Ep 306 | Writing Great Impact Statements with Jake Sucoff

Are you struggling to cut through the noise and truly connect with your donors? In this episode, I sit down with Jake Sukoff, founder and CEO of Patient Procure, to explore the art of crafting compelling impact stories that resonate with your audience.

Jake shares his passion for helping organizations translate their mission into powerful narratives that inspire action. We discuss:

The Power of Personal Stories

• Why leading with individual stories is more effective than overwhelming statistics
• How to identify and develop your organization's core impact narratives
• Strategies for tailoring your message to different stakeholder groups

Creating a Holistic Impact Strategy

• Integrating your impact stories across all communication channels
• Balancing detailed information with concise, engaging content
• Tips for repurposing content to maximize your storytelling efforts

Overcoming Common Pitfalls

• Why under-communicating is often a bigger risk than over-communicating
• How to simplify your message without losing its power
• The importance of staying human-focused in a world of algorithms

Whether you're a seasoned nonprofit marketer or just starting to develop your impact strategy, this conversation offers valuable insights to help you share your mission more effectively and connect with the hearts of your supporters.

Wanna Skip Ahead? Here are Some Key Takeaways:

06:46 Crafting Relatable Impact Stories It's important to create stories that are universally relatable and tailor them to specific audiences. The power of personal narratives over statistics in conveying impact and emotional connection is crucial.

15:23 Simplifying Impact Communication for Nonprofit Leaders Focus on the core mission and impact rather than getting overwhelmed by marketing technicalities. Simplify the message and get back to the fundamental “why” of the organization.

26:51 Human-Centric Approach to Impact Storytelling Focus on human connection in storytelling, rather than getting caught up in metrics or algorithms. Speak directly to their audience and prioritize quality over quantity.

Full Transcript

[00:00:00 – 00:00:25]We talk a lot about story sell, share your impact, but how do you know what you should be talking about when it comes to the impact stories that you're sharing? That's where things can get kind of tricky, especially when you're in the organization all the time to really understand okay, this is what's going to resonate with people. This isn't or you're talking to different organizations or individuals or whatever, people with different motivations.

[00:00:25 – 00:00:26]How do we know what is going.

[00:00:26 – 00:01:41]To connect with them, engage with them, all of the things and so that is what we are going to talk about today with Jake Sukoff. Jake is here to share all of his goodness regarding impact statements, how to connect with people, what is really going to connect with your existing donors and your new donors? Jake is an entrepreneur, marketer and four time best man. He's the founder and CEO of Patient Procure, a marketing agency that specializes in helping medical practices book their ideal patients and keep them coming back. Pet Pro leverages exceptional content, storytelling and technology to create reliable patient funnels so practitioners can focus on what they do best caring for patients. Jake's career spans 15 years of building and launching products across diverse markets including B2B, FAS, Enterprise Healthcare startup, incubator and loyalty rewards hardware. He spent these years working directly with C suite executives, pitching in high pressure environments and using data to influence decisions. Jake's real passion is his family, friends and music. He's constantly tinkering with automation and AI these days so he can spend less time in the office and more time with the people he loves. Aren't we all? So today I really hope that you.

[00:01:41 – 00:01:43]Enjoy this conversation just really about how.

[00:01:43 – 00:01:53]To use the work that you're doing, connect with the people that you're working with, community solve and the donors that want to help you and growing that mission.

[00:01:53 – 00:01:55]So before we get into it, this.

[00:01:55 – 00:02:37]Episode is brought to you by Do Good University. Do Good University is the go to place for small to medium sized nonprofits to find community amongst other nonprofits that are trying to do this thing. We provide tons of templates and on demand courses and worksheets and live workshops. Especially our weekly live Q&As where myself and Patrick Kirby join you to answer all of your questions like get what you need and support you in your fundraising journey. Whether it's offline, online grants, board engagement, all of the things, events, you name it, we talk about it in these sessions. Now you can get two weeks free.

