Telling Fundraising Stories with Dignity with Maria Rio
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In This Episode
The questions we ask shape a story long before a single word is written. A simple, open-ended invitation gives someone room to show up as a whole person, rather than only as someone who received services from your organization. In this episode, Maria sits down with Maria Rio, founder and CEO of the fundraising consulting firm Further Together, to talk about how fundraisers can gather and tell stories with dignity at the center.
Maria Rio shares how coming to Canada as a refugee and accessing services as a child shaped the way she once told stories, and how that shifted as she saw how those narratives landed with others. Together, the pair explore her 10 Dignified Storytelling Questions, gentle interviewing techniques like mirroring, what to do when a story owner shares more than expected, and why storytellers need boundaries and their own support. They also discuss why empowering donors builds longer relationships than guilt ever could.
This conversation is an invitation to see trauma-informed storytelling as a lens rather than a checklist, and to remember that the stories we tell, however small they feel, add up to how entire communities are understood.
About Maria Rio
Maria leads the Further Together team. Maria came to Canada as a refugee at an early age. After being assisted by many charities and going through an arduous 12-year immigration process to become a Canadian citizen, Maria devoted herself to working in non-profit. Maria has over a decade of fundraising and non-profit experience. Her op-eds have been featured in national publications such as the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and CCF. She is frequently asked to speak at webinars and conferences and was a finalist for the national 2022 Charity Village Best Individual Fundraiser Award. Maria also hosts The Small Nonprofit podcast and sits on the Board of Living Wage Canada.
Connect with Maria Rio
Website | LinkedIn |The Small Nonprofit Podcast | 10 Dignified Storytelling Questions
Connect with Maria
Speaking & Training | LinkedIn | Email
Transcripts
Maria Bryan: Today I am joined by Maria Rio. Maria is the founder and CEO of Further Together, a fundraising consulting firm helping nonprofits build stronger, more sustainable fundraising programs. Her work is deeply rooted in community-centric fundraising principles, and I admire you so much, Maria, and how steadfast you are in not just fundraising and fundraising well, but fundraising in a way that is ethical and that's going to better communities. So in this conversation, we're talking about what questions we should be asking folks when gathering their stories to ensure their dignity and their safety, and how fundraisers can tell these stories without exploiting people at the center of them.
Maria, welcome to the show.
Maria Rio: So happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me on, Maria.
Maria Bryan: I love your 10 Dignified Storytelling Questions, and I know it's personal for you. As much as you feel comfortable sharing, when you look back at your career and the shifts and changes you've experienced around nonprofit fundraising and storytelling, what's your story?
Were there moments that changed you and brought you to the community-centric fundraising practice that you have today?
Maria Rio: I was thinking about this question, and there are just so many little moments that shaped who I am as a fundraiser. I started as a service user, so I moved to Canada as a refugee when I was nine years old. I lived in a World Vision refugee shelter, and I also accessed food banks and drop-ins, got Christmas gifts from strangers, and used a broad variety of services.
And then when I was old enough to start fundraising, I saw World Vision was doing fundraising on the streets, so face-to-face fundraising, and I thought, "I really wanna do that." That was interesting 'cause I was putting myself in the shoes of someone who is a beneficiary, who could really explain to a donor the impact and then have them be inspired to support the cause.
So I was placing myself in the story as the beneficiary, the poor person that needed help.
That's the way that I saw myself too because I had seen the World Vision ads. I had lived in the shelter, right? I'd had my whole life changed. So that's how I told stories until I realized, hey, I'm hearing how other people are being treated when I'm telling a story this way.
For example, I had another colleague who was also racialized. She was Indian, and people would say to her "Oh, is that how you got helped?" They would just assume that she was a sponsored kid that made it here, similar to me, even though I was not a sponsored kid. I lived in a World Vision refugee shelter.
So that was one of the moments where I'm like, oh, it's weird because they read her as more visibly racialized. Her talking about this is already placing her in the beneficiary seat because of the way that she looks.
And then as I continued my journey with being a fundraiser, I would bump into these kinds of moments where people would ask me about my personal story and say, "What was it like living in a refugee shelter?"
And obviously, Maria, I'm sure you know the answer is not great. Not what most people want for their kids. So it just felt like it was rubbing me the wrong way, but then in my own fundraising, I could see how what I was doing could also rub other people the wrong way. So for example ‘People who are homeless’ is a term that maybe I would've used poor person before, 'cause I was poor, or homeless person before, because I experienced living in a shelter.
