111 – How To Make Fundraising Pitches with Emily Schneider

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: Get ready to discover how the right presentation can make your next pitch to donors, board members, or stakeholders, not only memorable, but game-changing for your non-profit’s success.

Welcome to the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast. I’m your host, David. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about all things visual storytelling with Emily Schneider. Emily is a visual storyteller with a passion for presentation design, specializing in transforming complex content into captivating presentations that seamlessly blend storytelling with eye-catching design. Emily brings nearly two decades of experience in marketing and branding to us today. She’s dedicated to empowering clients to deliver their messages confidently. It invites you to explore the exciting world of presentation design and storytelling.

Emily, thank you so much for joining us here and taking a break from your tambourine enthusiastic time that you spend on the side.

Emily Schneider: I love that. Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to chat with you more about this and help everybody who needs a little bit more polish in their storytelling, especially from that visual impact side.

David Pisarek: Let’s start right at the beginning here, which is why does a non-profit need to even care about storytelling?

Emily Schneider: I love that question.

I think it’s for everybody, but specifically in the non-profit sector, right? Isn’t there so much about connection, communication, trust, credibility? That’s what storytelling is all about. I think even more so in the non-profit, there’s a lot of that empathy and that heart that comes with business. That’s exactly why I do what I do, because I am a creatively curious, empathetic person.

The ability to articulate stories that drive meaningful and impactful change really starts with a well-polished system or story.

Stories, again, there’s so many ways, but you go back to the concept of picture books, and that pictures mean a thousand words. When you can lead your story, your pitch, your need as a thought leader with the right articulation and visuals behind you, you show up more confidently. You create that authentic connection. You guide your audience to listen with clarity and understanding so that at the end, they know what you need them to do. You made them feel a certain way, and now they’re ready to make that impactful action and take the next step.

David Pisarek: Right? In the non-profit space, we need to appeal to people’s emotional senses, and the way that you can do that is by having some imagery that they can connect with. It’s one thing to say things or to print words in a document or to have this paragraph or these bullet points on your website or social media posts. But that’s not what people gravitate towards. They want to see the picture. They want to envision what it is that you’re trying to tell through the visual representation.

Emily Schneider: Yeah. What I would build upon that is when you say it like that, I immediately go to pictures, and there’s amazing stock photography, there’s great resources, too, and I can share some of those links with you after you could put in the show notes. But I think it’s also about taking your content and making sure that your content is visually designed.

When you’re talking about that, investors or people who are being part of those non-profits, they need to know data, they need to know numbers, they need to know impact. Those visualizations are just as critical, if not more so, than when you’re talking about photography.

I’ve worked with a couple of non-profits locally, and some of the things that we’ve worked on with them is just taking their data facts and bringing icons and graphically articulating them. Instead of saying one out of 10 people, you have 10 bodies, and one person visually stands out differently, and you stylize the font and the type under it. Those simple things are all part of your visual story.

So visuals are a combination of content, and pictures are, I guess, a loaded phrase, but that visual story is the whole essence of what every slide is and your whole presentation.

Emily Schneider: I mean, Steve Jobs set the bar with his Apple presentations that have no words, maybe a word, and just these beautiful pictures that set the bar for what we would dream about doing. But most presentations have a lot more content and a lot more day-to-day information that needs to be shared. But there’s always ways to find that balance and that synergy to bring that emotional connection.

David Pisarek: I had a couple of thoughts as you were talking about that.

I think what makes infographics so amazing is that it conveys all this big information in a digestible format where you can see, all right, this, this, this, this.

I think a lot of organizations should maybe take that approach when they’re putting together their next publication, or their next social media posts, or they’re going out on their next campaign to talk about stuff, is: how can we relay this information through a visual medium that gets the impact across? That’s the first thing. The second thing is in terms of presentations, I believe having less on display when you’re presenting is actually more impactful.

If you have an image with one word or two words and you’re talking, whether it’s on Zoom and you’ve got a slide deck you’re on stage in front of people, or you’re sitting down with a potential major gift donor, and you’ve got this presentation deck, whatever that you’re going through, you want them to pay attention to you, the words that you’re saying. If you have a giant paragraph with seven bullets up on the screen behind you, they’re not going to pay attention to you.

David Pisarek: They’re going to be looking at that, reading it, trying to digest it, and blocking you out. So I think there’s, in terms of presentation skill, a lot there to be learned for sure.