[00:02:38 – 00:02:40]Inside of Do Good University by going.

[00:02:40 – 00:02:47]To the firstclick.net dgu the letter U and join us for one of our live Q&As.

[00:02:47 – 00:02:49]Check out what's behind the scenes and.

[00:02:49 – 00:03:22]See if this is something that can support for you. We are not just here to provide you with a bunch of extra training. We are here to connect with you, to learn about your organization, support you, and help you where you're stuck in real time. We get together every single week. So again, head on over to the first click.netdgu check it out. Let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming chat. Let's get into the episode. You're listening to the Digital Marketing Therapy Podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell Mulhern.

[00:03:22 – 00:03:27]Each month, we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you.

[00:03:27 – 00:03:40]Can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

[00:03:40 – 00:03:45]Hey, friends, please join me in welcoming Jake Sukhoff to the podcast. Jake, thanks for being here today.

[00:03:46 – 00:03:48]Thank you, Sami. It is a pleasure to be here.

[00:03:49 – 00:04:14]So I feel like impact is a buzzword now. It's like one of the we always. It's easy to say like, okay, hey, nonprofits, you need to share your impact. Let's talk about our impact. But we don't often talk about what that actually means. And so I'm really excited for this conversation today. But before we kind of jump into some strategies, why is this something that you are so passionate about and that you love kind of stuff? Supporting nonprofits with.

[00:04:14 – 00:06:03]Yeah. Thank you. When you start doing work that the direct result of is it makes people's lives better, you just live a richer life. It feels good. I don't want to sound gratuitous here, but it's like a drug. The more you help people, the more you get hooked on it. And it just feels great to help people. And especially in an area like digital marketing, which is where I've made my career, there's a lot of times when what you're doing is heavily directly related to profits, and it really comes down to the numbers. How many dollars are you putting into your marketing and how many dollars are you getting back and is it profitable and can you justify your existence? And when you get an opportunity to work with people where there is impact and you are actually helping people's lives, it gives you a little bit more meaning to the work that you're doing. So that's why I care about it. And Then thinking about impact, which is where we'll be spending most of our time today, I tie it directly to the why. If you are a nonprofit leader and you are spending your life trying to improve the lives of others, you need to convey to your stakeholders why it's so important. The things that you're doing, they're the inputs, but the outputs are really are what's going to make people care. And that is the, you know, the mission behind what you're doing and then the real tangible outcome of. Look at these people whose lives were improving.

[00:06:05 – 00:06:45]Yeah, that's so good. But I think it leads me immediately to my first question, which is how do we know? Like, we know the work that we're doing. We see it every day. We see the impact that it's making on the community that we're serving, whatever that is. But how do we make sure that the stories and the impact that we're sharing with our audience are stories that they care about so that they want to engage with us? Like, how do we kind of balance that? Well, this is the work that we do. Which stories? Because there's so many, do we actually. How do we know what to share with people? How do we know which impact is going to be the most impactful? That was too many impacts in one sentence. How do we know that that is what people are going to care about on the receiving end?

[00:06:46 – 00:09:36]It's a great question. I think about it in two ways. The first is who is the person that you're speaking with? When I am organizing a campaign, regardless of whether it is for nonprofit or for profit, you need to think about who is the ideal Persona that you want this message to get in front of. And then how are you positioning that messaging so that it speaks to that individual? Now we can talk about that a lot more. But the, the second area is going to be trying to come up with stories that are generally relatable is probably the best. What's a good way to think about this? You know, let's take for example, I worked in the past with a literacy program. There are many, many different stories that can be told. But generally there are one or two that you know that you can have in your back pocket that you can always go back to that's going to be relevant to everybody. So for instance, we were helping manage this program for outreach into a local community to improve literacy rates. And there is a 12 year old girl who talked about her journey from being afraid of being called on in school because she didn't know how to Read. And then after intervention, not just being able to read at the level she was supposed to, but developing a passion for it and being able to speak confidently about it and understanding that it was so important in her life to the point where she wanted to become a writer. A story like that is translatable to every single stakeholder, regardless of if it's going to be a staff member, is it going to be a donor, is it going to be a policymaker? So getting a couple of those stories that are really foundational to what your organization stands for is really important. And then after you've done that, figuring out, how did these fit into the individual Persona who I'm speaking to, the policymaker wants to know, how is that going to improve schools in the area, and how is that going to improve getting teachers the tools that they need to do a better job? The people who are impacted by it, they're going to want to know, is this going to help my child in the same way that it helped this other child? So first I'd understand, what are these stories that are really going to be applicable and just they're going to resonate with a very wide group of your audience. And then after that, figure out, how can we create individual messaging within each story, depending on the demographic we're speaking to?

