Experience Optimism Newsletter

Volume 1. Issue 1.  December 7, 2007

Imagine a newsletter dedicated to positive thoughts and deeds.

Then imagine it contains resources and tools that will enable you to enhance the community service you provide and engage others in making your community the best place to live, work and play.

Experience Optimism every month and we will give you the tools that will help your club and your community prosper.

Tell your story. For more than a year, newoptimistclub.com has reinforced the need to tell the Optimist Story. What does your Optimist Club do that makes a difference in your community? What would happen if your club no longer conducted projects?

Storytelling can be a powerful tool because it creates an emotional bond with your audience. Adapted from The Elements of Persuasion, here are some tips to help you tell a compelling story about the reason your club members participate in Optimist Club projects:

1. Be passionate: Are you inspired by your mission? Do you wake up every morning ready to do something good for your cause? Use that passion to motivate others to do and to give.

2. Build your characters: Every good story has a protagonist and an antagonist. The protagonist is your hero. He is someone that the group you are speaking to will respect and relate to. The antagonist is the problem. Identify what is at stake if the antagonist continues on: people will go hungry or students will not have coats to wear in the winter. Be descriptive.

3. Generate awareness: Build up to the “Aha” moment when your listener learns something from your hero’s experience that he wouldn’t otherwise have known. Give the story real-life meaning to act upon.

4. Affect change: Your hero should mimic the actions you want your listener to take. How does awareness lead to action? What should the listener do next?

Win $50,000 for your Optimist Club. Yahoo! invites you to share a story about people making an extraordinary difference through their work with a charity. Visit http://bix.yahoo.com/cybergiving to learn how your story might be used to inspire others to give more. One lucky charity will receive up to $50,000 matching funds from Yahoo!

Tell us your story too. Experience Optimism will help others learn by sharing stories. Our goal is to share best practices, identify resources, offer advice and help you experience and expand optimism in your community and throughout the world. Click here to submit your stories.

© 2007 newoptimistclub.com, a project of Research Idaho

Linda Jackson, Editor