We appreciate these tips offered by Network For Good in their November 3, 2011 issue. Thank you to Animal Shelter Fundraising for publishing in your July 25 newsletter, “What Spider Man and Marvel Comic Super Heroes Teach Us About Fundraising Appeals” .

The Journey You Are On is a Superhero’s Story By Katya Andresen

Stan Lee, former President and CEO of Marvel Comics, recently reflected on how to weave a great story. He boils it down to a few elements that create a page-turner:

1. A good guy trying to do something 2. Facing insurmountable odds 3. Who keeps getting in trouble in his quest 4. So the reader keeps wondering “How’s he going to get out of this one?” 5. Until after a lot of suffering along the way, there is a victory of sorts

Stan Lee focused his career on superheroes, but this advice surely fits your story. If you are trying to advance a cause, you know it’s a heroic struggle. You are on a journey to a far-off destination that may never be reached in your lifetime – an end to poverty, disease or prejudice, for example. There are a lot of obstacles along the way, and the quest is fraught with challenges. But you have your small victories, all the same.

Are you telling your organization’s story as a dramatic struggle against the odds and celebrating the victories along the way? You should be. Take it from Marvel Comics-you’ve got a rip-roaring page-turner all around you. Tell the tale with the drama and high stakes it surely merits. Because you want everyone pulling for you, each step of the way.