When the grizzled, homeless Vietnam war veteran hurled the question at me, through missing teeth and pursed lips, his eyes flashed with defiance and a dare − the dare to understand. As senior writer for many of our rescue mission clients, I was stunned by the question. I couldn’t answer.

‘Well, I do!’ he finally spat out, then tapping his temple. ‘Because I have to go to bed every night with that image in my head.’

Over the next hour, he told me about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam − the eight children he killed in the war, his medals, his own life-threatening injuries and psychological wounds he brought back with him, leading to life-long heroin addiction, nightmares, life on the streets, frostbite and amputated toes; and finally the new hope and redemption he found at the mission.

That’s a story. And every time I tell it, I can barely choke the words out, recalling the tragedy and the new hope of this one man’s life. But I hope whoever reads this man’s story or hears me tell it, experiences something of what I experienced that day. I hope readers are changed by the telling and inspired to be part of any rescue mission that can lead to such transformation.

Most of the nonprofit organisations we work with at Grizzard Communications Group are goldmines of stories like these – tragic, heart-warming, inspiring, human-drama stories illustrating the power of life transformation. And sharing these stories with donors is one of the most important tasks we perform – because through these stories, we transform donors’ lives, inviting them to participate as main characters in the stories themselves.

Unfortunately, however, too many writers in the nonprofit world fail at telling these stories effectively, relying on formulaic story structure, uninspired quotations and lazy prose that turns the extraordinary lives of the people we serve into stereotypes and caricatures.

So what makes a great story in our nonprofit communications? Here are a few ideas.

We live in a world where people have limited time and too many choices of where they will focus their attention. That means it’s imperative we write stores that are short and simple. I rarely write stories that are more than 420 words; sometimes as short as two or three paragraphs. This is an art – the art of knowing what to include in the story and what to leave out. In fact, 99 per cent of anyone’s story will be left out. So find the main theme, the unique theme of someone’s life and write the story around that.

The stories we tell involve real men, women and children, with real lives, real problems and transformation, real hopes and dreams. We dare not turn anyone’s life story into a means to an end, into a message or an advertisement. My first goal in writing anyone’s story is to honour the person whose story I’m telling by writing it with sensitivity, dignity and passion. When I do that, I help create a relationship between the reader/donor that transcends words and agendas.

You can’t just write a story and expect people to read. Donors have unlimited choices of what they can spend their time reading, it’s our job to give them a reason to read. People want to read stories that matter to them, that move them and even promise to change them in some way. That means writing strong prose in a way that sends a chill up a donor’s spine, causes her or him to shed a tear, and even leads her to share that story with a friend. And when we do that, well, we inspire donors to invest more in the organisation they care about.

As fundraisers and communicators, we have an extraordinary privilege and honour to tell stories that transform lives and inspire a better world. As the great poet Maya Angelou once said, ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’