An e-book with over 900 Story Prompts (aka Table Topics Questions) for Nonprofits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 15, 2024 I blogged about My workshop presentation at the 2024 District 15 Toastmasters Conference on May 18, 2024 about Creating or Finding Great Table Topics Questions. Story Prompts are one type of question.

 

There is a 56-page pdf e-book by Chris Davenport from 2023 titled Story Prompts for Nonprofits: 900+ storytelling prompts for attracting new donors, generating media buzz, connecting with your community, and deepening relationships with donors!

 

One large series of Story Prompts for Different Categories of Nonprofits with twenty for each of the following 17 categories [340] is:

 

Advocating

Animals

Arts

Children’s Hospital

Community Foundation

Dog and Cat Shelters

Environmental

Foreign Aid

Healthcare

Higher Education

Independent Schools

K-12 Schools

Museums and History

Political 

Religious

Social Services

Theater

 

Another large series of Story Prompts Based on Types of Beneficiaries and Help Provided with twenty for each of the following 29 categories [580; 580 + 340 = 920] is:

 

Cancer

Clean Water

Climate Change

Community Service

Disabled

Domestic Violence

Drug and Alcohol Addiction

Families in Need

Feeding the Hungry

Holiday Season

Homeless

Human Services

Job Provider

Land Conservation

Legal Aid

Low-Income Housing

Medical Device Provider

Music Programs

Political Action

Research

Scholarship Programs

Senior citizens

Sports

Technology Provider

Therapy

Transportation Services

Veterans

World Events

 

The image was modified from this one at OpenClipArt.

 

135 Conversation Starters (or Table Topics Questions) from the Family Dinner Project

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on November 21, 2022 I blogged about how Conversation Starters can also be used for Table Topics questions at a Toastmasters club meeting.

 

There is a web site called the Family Dinner Project that has a 6-page pdf article from 2020 listing 135 Conversation Starters. The first dozen questions are:

 

  1] What’s something you couldn’t do when you were younger that you can do now?

 

  2] If you had superpowers, what would they be and how would you use them to help people?

 

  3] What’s one fun thing you hope to do in the next year?

 

  4] Who is your favorite character from a book, movie, or TV show?

 

  5] If you could be an animal, what would you want to be? Why?

 

  6] If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you want to live? Why?

 

  7] If you could have a character from a book or movie as a best friend, who would it be? Why?

 

  8] What are three things you’re good at doing that took a lot of hard work and practice?

 

  9] What’s the greatest song ever written and why?

 

10] Do you have a favorite piece of clothing? What makes it special?

 

11] What is your favorite season? What do you like about it?

 

12] If you were a season, which season would you be and why?

 

There also is a post from Bri DeRosa at The Family Dinner Project blog on August 29, 2023 titled 100 Ways to Ask About the Day.

 

I found out about the Family Dinner Project from page 146 in a 2024 book by Michael Norton titled The Ritual Effect: From habit to ritual, harness the surprising power of everyday actions.

 

An image of a dinner table in Kew Palace came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Eight TEDx talks about charisma

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I searched on YouTube and found eight TEDx talks about charisma. You can watch all of them in less than two hours. In chronological order they are:

 

16:03 - March 18, 2015

Let’s face it: charisma matters | John Antonakis |TEDxLausanne

 

17:28 - October 1, 2015

Charisma versus Stage Fright | Deborah Frances-White |

 

12:47 - December 12, 2016

The Dark Side of Charisma | Rebecca Styn |TEDx Erie

 

14:16 - December 2, 2019

Who needs tricks? Charisma has magical powers. | Jon Ensor |TEDxArendal

 

18:04 - September 24, 2021

How Charisma is a superpower we gift to others | ElizabethZechmeister | TEDxNashvilleSalon

 

4:31 - July 11, 2022

I hate people with Charisma | Bishal Bajgain |TEDxKathmanduUniversity

 

14:24 - May 15, 2024

What Orpheus taught me about charisma | Scott Mason |TEDxApex

 

17:33 - May 30, 2024

How charismatic storytelling convinces you to care | SobanAtique | TEDxUofT

 

The image was adapted from Charisma versus Stage Fright.

 

 

In 2026 only you can prevent bad presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since 2015 (except for 2023), on the first of January I have posted about how only you can prevent bad presentations. That slogan, of course, is based on the Smokey Bear one about preventing wildfires. My last one was that Only you can prevent bad presentations in 2025!