But now our verbiage has changed to be more independent of the person. So really understanding how even if I share some lived experience with some of the people, it's still not my story to tell. The words that matter to them are important, and how we share the impact of the organization also is important.
It's not just a means to an end. There's a real person on the other side of it.
Maria Bryan: Can you help us understand the nuance that I wrestle with? You've experienced receiving services, and part of what you do in fundraising is informed by seeing the impact, so that's part of why you want to be involved in this work. But you also know that when we anchor ourselves in these seasons and stories, a few things can go awry, right? I'm sure you've experienced how it can stigmatize communities, and you've illustrated that so well with this woman of color and people assuming she received services as well. The reality is that you needed services, they benefited you, and those stories are true and human. But how can we tell and frame them in a way that dignifies people?
Maria Rio: So I think the first thing is just really making sure that the storyteller feels comfortable with what they're sharing. So for myself, what I just shared is like the broad strokes of my early life, right? Nine years old to maybe 15, 16, right? But I didn't go into the detail of "And then I moved out when I was 17, and it was really hard because of X, Y, and Z," right?
I don't need to go into every detail of my life story publicly, and I think that the way that we collect those stories is really important. So with the 10 Dignified Storytelling Questions, I address some of the issues that we perpetuate when we're asking people to share their stories. So basically, all of the questions are open-ended.
So you could say, "Hey Maria, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?" And that's the first question that I ask everyone. It's not saying, "Hey Maria, why did you come to the food bank?" "What was it like not having food?" So it gives them a place to define themselves, right? So "Tell us a little bit about yourself."
I'm not just a shelter user, right? I'm also a sister or a daughter or someone who's involved in my religious community or cultural community, and it gives that person the agency to define themselves. Now, as a fundraiser, I have asked people questions, and sometimes they're super excited to answer and share every single traumatic detail that happened to them.
Especially if you share their lived experience, they might be like, "Hey, let's trauma bond and talk about that time that this person did something horrible to me," and you can relate. And that can be a little bit difficult because, in that specific scenario, I was not ready to receive all that information, all that trauma that person had gone through.
She had been through solitary confinement, and she was walking me through what that was like for her, and it was horrible. I don't even wanna repeat it because it was so traumatizing for me to just hear her experience.
Maria Bryan: Yeah.
Maria Rio: So I think you have to make room for both types of storytellers, people who wanna be more surface-level about the trauma they've experienced, and people who wanna tell you every single detail.
Now, you're the fundraiser, so you decide what the lens is gonna be, no matter what kind of storyteller you get, right? You decide if it's gonna be sensationalized and othering, or you decide if it's gonna be empowering and a way to deepen that relationship with that storyteller. And a lot of people, they just assume the donor wants to hear the most horrible version of Maria's story or that storyteller's story, and that's not true.
Because they don't share that lived experience, they don't even know the details that are missing from the story. And also, you don't have to make it so specific to that person as well. You could generalize what it's like to not have food, right? What it's like to be in a shelter. Ideally, you're always making sure that the story is something that the storyteller can feel good about being out there, and making sure that you're baking consent into every single step of the process.
Because sometimes I hear a lot of people say, "We're trauma-informed." What does that even mean? I feel like many of them have no idea what that means, and consent is one of the most important things about trauma-informed. So how deeply is consent baked into your process? And one of the things that I've learned from you, Maria, is how important it is to have a harm repair plan if you do cause harm with that storyteller, right?
So if it's trauma-informed, it should be consent-heavy every step of the way. But when it comes to balancing what donors need to know, you decide. You decide what the story is. So what do you think your donors need to know? Do they need to be educated more about like the realities of someone who is living in a shelter, and if so, why?
Is it to elicit pity or is it to move policy? Because those are also two very different goals, right? So the fundraiser has to have the discernment to know what my donor needs to know versus what is actually sensationalism or othering for the storyteller.
Maria Bryan: There are so many things you said that I wanna underline. And I think that's one of the hardest parts of this work, but also what gives us grace, is that it's gonna be different depending on the audience and depending on the storyteller. And that makes me uncomfortable because I want rules.
