Nia: And before I turn it over to Carly, just a couple things to go over. First, my name is Nia, and I'm one of the newest team members here at Instrumentl. I'm an events and community manager, and my job is to develop helpful and educational events like this one to share with our Instrumentl community. Many of you I know from the poll have attended webinars like this one with my colleague Rachel, so there are two of us now. You'll be seeing a lot more of me over the coming months.
And prior to Instrumentl, I worked at a rainforest conservation and research non-profit, building events like the annual World Rainforest Day Summit. So thank you everyone for being here with us today.
Some quick FYIs about this event. It is going to be about an hour long. This includes the presentation and then a live Q&A at the end. So feel free to ask any questions in the chat box as they come up, and we will circle back to them before we wrap up.
This event is being recorded, so you'll get the recording and slides delivered straight to your inbox after the event. And I want to make sure you feel free to take care of your personal needs during our event. So whether it's grabbing a snack or stepping away for a quick break, you do you. We'll be right here. But make sure you stick around until the end because I know our friends at MemoryFox have some exciting surprises for you today. Then we do have closed captions enabled. So if you'd like to read along, you can toggle those on in your Zoom settings.
And lastly, I want to call out that in just under a month, we're hosting the Nonprofit Growth Summit. We'll be joined by really exciting panelists and sponsors, including MemoryFox. We'll be exploring emerging indicators of high-performing nonprofits. So the secrets to success, if you will, with some hands-on workshops to really dig in and learn how to apply them. Early bird registration for the summit is open right now. But it is almost sold out. So I would encourage you to get in there ASAP.
And with that, I'm excited to introduce our presenter today. Carly is the wonderful marketing manager over at MemoryFox. Welcome, Carly. I'm so grateful that you're here, and I can't wait for our audience to get to explore the topics you're going to cover today. I'm actually going to let Carly take it from here.
Carly: Thank you so much for having me.
Let me go ahead and share my screen with all of the information that I'm dying to share with you. I think we should all set here. Let me know if for some reason you can't see my From Survey to Solutions screen. But I believe you all should be able to.
And -- all right. Great. Okay. Looks great. Then in that case, I'm going to go ahead and hop right in. I have so much to cover.
So thank you all for coming today. I am so excited to share the 2023 Ethical Storytelling Report with you. I know you already introduced yourself in the chat. So, thank you so much.
I love reading about all of the missions. I love reading about the actual impact that's in the room at any given time. So, it's just really exciting to hear that you're from all different places and that you're doing all different types of missions. I just love that. So a little bit about me.
My name is Carly Euler. I am the Marketing Director here at MemoryFox. I am the one who organized and created the 2023 Ethical Storytelling Report. So, there's really nobody that's read it more often than me. It's been me that read through all the answers. I collected all the answers. I put them all together for you. We launched the report in January. And to date, we have just under 2,000 downloads. I'm hoping that if you haven't had a chance to read the report or download your copy yet. Go ahead and do that today because that's what we're going to be talking about.
But before that, before I came to MemoryFox, I did work in the nonprofit space for about nine years. I specialized in communications, peer-to-peer campaigns, sponsorships, and special events. Some of the great places that I got to be a part of include the Breast Cancer Coalition, Code of Support Foundation, The Wily Network, Kenya Lacrosse Association, and the FOMA Project.
Okay. So, before we actually explore the insights of the report, I want to share the backstory of how we even got here. So in 2023, our team identified a prominent pattern. At every speaking engagement, it did not matter what the topic was. It didn't matter what the style was or who the audience was.
Our team received a version of this thoughtful question. What do I do if the people I serve have sensitive stories that they might not want to share? And truth be told, we did not have an answer. We really just were unsure. We weren't sure what to -- how to respond to these types of questions. So we decided to embark on a learning journey, and we thought, how better to learn about topics like this than to invite experts in to learn about this topic or to tell us about this topic.
So in December of 2023, we invited four exceptional panelists. They really dedicated their whole careers to answering tough questions like this, and we invited them to join us for a virtual panel. And we thought, we're going to get all the questions together. We're just going to ask them, and then we're going to know, right? Then we'll have the answers. So we set it up as an Ask Me Anything style panel. We had four panelists. Kind of traditionally, it was going to be, you know, 60 minutes. But what happened was we had over 400 people register, and they submitted 150 multifaceted tough questions.