 

How can you do better? There is an article by Maurice Decastro at Mindful Presenter on December 28, 2025 titled 10 Ways to Develop Strong Public Speaking Skills in 2026 that lists these ways:

 

Overcome your fears

Learn to tell stories

Own your voice

Learn to pause

Understand how you move

Involve your audience

Create impactful slides

Learn from the masters

Cultivate a growth mindset

Get some professional help

 

Images from Wikimedia Commons of Carl Cohen, Frieda Pavlo, John Archibald Wheeler, and Mark Kac had captions added using PowerPoint.

 

Five ideas for generating applause when you need it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Brainzooming blog in October 2014 there is a post titled Event Strategy – 5 Ideas for Generating Applause When You Need It. They are:

 

1] Identify upfront where you want applause

2] Make sure there is always an applause starter in the audience [a shill]

3] Invite the audience to applaud

4] Keep presenters close to the stage

5] If you’re a speaker, pause at your applause line

 

The clapping hands cartoon was adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Top 25 Lies of 2025 by Donald J. Trump

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s no secret that Donald Trump tells a lot of awful lies. He is mostly a fraud. There is an article by Daniel Dale at CNN on December 26, 2025 which is titled Analysis: Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025. They are:

 

 1] Trump secured $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investments in 2025

 

 2] ‘Every price is down’

 

 3] Trump was reducing prescription drug prices by ‘2000%, 3000%’

 

 4] Foreign countries pay the US governments tariffs

 

 5] Portland was ’burning down’

 

 6] Washington, DC had no murders for six months

 

 7] ‘I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water’

 

 8] The Democratic governor of Maryland called Trump ‘the greatest president of  my lifetime’

 

 9] Ukraine ‘started’ Russia’s war on Ukraine

 

10] Trump was speaking ‘in jest’ when he promised to immediately end the Ukraine war

 

11] The US government had planned to spend $50 million on ‘condoms for Hamas’

 

12] Every drug boat in the Caribbean ‘kills 25,000 Americans’

 

13] Trump ‘didn’t say’ he had no problem releasing full footage of a September boat strike

 

14] Numerous foreign leaders emptied prisons and mental institutions to send their most undesirable people into the US

 

15] Trump ended seven or eight wars

 

16] ‘The people of Canada like’ the idea of becoming the 51 st US state

 

17] Capitol rioters ‘didn’t assault’

 

18] Critical media coverage of Trump is ‘illegal’

 

19] Trump didn’t pressure the Justice Department to go after his opponents

 

20] Obama, Biden and Comey made up the Epstein files

 

21] The 2020 election was ‘rigged and stolen’

 

22] The US is ‘the only country in the world’ with mail-in voting

 

23] Babies get 80-plus vaccines at once

 

24] Trump’s big domestic policy bill didn’t change Medicaid

 

25] The domestic policy bill was ‘the single most popular bill ever signed’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 18, 2025 I blogged about how In his 18-minute speech last night President Trump talked about reducing prescription drug prices by 400% to 600%. What would that even mean? But the third item in the list had an even more ludicrous 3000% (29 times), explained by the graph shown above. And a post by Steve Benen at the MaddowBlog on December 18, 2025 is titled The top 10 most brazen lies from Trump’s year-end prime-time address.

 

 

Does the design of slides for medical lectures follow the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course not! There is a very recent and serious article by Rajin Le Blanc and Nicola Cooper at Clinical Teaching on December 10, 2025 which is titled Investigating Death by PowerPoint: Do Medical Lecturers Adhere to the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning in Their Slide Design? They examined 52 lectures presented at the University of Nottingham. And they found that:

 

“Students were exposed to text‐heavy slides 84.4% of the time, an approach that CTML [Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning] shows impairs learning through violating the minimal text principle. In addition, the mean word count per slide was 38.2 – significantly more than the ‘few words’ suggested by the principle. Lecturers did however use images relatively frequently at 59.9% of the time.”

 

Counting its title, my slide example modified from Section 2.1 (and shown above) has 85 words, more than twice the 38.2 average.

 

There is another succinct four-page pdf article by Jacob B. Waxman and Sue J. Goldie from the Center for Health Decision Science at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health titled Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. That theory is also described by Richard E. Mayer in the 2020 third edition of his book, Multimedia Learning.