I want rules. I wanna know what's a red light, what's a yellow light, and what's a green light? And that's not trauma-informed or ethical storytelling. The truth is, you've got a story owner, and you're letting them make choices, and sometimes they're gonna share more than what your audience needs to know. And we don't talk about that. We talk about them under-sharing, but we don't talk about them over-sharing. And then we have a role, which you're saying, and I think I just believe that so deeply, is that then we have a role as a storyteller to say, "I just sat in that, and I know how dysregulated I feel."
So now it's our responsibility to shape what the donor needs to know. Or we're doing education for elected officials, police officers, or first responders. What do they need to know? That's actually a lens I haven't necessarily had before, Maria, so I appreciate that. I use a St. Jude's video often to show the difference between a video that's trauma-informed and one that's not. I show two different videos, and I think one is more trauma-informed than the other. I use those videos because my adult-life trauma was my daughter being in the NICU. I had a student who said, ‘Hey, actually, that one video that you think is really not trauma-informed would be important for healthcare workers to see. I think they need to see that and sit in what the reality is for parents.’ That flipped a switch for me. We don't have to say yes to some stories and no to others, but it is our responsibility to make sure story owners have the utmost consent.
And something that our friend Diana Farias Heinrich always says is that it is not just about the consent form, but about asking the big, broader questions. Would you feel good if your child saw this, if your in-laws saw this, if people at your mosque saw this? But I just appreciate how you highlight that this is our role as storytellers, and this is why being trauma-informed isn't a one-time badge.
It's sitting in how uncomfortable it is knowing that you might mess up. But the best people to ask are those with lived experience, right? To see how this sits with them. And donors, though, because now I'm working in a fundraising company as well, and I've been thinking a lot about the donor lens. They're people too, and they're people with human experiences too. How can we honor them and protect them when we invite them into our stories?
Maria Rio: Well, that's one of the questions that I get asked a lot. I just want a checklist for community-centric fundraising rules. Like, how do these principles apply? And I feel like CCF is also a lens. So I think they all come together as a viewpoint for how you understand the work and see the world.
And I love your example about the two videos, 'cause when I've led workshops about this, I'm like, "Look at these two videos." One of them is World Vision Norway, and it's a typical World Vision ad, if you remember those, right? "This poor kid needs water. Look at him drink the dirty water.
Look."
Maria Bryan: There are flies all over my kids too at all times.
Maria Rio: Yeah. And then, in comparison, I also showed a Plan Canada Because I'm a Girl campaign, which is all about getting girls into school and what could happen. This one was editorialized to be the story of a girl: ‘Because I'm a girl, I don't get to go to school because of X, Y, and Z.
I'll be married off.’ And I thought both had similar problems related to white saviorism, the crafted narrative that they're not actually telling themselves, and the fact that it's still being told through the lens of the organization. So even if you have a checklist and you're like, ‘Oh, okay, the actual video is good,’ there are still bigger ideas that, if you don't have that lens, you're going to miss, because it is better than before.
It is better than before. That Plan Canada video is way better than the one that was 20 years old from World Vision, but it still causes harm, and it still shapes our reality of the world. And I was actually thinking about this recently, Maria, so I'm really glad that we were able to have this conversation. I was thinking back to my face-to-face fundraising days when I first started fundraising and thinking about what did I learn about the world only through my nonprofit work?
So for example, I don't know anything about Burkina Faso, and it's a country that I have fundraised for because I know that they didn't have birth certificates for young girls and have some poverty. I don't know if that poverty is 90% of the country or 5%. I don't know what their economy consists of.
I don't know what languages they speak there. So I was just thinking about how much power storytellers and fundraisers have in shaping entire narratives that we don't hear about from the perspective of people with lived experience. When's the last time you met someone from Burkina Faso or tuned into their news?
So I'm only hearing about it from these deficit positions that nonprofits create through their lens.
Maria Bryan: And I think that's the bigger question. It's like we tell these stories and they feel micro, but they add up, and then they actually do affect legislation. They actually affect how communities treat each other. And that's why it keeps me up at night. We need to do asset framing, but we also can't pretend that these things aren't happening. We just need to do the research.
Maria Rio: I think the research has been done. We know that people make decisions based on their values. We already know that, so why are we not fundraising in a way aligned with our values?
Maria Bryan: Right.
Maria Rio: We know that donors give because of their values, not because of naming rights or because of how you use this person as a prop.
If you ask donors, "What were your most meaningful gifts?" They'll talk about "Oh, the school bake sale that I did with my kid," not the gala sponsorship or the named gift. So we already have the research that donors give because they want a sense of community, because they wanna be in alignment with our values.
