Ethical Storytelling

Do you struggle to portray your program participants as their own agents of change, while admitting that they also need your organization’s help? Do you worry about jeopardizing the dignity of the people in your stories for the sake of raising money? Do you find yourself debating ethical storytelling principals with colleagues who don’t see eye-to-eye?

We can guide you step-by-step in evaluating your own communications, defining ethical excellence in your storytelling process, and securing buy-in from your team so that you can launch your new strategy with success. Ethical storytelling is about more than the messages themselves – it’s about the entire process, from acquisition of content, to interpretation, to crafting the narrative and measuring its effectiveness. To be successful in transforming your organization’s communications you need to be a change-agent yourself – bringing your entire team and stakeholders along.

Problems We Solve

You struggle to apply the principles of ethical storytelling to your organization’s communication
You worry that you may be jeopardizing the dignity of the people in your stories but are not sure what to do
You want to collect feedback from your story contributors but are not sure how to go about it
You want to resolve the disconnect or discord between your fundraising teams and your program staff on the ground
You want to transform your communications and need support to get it right

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Results You’ll See

Clear direction on where you are headed in your ethical storytelling strategy with evidence to support every decision
Unified staff and teams that work together to achieve a shared vision and outcomes
Metrics and guidelines to ensure your communications reflect principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion
Ethical communications that meets your organization’s objectives: raising funds, engaging new supporters, catalyzing increased investments from current supporters, expanding awareness of your mission
Comprehensive assessment that takes the guesswork out of transforming your communications, enabling you to make informed decisions, budget accordingly, project accurately, and proceed with confidence
Metrics and guidelines to ensure your communications reflect principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion
Stories that cultivate empathy, not exploitation, so that you can rest easy knowing the dignity of the people you impact is not at stake

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Services We Offer

Ethical Storytelling Audit: Evaluate your communications and provide recommendations to optimize and enhance your work
Contributor feedback and interviewing: Help your team design a process to secure and apply feedback from your story contributors (the people impacted by your programs)
Workshops: Guide your team through a collaborative workshop to create principals, guidelines, and protocols to transform your communications
Training: Design custom training programs on ethical and empathic storytelling and intercultural competence
Coaching: Work one-on-one with your marketing and communications teams, major gift officers, or leadership to address your toughest challenges and achieve breakthroughs for your ethical communications
Retainer: Serve as an on-call resource to your team and stakeholders for assistance in ethical storytelling, fundraising, communications, and intercultural competence