Stories are critical to social change. They show us the human stakes of policy decisions. They offer windows into experiences unlike our own. They make us stop and think, because they first make us feel.
For organizations that use storytelling to help change the world, the conversation can’t begin and end with how to tell compelling stories; we need to consider how those stories are framed and how people and communities are represented in and affected by those stories.
Organizations often tell stories without meaningful input from the people those stories are about or who are most affected by the policy or issue in question. This must change.
“Who tells the story?” is the question organizations must ask themselves when shaping their communication efforts and deciding where to use their resources. I help nonprofit, health care, and legal services organizations develop practices to ensure that the stories they tell are shaped by and benefit people directly impacted by the issue(s) the story is about. Scroll down to learn more about why this work is important, download a free guide to start examining your organization’s storytelling practices, and reach out if you want to dig deeper together.
-- Kate Marple
Examining the research
Sympathy leads to charity. Empathy leads to change.
Stories that reduce people to their problems, that depict sad, hopeless faces, and that paint organizations as heroic are common in the social sector, and they can be effective in raising money; research shows a correlation between pity and charitable giving.
But those same stories can also more deeply embed stereotypes that make solving systemic problems more difficult. Changing policies, particularly to be more just and more equitable, requires that we instead feel empathy—that we understand more about who people are beyond the problem they face, that we see their experience through their eyes, and that we understand the larger societal context for the problem itself. This requires a different kind of social change storytelling, one where clients and communities are in the driver’s seat. The Who Tells the Story? guide looks at research that illuminates why.
CHANGING STORYTELLING CULTURE
Strategies for Partnered, Empathetic Storytelling
Partnering with clients and communities means changing the culture of storytelling inside organizations. I work with organizations to explore what that looks like at four points in the storytelling process:
Setting the Stage for Partnership
Involve clients and staff in the storytelling process from the beginning
Establishing Goals & Boundaries
Engage in an empowering, nuanced conversation about intent and consent
Gathering the Story
Foster authentic sharing and invite perspective on the story and how to frame it
Telling the Story
Focus on empathetic, human narratives that center on the people they’re really about