[00:09:38 – 00:10:08]Well, this is really interesting because you didn't start that out by saying, like, you know, 300,000 children can't read in the United States. You literally said that. I'm making that number up. I have no idea. So don't go say that. That's a real stat. But you didn't start with a stat or like a big thing. You literally are sharing a personal story so that people feel that connection, and then on the flip side, giving them the added information that they need based off of who they are. So I think that's really beautiful.

[00:10:08 – 00:10:08]So.

[00:10:08 – 00:10:32]So it's almost like when we're starting to put together our impact statements or our impact, it's more about what are the stories that we can tell first that are gonna help validate the impact that we create. Is that kind of how you like to think about things when you're kind of pulling things together? We know this is the impact, but when we were gonna go forward facing and talk to somebody, we gotta go story first and back it up with kind of those impact stats.

[00:10:33 – 00:11:56]I think that was a really astute observation, and I think that that is dead on. And some people may disagree. And this actually goes back to the audience, right? There are some people maybe Board members want to know exactly the number of children who are affected. How does this improve literacy rates within the school district? But at the end of the day, people respond to stories. I mean, most individuals get into nonprofits to help people, and people understand stories more so than they understand statistics. And, you know, back to impact, you can convey impact in a lot of different ways. You can do it statistically. Back to the example I just gave about how many individuals is this affecting and the population at large, how does this. How does this change how people are living their lives? But I'm very biased here. I mean, I'm a storyteller. That's what I do in marketing. But it's impossible to convey emotion the way that a story does. You know, it's this old adage about people won't remember the specifics. They'll just remember how they feel. Statistics don't leave an impression on somebody the way that a story will. And so, yes, I definitely agree with leading with the story, leading with tying that back to the why you're doing what you're doing and why people should care is going to be the best way to touch people.

[00:11:58 – 00:12:27]Well, and I think the beauty of that, you know, you mentioned you're a digital marketer. I'm a digital marketer. I think the beauty of that starting story first, is that it allows you to really weave that into everything you're doing, from your offline fundraising to your online fundraising to your website to your social media, like by just taking that time to really. Because I think a lot of times we don't want to spend the time to craft or write or put together those stories. But when you do that, you're really kind of creating a holistic strategy for everything that you're doing for your organization.

[00:12:28 – 00:14:19]Yeah, that's 100% right. I work with a lot of physicians, and I can promise you not a single one of them went to medical school to do digital marketing. They don't want to touch it. They have no interest in it. And it's the same with, you know, the leaders of the vast. Maybe all nonprofits, the vast majority, they understand the importance of it, but that's not why they're doing what they're doing. They're doing what they're doing to help people. That said, you're going to make your life and the lives of your staff so much easier if you start from the beginning, creating an identity and a messaging strategy around how do you talk about your organization? How do you talk about the impact that you're having? And like you said, that absolutely should be woven into the fabric of your entire digital strategy. I mean, if you start in the beginning with a positioning statement, why your organization is so important, how you differentiate from other nonprofits that are similar or different, and again, why people should care, and specifically tailoring that why to each individual you're trying to get in front of, then regardless if you're putting together mailers, if you're putting together email campaigns or newsletters, if you're posting on social media, if you're doing SEO, if you're, you're going to have a much deeper understanding of the things that you stand for and how it translates to, whether it's digital or just physically written, any written medium, you're going to have a huge head start. If you have new volunteers coming in and you want them to get a head start on writing mailers or even just going door to door to speak with people you can direct them to. This is who we are and how we talk about ourselves. And it will save you so much time and stress in the long run.