Emily Schneider: I mean, I think you’re like reading my mind. That’s exactly how I approach to talk about it.

My three intentions it is simplicity, consistency, and intentionality. I think that the three principles are better than intentions, but less is more. Being consistent with how you treat things, how you say things, how you show up. Then when you’re intentional with your choices that you make in your presentation, from your script and your voiceover to your slide, that is the powerful combination. That’s how you guide your audience. That’s how you create this one-to-one conversation and experience.

I like to use this analogy that I help clients become conversation conductors. Just like when you go to an orchestra and the conductor stands on stage, he is the… Yes, exactly. He leaves this whole ensemble. He tells them the different sections and instruments or musicians, when to play, how loud, what the beats are, how fast, how slow. The audience sits back and they have this emotional, harmonious experience. You feel it, you hear it, you see it, and it’s this full sense of experience, and it’s amazing.

If you can think of being that conversation conductor, you lead your audience with your slides, with your voiceover, with your cadence, with the information simply and strategically laid out, you are going to guide that conversation.

Emily Schneider: You’re going to create this harmonious experience. She said, less is more. Two to three key things on a slide is all you need. Yes, we are used to information overload, and it goes back to the infographics comment. We’re so used to seeing so many things.

Our brain naturally turns out when it’s all copy, unless you’re ready to read it. But if you’re sitting in a room, you’re in an experience to listen, to see. It’s a very, again, multi-sensorial experience. You have to make sure that you’re not overloading one or the other because our brains will naturally shut down. We’re 65% more likely to retain information when it’s visually designed.

Those infographics really have power to get somebody to hear it and see it so quickly, and then they’re ready for the next thing, or they’re engaged, or they’re putting the puzzle pieces together around what that means for them and how that can drive their business. I think there’s so much power in that less is more, and that keeping yourself focused on 2-3 things so that you become the conversation conductor. You lead the way. Have you heard of the term death by PowerPoint?

David Pisarek: I’ve lived death by PowerPoint.

Emily Schneider: Yes. I mean, we all have. Do you remember the presentation? No way. But you remember how overwhelmed you were, how you shut down.

Again, we’re used to all this attention-seeking stuff. If I get overloaded, I’m going to shut you down, I’m going to open my phone, or I’m going to be brainstorming about my next thing, or thinking about dinner that night, or whatever it is on my personal agenda because I’m not focused with what you’re saying. But when you can simplify that and you can create a really impactful and emotional connection, people will remember how you made them feel, what you did, and they’re going to remember those key points and the key takeaways. Nobody remembers the full slide of bullets, but they remember the way you made them feel and what you made them think and do.

David Pisarek: It’s obvious and very clear how passionate you are in what you’re talking about with this, and that’s absolutely amazing. I wish more people had the excitement about how to deal with this type of stuff. But one point that I want to make is it’s not just about the deck. It’s not just about the visual, or the one or two bullets, or the title that you’ve got on that slide.

It’s also about your tonality and how you speak and how you come across. Are you using your hands? Are you engaging? Are you walking from side to side? Or are you just standing here in a very monotone voice talking like this and just getting the points across?

I think a lot of leaders are worried or concerned about making sure they’ve covered all their points that they want, which is why they have all of this on the slide deck. But that’s what the presenter notes are for. I was a keynote I was a speaker in April at a conference for digital marketers, and I was like, okay, I got my slide deck tethered for it. I got all my points. I got all the stats and analytics and stuff that I wanted in this thing.

David Pisarek: I know my content because it’s my content. But then I got a note from the organizers saying, by the way, there isn’t a way for you to see your show notes, your presenters’ notes during the presentation. I just went into panic mode. I made these cue cards and this and that and whatever. Then I think I practiced it five-six times because I’m a perfectionist. I really wanted it to be exactly the way that I wanted it to be.

Then I realized at 8:00 at night, the night before, nobody is going to know if I missed anything. It’s me that would know. I’m the one that would freak out in panic, not them. That just leveled the whole thing. Yeah, there were a couple of things that, oh, afterwards, you know what? I wish I would have said this point or whatever. But nobody knows. It’s an internal thing. I think that’s an important perspective to take. What do they need to know? Can you get those three or four points across to them?

Emily Schneider: Yeah, and what you did is you made your job as a presenter easier.

