[Ep. 86] When You Don’t Message Enough: How Humility Can Kill Your Fundraising (Narrative Strategy with Josh Gryniewicz and Justin Reid)
What if sporadic communications are doing more damage to your fundraising than donor fatigue or a tight economy?
In a sector where small, underfunded comms teams and pressure to “stay humble” are the norm, too many nonprofits are under-communicating their impact and missing out on vital support and deeper donor connections. In today’s episode, Josh Gryniewicz interviews Justin Reid to discuss the value of consistent, human-centered communication.
Tune in to learn how to build basic narrative infrastructure even with a small team, use AI as scaffolding instead of generating more “slop,” and create content that helps your donors and beneficiaries actually see themselves in your work.
Episode highlights include:
Why “sparing the marketing expense” is quietly stalling your growth
How to talk about impact without feeling like you’re bragging
The value of “narrative infrastructure” and why most nonprofits don’t have it
The problem of “AI slop” — and how to avoid it
A simple scaffolding move that helped one org rapidly scale its content output
Why only telling your story once or twice a year is a mistake
What happens when your audience can’t see themselves in your content
How deeper engagement beats likes and shares for real fundraising outcomes
Why engaging with other people’s content may be more powerful than posting your own
Listen here:
Additional Resources
[NPFX] How a $10M Mindset Can Break the "Who You Know" Funding Barrier
[NPFX] Co-Creating Solutions: The Next Level of Community Listening
[NPFX] How to Measure the Impact of Your Narrative Change Strategy
[NPFX] Authentic, Ethical, and Effective Messaging — From Theory to Practice
Guest
Justin "Jay" Reid is the founder of Renaissance Digital, a Durham, NC-based production company and consultancy built on narrative-led, culture-centered storytelling and creative infrastructure for organizations. Jay spent a decade developing content and communications strategy at Cities United, a national organization dedicated to supporting cities in reducing homicides and shootings through comprehensive public safety plans. That work shaped his approach to storytelling as advocacy, and his belief that narrative infrastructure is the key to producing consistent, quality content at scale. Through Renaissance Digital, Jay supports organizations and events with creative production and strategic consulting, developed an AI-powered content and storytelling tool, Creative Studio, and partners with organizations to develop the creative systems they need to show up consistently. At the center of Jay's work is culture as infrastructure: the thing that shapes how people connect, trust, and make meaning.
Host
Josh Gryniewicz is the founder and Chief Narrative Strategist at Odd Duck, a storytelling-for-social-change creative consultancy focused on impact-driven organizations. Josh is the co-author of the award-winning national bestseller, Interrupting Violence. For over a decade, he has worked in nonprofit communication. In 2018, he founded Odd Duck to combine his passions for storytelling and social change. The agency’s Navigating Misinformation for Community Health framework has been shared with over a thousand community health organizations. Odd Duck has worked with nearly a hundred change-making organizations and advised hundreds more, including the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the White House.
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