[00:14:21 – 00:15:22]No, that's so good. Because I think we tend to think about those foundations, those foundational elements, and I think we tend to think about, well, if we're going to bring in a marketing person or if this person's in charge of marketing, we like, put them in that silo and just kind of say, okay, well, you go do your thing, because what you're doing doesn't really have an effect on me and what I'm doing. So I would love for you to maybe support our fellow nonprofit marketers out and maybe give a little push and a nudge to those that are out there doing the fundraising offline, but also those that are out there actually delivering the programs and services, because they're the ones that have the stories, they're the ones that have, like, the emotion and the connection and know what the impact really is happening day to day. So, you know, what might you say to those folks that say, well, we're not in charge of marketing, so we don't need to participate in any of that and, or any tips or ways that you've seen kind of organizations come together to kind of bring those teams together to kind of really create great content?

[00:15:23 – 00:18:32]Another great question. If you are a nonprofit leader and you are struggling with what you just described, bringing together a coalition around this type of strategy, I would encourage you to, to not think about it as marketing at all. Just move it out of your brain to start. These are semantics. Think about it. Really. I mean, going right back to impact marketing is just helping you translate your impact into a strategy and words and disseminating it out into the world. So if you're having trouble because you think it's complicated and you're worried about the workload and the individuals who are going to be in charge of it, just forget all of that and just think about the people you're helping and how it relates to the rest of the world. I think that it's easy to get. There are so many levers that you can pull in marketing. There are so many different strategies and channels, and it's hard to not get overwhelmed thinking, I need to do everything. Maybe my people are hanging out on the donors are on LinkedIn, but the people I want to work with are in Instagram or Facebook. And, you know, I want to make sure I reach my staff through an intranet. And I need a newsletter. It's just, start from the beginning. Think about why you got into it. Think about the stories that resonate with you, and it doesn't have to be everything all at once. I think as long as you can put together a couple, just a couple paragraphs on why you're doing what you're doing, why it's so important who you're helping, that's enough to start just so that everybody who's in the organization can rally around again. I mean, this is. People are going to get sick of this by the end of this podcast, but it's all about the why. It is the why. And when I work with people in this area, you have to hammer that home. It really can't be overstated. As long as everybody is rowing in the same direction and they have that mission in their heart and they understand how to talk about it, you can easily then translate that into a strategy, you know, and you might already be doing it without really understanding it. I found a lot of these leaders understand what I'm saying from a conceptual level, and they already have a lot of this in their brain. And when they talk about it, they. They don't think about it. They say all the things I'm telling them to do just instinctively because it is why they're there in the first place. So I would try to, you know, go back to first principles, think less about it or not think less about it, but don't, don't try, don't try too hard. You already have the answers in your head. It's just about getting them down on paper so that everybody understands the right way to talk about this impact.

[00:18:33 – 00:19:50]No I love that. And I think as marketers, our brains think differently. And I think when we're coming to you or the team is coming to you, they're not expecting you to come up with a fully fleshed out story that you just hand to them, that they're like, oh, this is perfect, I'm gonna go take this out and run with it. Right. They're looking for the bullet points. So I love that you're just going back to simplification, like, how can we just get some information out and then let the marketing on your team take it and run with it and ask follow up questions and utilize it in the way that they know how for best practices. But we just need you to give us just some nuggets of things. Right. So I think. I love that you're saying just to kind of simplify it and go back to the why, Because I know I want to get to some mistakes that we commonly make with impact statements. And one of the biggest ones that I see is too much information. So I love the example that the story that you gave at the beginning because it was very clear, it was concise, it clearly showed impact and the transformation, but it was short. So kind of, how can we think about our. How can we not overwhelm people with our impact stories? Because sometimes we might want to write too much information and give too much information in that piece and people just can't process it.