What I hear you say, and what I’ve created, part of why my process is a minimum of 10-day turnaround from kickoff to delivery for a super small deck is because it gives people time to process. It allows you the planning and the preparation. You need to get comfortable with your content. When you work on it the night before, that’s where we experience stuff by PowerPoint. When people are unprepared and they’re not ready and they’re not confident.

I am excited about the work I do, and I know I geek out about PowerPoint. And to be honest, I used to think it was a bad word. I came from the marketing. I have a fine arts degree. PowerPoint was like, it was yucky in my world. But what I love about it is my zone of genius is helping people articulate and refine their content. And I get to show up and be super confident and super excited. But what I do is that I empower somebody else to take that, to shine their light brighter. They can borrow my confidence in how strong their presentation is. I give them the time back. They’re not spending 10 to 12 hours building their presentation and thinking about it.

Emily Schneider: They’re focused on the content and their delivery and knowing that they have their information outlined. Like you said, your presentation, it’s not word for word. But if I can design it to hit on those three points, and you have some consistencies across the way, and you have your bullets very steep, and you have your infographics and your data design. It’s easy for you to look at a slide and know exactly what you should say about it without reading.

I think that is the beauty of what it takes to be simple, consistent, and intentional when you build your presentations. That’s why storytelling is so important. It’s not a presentation, it’s a story. It allows you to connect with people.

I think that’s one of our universal human truths, is: we all want human connection. We all want that, especially in the non-profit world. It’s so important. There are so many hard for projects and missions, and so it’s important that we connect in the right way.

David Pisarek: One of the things you mentioned before was that there are key elements, right? What are the key elements of a successful presentation when you’re pitching to donors or boards of directors or I guess in general?

Emily Schneider: Yeah. In general.

So I’ll say from a visual storytelling aspect, I’ve had this four-tip process. It starts with what we’ve talked about, knowing your audience, understanding what you want them to think, feel, and do. Also, knowing who they are, because that depends on how much information they get. If you’re talking to somebody who is more internal, it’s more peer-to-peer, they’re going to need a lot more day-to-day information. They’re going to need more updates on where progress is, how things are, where focus is. If you’re talking to investors, if you’re talking to board members, they need different type of information, and it’s usually a bigger picture. It’s less specific but broader strokes.

You need to know and understand who your audience is and what they need to think, feel, and do. Then it comes down to crafting your story. Again, this is not my expertise, but I always love helping people think about their story. When it comes to crafting your narrative, it’s very simple.

Think of it like a traditional book, but you start with the end in mind. You ground people on why they’re there and what you want them to do. Then, just like a traditional book, you hook them in with some emotional, personal story. You connect with them. You give them the framework of what’s going on. The middle is the heart of the presentation. It’s usually where the most time is spent, giving them the updates, the data, the fact, the information, and the evidence, and the support that they need to make that informed decision of why they’re there or what you’re giving them the update. Then the end is that summary. It’s recapping those things. It’s pulling through some of those key words or phrases that they’ve heard, and it’s summarizing.

Again, our brains can do a lot of the heavy lifting, but it helps if we can guide them along. Then you end it with the ability to open that floor and have that conversation. But I’m not even talking about design at this point. Crafting your narrative is super important before you get into the design work. One of my tricks is always to grab some Post-it notes and a Sharpie and start putting one idea or Post-it note on a piece of paper. It’s very modular, but getting off the computer allows your brain to think, and it actually allows you to find these themes or these content buckets.

Emily Schneider: Going back to keeping slides simple, it allows us to keep our flow simple. That’s step two. Step three is actually the guide. That’s where the heart and the me of my passion comes in. Again, simplicity, consistency, and intentionality. You want to have 2-3 key things per slide, and you want to balance content and visuals.

You can have slides that are all content, and you can have slides that are all visual, but you don’t want to overload a single slide, and you want to make sure that your key points are always brought out. And that’s, again, we’re crafting your narrative in that outline. Going back to that, it’s an evolution, it’s really important. When it comes to content and text design, picking one or two fonts, using your brand colors, not overdoing it. Simple. Less is always more.

Being consistent with headline placement, where words are. How long your bullets are? We talked about that. I’m not going to read bullets. I’m not going to remember bullets. A lot of times people will bold something in this long sentence. Why am I not just putting that on the screen? I’m going to voice over the whole sentence, but if I put those three words, that’s what my audience is going to remember.

