Hello ,
A few months ago, I wrote about the Nugget Collection System: the habit of building a shared "Hall of Fame" of your organization's best concrete evidence. Plenty of teams took that to heart. And as I kept working with the ones who'd built one up, something clicked: collecting nuggets is one thing. Being able to show a few of them, fast, on your phone, in the middle of a live conversation, is another. That's what this edition is about.
Warmly,
Marc
Practical persuasion insights from EST
MAY 2026 EDITION
A phone-ready way to show your best proof in the middle of a live conversation.
A quick refresher on what a nugget is: the best-of-the-best pieces of concrete evidence your organization has on hand. A short quote with the speaker's name attached. A photo that makes the work visible. A specific moment: what someone did, where it happened, the unexpected number. The small, specific details that make abstract claims feel real.
Your team collects them in a shared "Hall of Fame of Best Examples," a one-pager that gets fed into every pitch, ask, and conversation.
That's the library. What I want to show you today is the highlight reel.
Your Evidence Page is a one-screen, phone-first page that lives on your team's phone home screens. You pull it up the moment you've made a claim and want the donor to see the proof rather than just hear you describe it.
Three or four items, drawn from your Hall of Fame, selected because they can be absorbed at a glance.
You can see a live sample at evidencepage.com. It's for a fictional prison re-entry program called Second Shift. Open it on your phone. You'll notice it barely looks designed. That's intentional. No logo, no navigation, no mission statement, no donate button. Just three pieces of proof: two short third-party videos and one simple number comparison. It isn't trying to explain the organization. It's trying to help one claim land.
The trigger for pulling up the page isn't the donor asking. It's you, the moment after you've made a claim, deciding you want to show rather than keep talking.
That means the deployment has to be fluent. Pocket to evidence on screen in about three seconds. If you fumble, searching through bookmarks, scrolling through apps, asking "now where did I save that," you've broken the flow. You've gone from "let me show you something" to "let me find something to show you," which lands as the opposite of confident.
This is why the page has to live on the home screen. Tap the icon, page opens, you're already turning the phone toward the donor. The page is on the home screen the same way your camera is: one tap away because you might need it any second.
The same idea works on Zoom. Briefly share the page, let the donor scan a QR code, or drop the URL into the chat. The point is the same: the evidence appears at the exact moment the claim needs proof.
And while I've been describing donor conversations, the same move works anywhere a claim meets skepticism: policy meetings, sales pitches, partnership asks, board conversations. The audience changes; the mechanic doesn't.
The technical lift is small. The editorial discipline is what matters.
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Pick one specific claim. e.g., "Graduates return to prison at one-fifth the national rate." | The claim doesn't appear on the page. The page is the proof, not the argument. |
| Three or four elements, max. Each one must decode at a glance: a face, a number, a short quote, a short clip. | If it takes more than two seconds of looking, it doesn't belong. |
| Videos under 10 seconds. Conversational, not produced. | Polished testimonials read as marketing. Slightly imperfect clips read as real. |
| Prioritize third-party voices. An employer, a teacher, a corrections officer. | Outside validators carry more weight than people the donor expects to praise the program. |
| Skip the branding. No header, no logo, no donate button. | Showing a phone photo invites looking. Handing over a brochure invites bracing. |
Then save the page to every team member's phone home screen, and brief everyone on how to use it: as a prop pulled up during a live conversation, within seconds of making a claim out loud.
The Evidence Page is a sharpening of Step 2 of the EST framework: Trust. The claim does the work of Step 1 (Curiosity). The page does the work of Step 2 (Trust), at the moment skepticism is most likely. Then you move on to Clarity and Action with the listener already leaning in.
I'm now building Evidence Pages with teams as part of EST workshop engagements: identifying the strongest nuggets, turning a few into a one-screen phone page, and training staff to use it in live conversations. Reach out at est.io/contact or book a 20-minute call at callmarc.org.
But you don't need EST to try this. If your team has already collected strong nuggets, you can build a first version in an afternoon. The hard part isn't the page. It's the restraint.
Go look at evidencepage.com on your phone. Then ask your team: what are the three nuggets we'd put on ours?
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Marc Fest
EST Persuasive Communication Training
est.io