Health Leads, a Boston charity that recruits college-student volunteers to help low-income people connect with social services, can boast some terrific numbers. More than 4,000 volunteers have helped tens of thousands of people address urgent needs—like paying fuel bills, finding food banks, and seeking shelter from domestic abuse.
But when Rebecca Onie, the chief executive, speaks about the program at health conferences, she often focuses more on the details of people’s stories than the data. She describes a young asthma sufferer in substandard housing who wakes up covered in cockroaches. She puts listeners in the shoes of a homeless man who lost his apartment when he had to choose between paying rent and buying his HIV medicine.
“We have all kinds of data that we can share about what we do, but the stories are really what make the data matter,” says Connie French, director of communications and marketing for Health Leads. “Percentages and numbers don’t really mean anything until you see them through the lens of something like a child suffering with asthma.”
The ancient art of storytelling may seem quaint in an era when many outreach efforts are driven by big data, with results measured in Facebook “likes” and Twitter retweets. But more and more charity leaders and communication consultants are concerned that nonprofit organizations spend too much time numbing audiences with numbers instead of stimulating them into action through stories.
Finding Success
Charities that have adopted “a culture of storytelling,” in which everyone keeps an ear out for good stories that are carefully collected and curated, are finding success in building support for their missions.
“Storytelling has always been important, but it seems to have become a lot more prevalent in the sector over the last few years,” says Chris Davenport, a nonprofit consultant and videographer. Mr. Davenport is co-organizer of the “Nonprofit Storytelling Conference,” in Seattle, on November 6 and 7, which will bring together more than a dozen consultants to discuss the power and practice of effective storytelling.
“We have been focused on technology because it’s been the shiny new object,” Mr. Davenport says. “But now everybody has these tools and they are not so shiny and it comes down to engaging content. And as humans, I think we are just preprogrammed to listen to stories and take them in.”
Recognizing the power of storytelling, the Rockefeller Foundation made a $4-million commitment this year to support storytelling conferences, grantee workshops and training, and website resources offering charities storytelling tools, tips, and case studies.
As part of the effort, the foundation released a study in May, “Digital Storytelling for Social Impact,” featuring experts from business, philanthropy, media, technology, and other fields.
“While there have never been more ways to reach audiences, it has also never been more difficult to really reach them,” Jay Geneske, the Rockefeller Foundation’s director of digital, wrote in the foreword to the study.
“If anyone is going to be good at storytelling it should be our sector, where there should be no lack of honest, hopeful, inspirational, and impactful stories,” Mr. Geneske says.
“But what’s happening to a lot of organizations, because of the competition or a lack of resources, is that they are so busy just getting their channels up and pushing out content they aren’t really thinking about the actual stories they could tell to connect with people.”
The Meyer Foundation, in Washington, has also recognized the importance of storytelling for nonprofit organizations.
In September, in conjunction with the Georgetown University Center for Social Impact Communication, it released the report “Stories Worth Telling: a Guide to Strategic and Sustainable Nonprofit Storytelling,” essentially a how-to guide for better charity storytelling, complete with examples of how some organizations are telling their tales effectively. The report, along with additional storytelling resources, can be found on its website: meyerfoundation.org.
Transferring Emotions
What constitutes a good story for a charity? The answer varies, but Andy Goodman, a charity consultant in Los Angeles and author of the book Storytelling as Best Practice, says there is a basic framework.
“For nonprofits, a story is most often the tale of an individual that they have helped or an individual at the nonprofit who has supplied help, and we follow them along this journey,” Mr. Goodman says. “It should have all the classical elements of story: Somebody wants or needs something, there are obstacles in their way, they find a way to surmount those obstacles, and hopefully we arrive at some successful ending.”
Mr. Davenport offers another definition.
“From a fundraising perspective, my definition of a story is that it’s a vehicle in which to transfer emotion from the nonprofit over to an audience, the potential donor,” he says. “That’s really what a story does: transfers emotions to get people engaged.”
Consumers Union, the consumer-protection charity in Yonkers, N.Y., began bolstering how it collected and used stories a decade ago, and the group credits that effort with advancing many of its causes. One of the first successes was raising awareness about the alarming number of people dying of infections they contracted while in the hospital, says Gregory Foster, the charity’s technology manager.
The charity began to get traction on the issue by, for example, publicizing stories from grieving parents of children who had gone to hospitals for routine procedures only to die from infections. Many of these real-life storytellers eventually became spokespeople on the issue, speaking to the media and in public forums.
“If you use statistics you are generally going to put your audience to sleep, but if you engage them with an emotional, compelling story, you’re going to get a whole different response,” says Mr. Foster. Today, more than half of U.S. states have laws encouraging the prevention and reduction of hospital infections, he says.
The charity has developed a comprehensive web-based platform for collecting, organizing, and accessing stories at www.stori.es which it is making available to other nonprofit groups for free. Stories enter the system through customizable questionnaires filled in by staff members or others to produce a searchable database.
“Everyone uses the platform differently, and we want to work with different types and sizes of organizations and see what the challenges and needs are,” says Mr. Foster.
Complex Issues
Carter Roberts, president of the World Wildlife Fund, the global environmental charity in Washington, devoted the entire forward of his organization’s 2013 annual report to extolling the power of storytelling. While noting that stories have long been a tool of the conservation movement, he urged his organization to “double down” on it in the future.
The charity has since provided storytelling training for staff and introduced a new platform for stories, the quarterly magazine World Wildlife.
A recent story about the impact of a new coastal marine preserve in Mozambique on nearby communities included first-person storytelling, photos, infographics, and videos. That case, featured in the magazine’s premier issue, has served as a template for how the organization tells stories, says Brigid Milligan, the group’s external affairs specialist.
For some topics, like climate change, “where the threat is so incremental and hard to wrap your head around,” storytelling can be particularly important, says Steve Ertel, head of WWF media and external affairs.
“We can present the issue through the eyes of a species, such as the mangrove tiger whose habitat is being destroyed by rising sea levels,” notes Mr. Ertel. “My job is to take really complex issues and make them relevant to people, and there is no better tool in our toolbox than stories.”
Voices of Clients
The Nurse-Family Partnership, a charity in Denver that arranges for nurses to visit the homes of low-income first-time mothers, has decades of research to back up the value of its services.
“We really failed to expand our outreach until we realized a couple of years ago that the best voices to effectively communicate how it works are our clients—these young moms that we helped to be successful parents,” says Fran Benton, the charity’s director of public relations.
The Nurse-Family Partnership’s website features information about various academic studies and randomized trials that show the benefits of nurse interventions. The site also includes links labeled “Crystal,” “Nely,” “Amanda,” and “Maria,” which lead to the stories of mothers as young 14—clients who overcame abusive partners, homelessness, and addiction—to deliver and raise healthy children.
“To reach and motivate people,” Ms. Benton says, “you really have to speak to their hearts.”