit and a mostly board-run operation, they knew they wanted to upgrade their fundraising strategy but weren’t sure they had the resources to do something about it.
When they came to us, they had the desire to run their first ever end-of-year fundraising campaign. This meant getting more intentional about their content and more strategic about storytelling.
They were a small but mighty team with a mission that changed lives, and we knew we had to harness the impact of their stories to reach their audience and highlight their powerful work.
With so many nonprofit organizations across the globe working to build brighter and more supportive communities, it can be tough to stand out.
The first step to really connecting with your audience in a meaningful way is audience segmentation. While it can be tempting to send everything to everyone, especially with a small audience list, it’s not the most effective way to get your message out.
We began our work with Step Onward by digging into the different types of audiences they were speaking to, so that we could tailor future messaging based on the information we uncovered.
Next, it was time to dive into storytelling. The Step Onward Foundation serves primarily children, teens, and families by connecting them to resources and providing gap funding as they face extenuating circumstances in their lives that may prevent them from remaining housed, flourishing, and moving forward.
These circumstances are things like severe or life threatening medical conditions, financial stability through college or school, or other major life events. These types of situations present significant financial and emotional challenges to their clients. Step Onward’s support means a complete change of trajectory for many of their clients. It is truly life changing work.
A mission like theirs lends itself to very powerful stories. By helping the Step Onward Foundation team really hone their storytelling skills, we put together impactful content and strategy for their first ever end of year campaign and laid the groundwork for future fundraising strategy as well.
Even as a small, grassroots nonprofit team, investing in high level strategic support and honing their storytelling skills allowed the Step Onward Foundation to take their own next steps to a thriving future.
They utilized their enhanced storytelling strategies from our time together at fundraising events throughout the year, and are continuing to develop more high level fundraising and content strategies to share their impact and make a difference for even more teens and families.
“Jules and her team are talented, competent, skilled, responsive, and passionate about helping mission-driven companies. [They are] flexible and willing to propose work that fits within our budget. I’m excited to continue working with Wayward Kind to build our funding streams into a deep and steady river of support that nourishes our programs and allows us to better serve our community and grow our impact.”
LAURA MCFARLAND
STEP ONWARD FOUNDATION
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