Is sensationalism and extortion in alignment with those values? I don't think so. And when I have conversations with donors about white supremacy, wealth hoarding, tax avoidance, anything like that, they have been thinking about this for a while. They're putting the pieces together and you can help them put them together faster because not only will they give, but they'll give more frequently, and they'll also become an advocate for the organization.
They'll say, "Hey, I give lots of money to this organization. I know that I'm part of the problem because this should be funded by the government, so I'm also gonna be voting in this way next time." But if you don't give them the information that they need to solve the problem, and you always give them the information that they need to manage the symptoms, that's all donors can do: manage symptoms.
So that's why I really believe the education piece is a huge part of the fundraiser's role, not only for yourself, but for your donors and potentially for your board and your executive director, who might be the biggest naysayers about shifting your fundraising practices. But it's your role. You do have so much power in this role.
You are the person holding the purse strings.
Maria Bryan: Yeah. Agreed. And education isn't just the storytelling. To your point, it's the data. So you might know that there's poverty in Burkina Faso, but your question of whether it is 5% or 90% makes a really big difference.
Maria Rio: It matters when helping people be better donors 'cause then they won't be sending pencils to Burkina Faso if it's 5% and not 90%. It really changes the perspective on how they can actually get involved to support whatever needs to be done locally or abroad.
Maria Bryan: Yeah. So when we think of interview questions or storytelling practices, can you speak to specific questions or practices that are deeply harmful and exploitative? I love that you start with questions like, ‘Tell us a bit about yourself,’ and ‘What brings you joy?’ Are there template interview questions that are problematic?
Maria Rio: I feel like everyone has a different way of collecting these stories, and there are still a lot of questions about it. Some things that are always a no-go for me involve people who can't consent. So if they're underage, for example, or they're not mentally able to consent to this, I think that's already a no-go.
Anything that others or sensationalizes people, I don't love, but you could use it if it matches your lived experience and the person who's sharing the story wants to be portrayed in that way, right? So depending on how you wanna talk about the cause and position it, it is really important to make sure that dignity is tied into it because the only thing that your nonprofit has is its reputation.
So if you're seen as someone who's exploiting your own service users for a dollar, I don't trust you. I don't think other people are gonna trust you.
I would say also don't be as pointed with your questions, even if you want to find out more. There are ways that are a little bit softer to get more information if you would like it. So for example, you could use elicitation techniques that allow the person to share more if they would like to learn more.
So a really easy one is just mirroring. So Maria's telling me about her story, and then she says, "And it was really rough." So I could say, "It was really rough?" And that invites Maria to say more if she would like. I don't have to ask what was so rough about it and add my own lens, right? I don't have to add salt to the wound. You could just do something as simple as mirroring the last three words, and they could add to their answer if they would like to. Sometimes they would not like to, and you could just take the cue and move on to the next question.
Maria Bryan: Oh, that's such a great practice, and that's something that, as storytellers, we learn. I studied journalism, so these are the kinds of things I learned. But not everyone has that degree. Not everyone has practiced holding space for difficult stories, and it takes practice. It takes time.
Maria Rio: It definitely takes practice and also understanding your own boundaries as someone who's hearing the story. How do you take care of yourself if you hear something that is very challenging? 'Cause I understand a lot of people don't share their lived experience. So how do you take care of yourself when someone just told you they witnessed a murder or something like that?
These are real things that you're talking about, but we don't give them the weight because we don't have the relationship. We see it as transactional.
Maria Bryan: How are you currently doing that? How are you setting boundaries and holding space for difficult stories?
Maria Rio: I'm lucky enough that we have a team at Further Together, so there are three consultants. So if one of us is like, "Woof, that's a very near and dear topic to my heart," we'll switch who's actually collecting the story. So for example, we have a client whose work is focused on child sexual abuse. And I'm like, "That is something that I've personally experienced.
That's something that I can listen to." And it makes it easier for the person telling their story too, 'cause it's "No, I get where you're [Overlap / unclear]. I know how you talk about it because I talk about it in the same way." It might sound a little bit flippant, but you don't need to know every single detail of what happened, right?
So I think that's really helpful, being able to switch to someone who might not be completely triggered by that. Sometimes you won't know until you're actually hearing the story, which I think is a mistake. I think if you're getting triggered by the story, you didn't do the prep work and relationship building work to understand what was gonna happen.