Emily Schneider: They’re going to resonate, stylizing, creating italics, subhead and different treatments. Again, it doesn’t have to be overdone, but if you can help your audience see the communication hierarchy on your slide, it creates those synergies and simplicity and consistency. That’s such a heavy lifting for you. Our brains will assemble the puzzle if you set it up correctly.

When it comes to simplifying your text, put six bullets on a page, maybe 30 words. I always encourage my clients, and I’ll do the exercise myself because if you can’t tell them a verbal processor, so I share a lot and then I learn to refine it. But keep cutting words until it doesn’t make sense anymore, and then add the last word back in. It works brilliantly for headlines and for your bullets because it allows you to cut all that extra of the A’s.

Just sometimes we’re redundant. Sometimes we think we’re being more descriptive, and again, less is always more. I actually think there’s a sign of confidence, a cool confidence when you show less because you’re able to articulate it in such a more succinct and impactful way. That’s when it comes to content.

Emily Schneider: Then, the fun part is the visual design we talked about.

It’s more than just pictures. It can be icons, it could be illustrations, it could be drumming, it could be data. Again, what I always recommend is picking a style that works and being consistent. If you have photography, photos, especially stock, are usually done in series. Try and find like images. You might not have the same exact people in them, but are they shot the same way? Is the coloring the same? Is it all inside? Is it all outside? Does it have the same emotional feel?

Sometimes I’ll get pictures and they’re all over the place. One of my tricks is turning them black and white because then nobody sees color and you simplify that overload of information. If you pick illustrations or icons, pick stylized stuff, again, that is consistent. It doesn’t have to be over the top. PowerPoint has beautiful icons in its system. If you use all theirs, they all look the same. You want to feel cohesive and that consistency across. When it comes to data, again, how you stylize your X axis and your Y axis and how you treat your data, treat it the same.

What is the priority? Usually in data, it’s not your X and Y axis. It’s not your key. It’s the data itself. Sometimes it’s removing all the extra parts. I think about when people share their year, especially as you wrap up the year, they’re showing the year’s growth. Do I have to label every single month on an axis, or do I just label the quarter? Because people get that they see the 12 bar. Do I need the Y axis? If I put my numbers at the top of the bars, you label your bars, I don’t need an axis number. I’m not going to reference it.

The more you can combine that information and give it one shot, okay, I can register and take that all in. It does so much for you using color to highlight categories, sections across your whole presentation in the same way.

If you’re talking about one type of offering, use a color or stylize that and use that on every slide so that I know when you continue to talk about it or if we have three different topics, oh, this color resonates with that topic, it’s really easy for my brain to put that together.

David Pisarek: The only thing I would add in there is as you’re working on paring down the content that you’re displaying or showing, I would suggest leveraging AI. Give it a prompt, I need this to be shorter. It’ll shorten it down, it’ll make it more concise, and then you can use that to put that one word back in that you want, or you can give it a prompt. That didn’t hit the point. I wanted to include the word diversity and then get it to reword.

What I like to do in the prompt is say, give me 10 options. You get a whole bunch of them, and then, oh, I like option two and three, combine them, and then you get something really great out of it. I think there’s lots of opportunity to leverage technology if you’re in that realm and you want to leverage it and use it in that way, or just write it on a piece of paper. Write it three, four times, the whole sentence, and then go, I’m tired of writing this word. Don’t include that word, right? Start cutting it down.

Emily Schneider: You’re so right. I use ChatGPT all the time because it does, it helps me synergize my thoughts in a very efficient way, and it allows us to communicate with more clarity and simplicity. It’s not perfect. It’s very obvious if you copy and paste it. But if you can use it as a resource or as a tool, especially if you’re building something by yourself, it allows you to use it as a brainstorming tool.

I think AI is amazing for those purposes, or just how do I better articulate? Or I’ve had it transform data and help me figure out what chart to do when I’ve gotten new types of data that… I’m not a data scientist, so I don’t know the best way to articulate all the data, but it helped me figure out, is it a bar and line chart? What are the combinations? What are the options?

So yeah, I think it’s a great tool. I love that. I didn’t get to my last tip, which is delivery. We talked about that. But delivery is really once you already have this beautifully simple story designed and written, your delivery is going to be very simple.

