Don’t Lead with Data, Lead with People

What makes a story stick? Especially in the medical or non-profit world, this question matters. Because if you’re not making people feel something, you’re probably not making much impact.

Over the years, I’ve seen a pattern. The stories that truly resonate all share the same three things:

  • Uniqueness – something that makes the person stand out
  • Desire – what they want, in their own words
  • Motivation – why it matters to them, not just to you

It’s these elements that pull us in, make us care and keep us watching. And the science backs this up – personal narratives generate two and a halftimes more donations than statistics alone.

That’s why I always advise organisations against leading with their mission statement, but to instead lead with a character.

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Emily’s Gift

I worked with a mother who lost her daughter, Emily, to cancer 30 years ago. She was launching Emily’s Gift, a campaign to fund psychological support for families with children facing cancer.

We didn’t start with statistics about treatment gaps. We started with a question a six-year-old boy once asked his father:

“Am I going to die?”

It was raw, real and it became the doorway into the story. Through Kai’s perspective, people could feel the issue as well as simply understand it.

That’s the power of what psychologists call character identification. When we see someone striving for something meaningful, we start to adopt their goals as our own. That’s how you move people.

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Alaina’s Story

Take Alaina. She has cerebral palsy. We could have unpacked the medical condition, the therapies, the systems. But instead, we focused on her goal:

She wanted to walk down the aisle at her wedding.

That human desire made all the complexity around her care click. The audience didn’t need a lecture, they just needed to feel what she felt.

I often lean on what Andrew Stanton of Pixar calls the 2+2 rule – give your audience just enough to let them figure it out. If you just give them 4,you lose them, but if you give them 2+2, they connect the dots and stay with you.

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What Charities Get Wrong

Too often, purpose-driven organisations lead with data. I see it all the time: "We help X number of people each year."

But numbers don’t create connection, people do.

I worked with Milly, who runs a community hub in a small town. She was already making videos, good ones, getting 500 to 1,200 views. But she was focused on her services of free meals, washing machines and practical help.

When we told her story instead – including her reflections on emotional poverty, the feeling of not being seen or heard – a single clip got 25,000 views, helping them win a major funding bid.

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Five Common Mistakes I See

1. Leading with the organisation instead of the person

2. Choosing average characters over compelling ones

3. Avoiding conflict (when it’s actually the heart of good storytelling)

4. Forgetting the action keyword (the emotional core of the message)

5. Using the same story everywhere, for everyone

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In the End, It’s Simple

Ultimately, good storytelling isn’t about showing how much you do. It’s about showing who you help and why it matters.

That’s where the story lives, and that’s where change begins.

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