[00:19:50 – 00:20:53]Yeah, I think it's really easy to overwhelm with information, like you said. And if you. Back to what I was saying earlier, if you have an understanding about who you're speaking to and why they should care, I think it'll help you keep things really concise. At the same time, you don't want to focus too much on statistics and overwhelming people. You want to focus on trying to think of a good way to frame this. I mean, I don't know how to not overwhelm people other than just say less. I mean, you understand the. What I'm struggling with here is that of course you don't want to overwhelm people. But one of the challenges I've seen a lot in the nonprofit world is under communicating rather than over communicating. I feel like there is a lot.

[00:20:53 – 00:20:53]Of.

[00:20:56 – 00:23:47]Inherently, there's so much going on behind the scenes. There's so many people that you're helping, there's so many anecdotes that you have and your donors especially. But everybody wants to be kept in the loop about all of the things that you're doing, all the activities that you're doing. And so I would. I'm less concerned with overwhelming people and more concerned with not giving enough updates, not not letting people know enough what you're doing and understanding the channels that people want to get this information through and making sure that the content that you're creating is appropriate for each channel. I mean, I think, yeah, it's to your, I don't know if that answered your question exactly, but to your initial point, I mean, if you're writing an email, nobody wants to read a 10 paragraph email, right? You know, you want to keep that short and tight and make sure that you very quickly understand what is the value of that email to the reader and why are you sending it in the first place and make sure that it's relevant and it has enough. But not too much. But I would go for. I think that there's a lot of anecdotal discussion around the over saturation within email. But candidly I see really great open and read rates from the campaigns that I run. So it's still one of the most effective ways of getting in front of people with marketing. Unfortunately, a side effect is that you're going to alienate people by, by getting in front of them. But a lot of those people, you shouldn't worry about unsubscribing or no longer following you on Instagram. I mean, if they, if they don't want to be bothered by your correspondence, their not a good fit or maybe they are a great fit. They're already just, they're involved and so they don't need to be contacted as much. I think people worry too much about am I going to offend this person by sending too many messages or too many, is this email too long? Is this, am I posting too many photos? I mean, people who don't want to engage, won't engage. But at the end of the day it's not. Your impact is not enough. It's the perception of the impact. Right. If it doesn't matter what you're doing, if nobody knows what you're doing, I mean it matters to the people who you're helping, obviously. But as a, as a nonprofit leader, you're not just concerned with the thing that you're providing, the service you're providing, you need to keep the engine running, you need donors to put in money, you need to attract new staff members, you need to affect policy, you need to be engaging with the community. And so that's all about communication. It's all about getting yourself out there. So I don't know if that was the right direction you wanted me to go with that answer, but no, no.

[00:23:47 – 00:24:50]I had no direction that I wanted you to go. I just, I like how you kind of came to that at the end in that it's more about going back to the very beginning, understanding the audience. So like we might have our, we might write two or three versions of like our most important impact stories and they might be really long because they might just be the whole story. Here's the whole story of the girl who learned to read, right? We're going to write her whole story, her upbringing, everything. Like we're going to have that all done so everybody can kind of, and everybody internally can kind of see the whole thing. And then we're going to take that and chunk it up based off of the purpose behind how we're having that conversation and whether that purpose is one on one, whether that purpose is on a specific platform, whether that purpose is an email. But that to take the time to write kind of the big piece. I mean we do this with year end giving campaigns also, right? Like we write the longest piece first and then you're just repurpos it through the entire campaign. So I think that's kind of where you were going with that is.

[00:24:52 – 00:24:52]You.

[00:24:52 – 00:25:09]Could have a very short impact statement but use it incorrectly on a platform and get no results. Or you could use it correctly on the right platform and see amazing results. But you have to get it out there or nobody's going to see it. So it's kind of like both, right? Write it and then use it correctly.