Emily Schneider: You’re going to have that confidence. You’re going to create more of a narrative than just like you’re talking to the void. You’re going to have that trust and that engagement. Really, delivery is once you know who you’re talking to, what you’re going to say, and having the right content, the delivery is like a no-brainer. That’s where it should be fun, to your point. That’s where that confidence comes from because you’ve worked really hard to get there, and it should be, hopefully, second nature, or nobody knows what you missed. It’s perfect in their eyes.

David Pisarek: I’ve been following a number of people that are the experts in presentations and stuff. In the show notes, there’s a great video from TED Talks about how to make a great presentation. I’ll include that in the show notes for everybody.

But one of the people that I follow in terms of presentation skills, what he says is, if you’re feeling nervous, slow down your talking. It’s really hard. When you’re nervous, you start to talk faster, and then you go like this, and people glaze over what you’re talking about because you’re talking too fast and there’s too much to do. Take a breath. Say one point, wait two seconds, then the next point, start to calm yourself down. The causes in between give people the opportunity to digest what you’ve just told them. Give it time, give it opportunity to sink in for the people that are there that you’re presenting to.

Emily Schneider: I love that tip.

But what about for somebody like me who I talk faster, not because I’m nervous, but because I’m so excited and I’m like, wait, I got to share all these things? But I think I could still use that tip so much. I appreciate that. I’m writing that one down so I can remember it. It’s like taking breath. It’s giving yourself that space. Just like we talked about earlier, it’s planning; it’s giving yourself the opportunity to be present, ready, and show up with the right confidence and elegance. I think that’s an amazing tip. I will slow down my talking, even though mine is the opposite. It’s not nervousness. It’s always excitement. We were like, Hold up. Your speed is way too fast.

David Pisarek: Emily, amazing insights around presentation style.

We talked a little bit about branding, but we didn’t really call it branding, but visual storytelling. It’s super important for people to think about this across everything that they’re doing. Email is a little bit hard to do visual storytelling, but through web, through social, through video, through presentations, through content, through articles, through blogs, newsletters, etcetera, you can leverage this. Thank you so much for bringing this to the forefront of everybody’s mind.

Emily Schneider: No, this was awesome. Thank you so much. I wish I would have gotten that tip to slow down at the beginning. Can we go back and record? Just kidding.

But yes, you’re right. I think it’s so true. Visual storytelling is applicable to so many different types of business needs. I just really geek out about the PowerPoint aspect of it, but it’s such a way to connect and build that trust and connection that we seek in this world. I think it’s important. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

David Pisarek: My pleasure.

The one last thing that I would tell people is once you’ve got a slide deck created, whether it’s Google Slides, Keynote, PowerPoint, whatever it happens to be. Set it up as a template that you and your colleagues and other people in the organization can leverage. Run a lunch and learn with people. Just how does everybody get together and be like, This is what we’re doing moving forward. This fits our brand guide, our style, our tone, etcetera, etcetera. Let the folks in your organization know that this thing does exist, so if they need it, they can use it.

Emily Schneider: Yeah, I love it.

David Pisarek: All right.

I told you before we started rolling that I’m going to put you on the spot. This is where it’s going to happen. If you were to give people a challenge that you want them to do in the next two days after listening to this episode, what would that challenge be?

Emily Schneider: Oh, that is a good one.

Okay. I would challenge people to learn to slow down and take those breaths in all types of conversations, whether it’s with your family or with business or just in life. Enjoy that sip of coffee. Take a breath before you answer that phone call, or reach out to a friend, or go on that walk. Yeah, I love that. I challenge you to do what you said, which is learn that little bit of a pause and see if you can really foster that confidence in that just connection with life. I think it’s so important.

David Pisarek: Stop and smell the roses. Enjoy the moment. Be present in that moment in time. Awesome. If anybody wants to connect with you, what do they need to do?

Emily Schneider: You can find me on my website iamemilyschneider.com, learn more about me, my expertise, my experience, and a little bit of my process and how I work. You can reach out. You can contact me directly there. You can also find my four-tip process as a downloadable document so that you have this one-pager reference next time you’re building your visual story. I’m also super active on LinkedIn, and I love connecting and networking with people on there as well.

David Pisarek: Amazing. Thanks again, Emily, joining in on this episode of the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast.

To everybody listening, if you want any of the links, the resources that we’ve been talking about, Emily’s four-tip step guide document, the link to her website, LinkedIn, etc. We’re going to have all of that on our show notes page. Just head over to nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com, click on this episode for all the details.

And until next time, keep on being successful.