So for me, in that example that I was telling you earlier about the solitary confinement, I had exchanged a couple of emails with this person, and then I had her on to talk about this. It was for a podcast we did at the time for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Not having the relationship can lead to those traumatic experiences, and then when you're in them, you have to center the storyteller.
You can't center yourself, because how they experienced it and what they are sharing might not be how you are feeling about it currently. This is new information to you, but it's not new information to them. So when I receive information and I'm like, "Woof, that was a lot," I won't let the person know that, and I'll wait for the conversation to be over and try to deal with it myself.
So what does that look like? Maybe talking to a fundraising colleague, maybe talking to my husband, or maybe talking to my therapist if it brought up something for me. But I do want to go back to World Vision and Plan Canada. World Vision used to make very exploitative videos, but now, if you look at international development marketing, such as MSF, they've definitely changed to be empowering, and there's a reason for that.
It's because you can guilt someone into giving a donation one time, maybe twice, but you can empower them to give you 20 donations. So the person who's empowered will stay around longer and give more frequently than someone who feels guilted into it. My colleague Caitlin calls it the go-away gift, right?
So it's "Just take my money so I can assuage my guilt and move on with my day," versus "How can I actually be a part of making this difference?" And I think that storytelling, we don't wanna be getting go-away gifts. We wanna be getting, "I'm part of this, and I'm here with you because we share the same values and because we feel empowered to change the world."
Maria Bryan: It reminds me of every campaign in the '80s and '90s, right? Of these like international campaigns.
Maria Rio: But they don't do it that way for a reason.
And small nonprofits learn from large ones, and then they are so slow to pick up on, "Oh, something changed."
Maria Bryan: And they're still doing it because it's something that they were taught 10 years ago.
Maria Rio: Also, if you give your donor too much negative information, you might actually trigger a fight, flight, or freeze reaction. You don't want them to freeze and then leave your webpage.
You want them to feel excited and empowered to be part of your mission. So that's the kind of imagery that you should be sharing.
We are a community. That's what encourages people to give. The CanadaHelps Giving Report 2025 shared that a sense of community is so critical for people to give. So if they feel they're connected with their neighbors, they're more likely to give. So that's what you want to do.
These are their neighbors. Frame it exactly that way because it's the truth.
Something that I've found is that the best donors usually have either a personal connection to the cause or they know someone who has a personal connection.
So if your marketing is all othering, you're trying to attract people who know your cause best. For example, I would be a great donor for something like World Vision, right?
They helped me specifically. But if their marketing is all like, ‘Look at this kid covered in flies,’ am I like that? Is that who I am? It's so different from my experience getting services from them, right? So why do you think that's gonna inspire a donor who very likely has some sort of connection to your organization, at least through a values lens?
So imagine that their partner is an immigrant, or whatever the case may be, right? Maybe that's why they're involved with this cause, and we keep othering the very reason that attracts them to us.
Maria Bryan: I know we're almost at time. I could talk to you forever about this.
Can you tell us more about Further Together and how folks might be able to work with you? And I'd love for you to share about the Small Nonprofit podcast as well.
Maria Rio: Sure, I would love to. So Further Together is my fundraising firm. We have three fundraisers, and we're all about community-centric fundraising. So it's baked into every strategy and every engagement: how to raise funds in a way that is actually aligned with the organization's ethical stances and their values and their programming.
So that can look like a lot of different things. It could be individual giving at one organization or social enterprise at another. It's just what keeps the community safe and the leaders well-funded to do the work that they need to do to fuel social change. You can learn more at gofurthertogether.ca, or you could follow me on LinkedIn, Maria Rio, R-I-O, to catch up with all the stuff that I'm doing there.
I also send out a monthly newsletter called Further Reading that has resources for executive directors who want to do things differently. So one month it might be, okay, here are some volunteer resources on how to activate your board to fundraise, or here's how you could start thinking about the use of AI at your organization, or a sabbatical policy, whatever the case may be.
Maria Bryan: I have a lot of conversations with folks on the future of fundraising and how we can move towards community-centric fundraising, and you're one of those people who are deeply walking the walk. So thank you. Thank you for what you do, for advocating for communities. Thank you for putting together the 10 Dignified Storytelling Questions.
I'll be sure to have that in the show notes for folks that wanna download that, and thank you so much for coming on "When Bearing Witness." We appreciate your wisdom.
Maria Rio: Thank you so much for having me.