[00:25:10 – 00:26:15]Yeah, and I really liked how you talked about repurposing. I mean this is a tactic that all good marketers are using today, right? People are busy. To my earlier point, you know, nonprofit leaders didn't get into this game to spend all day posting on Instagram and not even posting. It's, it's, it's not. Obviously there's personnel and marketing teams to help with that. But the inception of that still relies on the leaders to create this content. They need to be recording videos of themselves or audio notes or giving us the tools that we need to craft the right stories. And that repurposing is essential to save time and energy. And we use that all the time. We record, you know, one very long video, that very long video can get chopped up into short form video which can go on to Instagram and TikTok and YouTube shorts and now LinkedIn and then we take the transcript and that can go into carousels and go into blog pieces. And so, yeah, using every piece of the content, Buffalo is super important. So I really like how you framed that.

[00:26:17 – 00:26:49]Yeah, that's so good. Well, Jake, I kind of love how you put a whole holistic view on impact and stories and storytelling and stats. Like, I think this is a very good just reminder for us to not overcomplicate it and to just sit down and do the work. Just sit down and write some stories. And it doesn't have to be perfect and you can kind of massage it as you go. But if there was anything else you wanted to kind of share or tips about storytelling and kind of showcasing your impact, like, what might you want to leave listeners with?

[00:26:51 – 00:28:49]I would encourage anybody who's creating any kind of content to remember that there's a lot of advice about algorithms and trying to game the system to get in front of people, but at the end of the day, you are a human helping humans. Who's trying to relate to humans. Just focus on that. I mean, there is no answer to beating the algorithms which change constantly. And what works today might not work tomorrow. So just really try to get in touch with that part of you that is human and that is empathetic and is doing this because people need help. They need support. That's. That's why these organizations exist. And try not to focus as much on, did I get enough likes? Is my engagement as high as it should be? And granted, I mean, this is what we make our money on. We need to show how our work is performing. But it is. It is truly about quality and not quantity. You have to remember that this is an attention battle against the entire world. It's not just you versus some other nonprofit that donors might be spending their putting. Putting their money into. It's not just about, you know, volunteers. This is. You're competing with cat videos. You're competing with, you know, meme culture. So focus on the individuals that you can. That you can speak to and speak to that individual. You're not trying to get in front of everybody. You're not trying to relate to everybody. You should understand the people who you're trying to talk to and talk directly to that person, and that's going to resonate with people.

[00:28:51 – 00:29:15]Yeah, that's so good. And I really appreciate you saying that, because we talk about those exact same things on the podcast all the time. So it's always great to have somebody else come tell my listeners this so they're not just hearing it from me all the time. And that was spot on. I didn't even tell him to say that. So I love that we're so aligned on that because I agree with that 100%. But Jake, if people want to connect with you, learn more about you, how can they do that?

[00:29:16 – 00:29:30]Find me@heyjakey.com I have an agency called patientprocure.com and I also have a new agency that'll be launching soon. But if you go to heyjakey.com it'll give you all the info on me.

[00:29:31 – 00:29:43]Great. And we will link all that up in the show notes@the first click.net 306 Jake, thank you so much for coming and sharing all your insights and encouraging people to just write down their stories. This was a blast.

[00:29:44 – 00:29:45]Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

[00:29:47 – 00:29:49]Huge thank you again to Jake for.

[00:29:49 – 00:29:52]Joining and sharing all of his wisdom and insights today.

[00:29:52 – 00:30:34]You can check out the show notes@the first click.net 306 I hope that you will go to YouTube and leave a comment below this video that tells me your biggest takeaway. What are you excited to implement? What did you learn? Where are you going to start out first with regards to creating these impact statements that are going to connect and resonate with your audiences, new and old? For now, thank you so much for listening. Subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss a single episode, especially some bonus ones that were trinkling in here and there. Especially the bonus episode I did with Patrick Kirby which you can find@the first click.net dgu for now, thank you so much. Have a great day and I'll see you in the next one.