Your board does not need a script. It needs a story.

I was in Hays, Kansas, last week for the Hansen Forum, where I spent the first day with community foundation staff and the second with a broader group including board members, economic development staff, and community leaders from across northwest Kansas.

Those two days were about different things, but they pointed to the same issue. Staff are often carrying the whole communication burden, and many of them are frustrated that their boards are not naturally helping carry it — even though board members are some of the best possible amplifiers they have.

That is not new to me. I go into rooms like that already knowing most organizations have more storytellers than they think they do. The issue is that many of those people do not yet see that they are part of the storytelling job.

That is part of why the Dane G. Hansen Foundation brought me in to begin with.

Two years ago, the Hansen Foundation asked me to help build a cohort experience for community foundations from each of the 26 counties in northwest Kansas. The goal was to strengthen their marketing, communications, and storytelling capacity over time.

That has taken a few forms.

In year one, we took the foundations through our Journey to Yes program, resulting in core messages and communications plans. In year two, many of them continued in our Accelerator weekly coaching program to implement those plans. This year, the focus got even more practical: how to make storytelling easier to do in a short amount of time, and how to make sure the message is repeated and amplified enough to generate understanding.

That first day with staff centered on a pattern I see constantly. Communication happens in bursts. Stories live in people’s heads. Every week starts from scratch. Awareness depends on whoever has time that week.

At dinner that night, one community foundation director said, “Were you just in my brain? Because what you said was exactly what I needed to hear.”

I appreciated that partly because it was kind, and partly because it is always reassuring to find out you were not just conducting a 90-minute monologue about your own niche grievances.

The next day, I had the 3:00 p.m. closing slot, which is an excellent time to speak if you enjoy competing with the late-afternoon slump and a collective urge to hit the road.

The session itself was on board members as ambassadors and amplifiers. I’d suggested this topic to the organizers, because it is a pattern I see over and over. Organizations already have people sitting close to the work, close to the stories, and close to other people in the community. Access isn’t what’s missing. It is the sense that carrying the story is part of their role.

That’s why I tell boards their job is not to memorize an elevator statement. Their job is to notice what someone cares about, open a door, and help them take the right next step.

The most powerful part of the session came when people started sharing stories about how the organization they represent had made a real difference. I took the mic around the room, and people were all ears. Which is not something I take for granted at 3:17 p.m.

The stories were specific, local, and memorable. An antique tractor donated. Mineral rights given. A fund created for EMS mental health. Help for childcare providers getting certified and supported. Help for local businesses securing loans and expanding.

That is usually the missing piece.

Boards often think they need a better description of the organization. What they usually need is one true story about a person, a problem, and what changed.

Then we did a little math, and this is where the idea clicked.

26 counties

× 2 boards per county (community foundation and economic development)

× 8 board members per board

= 416 microphones

416 board members

× 1 conversation per month

× 12 months

= 4,992 conversations per year

One person said to me afterward, “I’d never thought about it that way.”

That’s the point.

A lot of organizations assume awareness is mainly a marketing function. Often it’s also a people function. If staff have a practical way to surface and share stories, and board members understand that they are already in position to carry them, awareness has more ways to grow.

It no longer depends on staff effort alone, which is good, because staff are usually up to their eyeballs in work.

If you’re a community foundation or regional funder, this is the kind of capacity-building you can support across a cohort of nonprofit partners: helping them clarify their message, build a practical communications system, and equip board members to serve as stronger ambassadors.

And if you are part of a community organization, these are the kinds of investments worth considering in grant requests: message clarity, storytelling systems, and board ambassador training that helps awareness spread beyond staff alone.

Because awareness rarely grows from one polished communication.

It grows when the right story gets told again, by more than one person, in more than one place, over time.

Lori