Max Kringen
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Max Kringen
How Mission-Driven Organizations Build Real Relationships Through Seasonal Storytelling
by Max Kringen
A storytelling framework for nonprofits, colleges, and purpose-driven businesses that teaches you to build trust and belonging through four seasonal rhythms: Introduce, Educate, Engage, Remind. Part memoir, part methodology, all practical.
Your organization has a story worth telling. The problem is your timing.
Most nonprofits, universities, and mission-driven businesses skip straight to the ask. They lead with statistics, launch campaigns before trust exists, and wonder why donors give once and disappear. Why supporters engage but never commit. Why their community never quite becomes a community.
The story was never the problem. The season was.
Seasons of Story is a practical framework built over fifteen years of working with hundreds of mission-driven organizations. It mirrors the way real relationships actually develop. Just as nature cycles through Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, so does the path from stranger to committed supporter. When your storytelling aligns with those rhythms, everything shifts.
Spring: Introduce. Create psychological safety and curiosity. Share your origin story. Let people see who you really are before you ask for anything.
Summer: Educate. Build trust through consistency, transparency, and showing up the same way enough times that people stop wondering if you're the real thing.
Fall: Engage. Invite your audience into the story with clear, dignified calls to action that feel like belonging, not pressure.
Winter: Remind. Close the loop with specific gratitude. Show supporters what their role made possible. Prepare the soil for the next cycle.
Inside, you'll find real case studies from organizations using this framework, including a regional university that became the fastest-growing four-year public institution in its state. Practical storytelling tips sorted by sector. A permission-based approach to fundraising that treats donors like partners. And a companion toolkit with a month-by-month playbook, content calendar template, and seasonal readiness quiz.
Max Kringen is the founder and Chief Storyteller at Tellwell Story Co. in Fargo, North Dakota, and founder of the WellTold nonprofit storytelling conference. He grew up in Enderlin, ND (population 800), where his Grandpa Herb taught him that the most powerful thing you can offer someone is the feeling that they belong before they've proven anything.
That's what this book will teach you to build.
Founder + Chief Storyteller at Tellwell Story Co. Author, speaker, and nonprofit storytelling nerd from Fargo, ND.
Max Kringen grew up in Enderlin, North Dakota. Population: about 800. He was a rainbow dot in a red state, a speech champion, a Future Business Leaders of America state president, and a kid who learned early that performing for people is not the same as belonging with them. He's spent over a decade building Tellwell Story Co., a creative studio in Fargo that helps nonprofits, colleges, and purpose-driven businesses tell stories that actually connect with the people they serve. Documentary films. Brand strategy. Design. The kind of work that starts with listening. Max is also the founder of the WellTold Conference, a gathering for nonprofit storytellers, and the writer behind Start with Story, a weekly newsletter on human-first communication. His first book, Seasons of Story, teaches mission-driven organizations how to build real relationships through four seasonal rhythms: Introduce, Educate, Engage, Remind. He lives in Fargo with strong opinions about lemonade stands, campfire ghost stories, and why you should never lead with statistics. wetellwell.com