So as you can probably imagine, we weren't able to answer them all in 60 minutes, and we thought, "Well, while that panel was wildly successful, we only skimmed the surface." So we knew we had to continue the conversation, so we made a plan to do that. That's where we decided to take matters into our own hands, and we created the Ethical Storytelling Report. And if you haven't -- again, if you haven't downloaded it yet, you know, that's no problem. You can do that now, but I'm going to share the biggest takeaways from the report now with you.
All right. The first thing we wanted to understand when it came to ethical storytelling in general, we wanted to see how our community felt their current relationship with ethical storytelling was. So, we conducted a survey. I don't know if anybody in the chat happened to be a part of the survey. But if you did, go ahead and raise your hand. And I hope they will all participate next year. Here are some of the things we learned. First, we asked respondents to rate how important ethical storytelling is to them as an individual.
We were -- and we're proud to report that every single person surveyed rated ethical storytelling at least a three or greater, and a three in our case, meant it's a little important to them. But we were very happy to see that 88.5% of the community views ethical storytelling as extreme. However, next we sought to understand, you know, that one's relationship, one's values might not always be exactly the same as how they perceive the value of their organization to be about the same topic, right?
Sometimes we, as individuals, we believe in certain things that we're not sure our board or our organization as a whole is completely on the same page with. So we wanted to ask people, how important do you believe ethical storytelling is to your organization?
And notably, you can see that the answer skewed a little lower on the scale. Only 73% reported that they believe that ethical storytelling is extremely important to their organization, while 20% thought that their organization finds it very important. So, that still is really good news. But definitely skewed a little lower in terms of comparing to your individual feelings. And if there's one thing we know here at MemoryFox, it's that ethical storytelling actually begins during the story collection process.
So we wanted to understand if nonprofits currently felt equipped to collect and share stories in an ethical way. So we went ahead and we asked. And as it turns out, the answers widely vary. No one category captured the majority here, but basically you can see that just 9% of respondents feel that their story collection is extremely ethical, while 46 -- about 47%, they actually, which was the most common answer, they found that their process felt just a little equipped to do so ethically.
Another thing that we know here at MemoryFox is that the most important part of story collection is the consent process. So the really cool thing that we found when we asked our community about this, 88.7% also believe that, you know. Most people agreed that consent is the most important part of ethical storytelling. And then you see, very small there.
We have about 7.7% that said it was very important, and 3% that said it was just a little important. But we do know that just because you believe that consent is extremely important, it doesn't mean that you are collecting it regularly. So we then asked our respondents to share if they felt their organization had a solid consent collection system in place.
And as you can see, these graphs actually were very different. So even though we saw that 90% of people admitted that it's extremely important to them, just a mere 20% actually feel they had a good system in place to do so. And respondents were most likely to answer that they agree. That was about 30%. But 5%, this is now the first graph we're seeing that has somebody that answered one or has people that answered in the one category, 5% actually said they strongly disagree that their organization currently has a good system in place.
So this is all really important information to kind of get us a sense of how the sector is feeling about ethical storytelling. The report has a few other really great insights in terms of this, the survey. But the final thing I want to share with you here today in terms of the survey is we asked everyone to kind of click throughout a full list of emotions that you can feel about ethical storytelling. And I'm going to share the top five with you.
So coming in strong at number one, 58% of people said that they struggle with wanting to collect stories while -- from their community while doing no harm. So, there's a lot of people out there. And I imagine that the reason some of you are here today is because you have this feeling. And I just want to let you know, that is perfectly normal. A lot of people are feeling that way. And you are actually in the right place because we're going to talk about it together.
But some other really good news is that the other top four feelings that people reported all have positive connotations. So 56% said, "Hey, I do not feel pressured to collect sad or traumatic stories just to raise funds." That's good news. 55% said, "I have set aside time to educate myself about trauma informed ethical storytelling." And when you all take the survey in December, you'll be able to say that you did that as well. 46% said, "I feel the culture of storytelling at my organization is currently trauma informed."
Very encouraging. And 41% said, "I know the way we collect stories from our community is ethical." So this is -- again, this is a snapshot of what people said at the end of 2023. I'm really looking forward to doing this survey again in 2024 because I'm certain that these numbers will be increased.
All right. Now let's talk about the bulk of the report, which is the pages and pages of questions that were asked by nonprofit professionals like you. And they're followed by answers that we sourced for you. So the actual report is broken down into eight distinct topics. I'm not going to have time to go into every topic today. But this is what you can expect. Before I get into the strategies, though, I do want to give a shout out to all of the people who actually contributed to the report.
Here are some of the thought leaders and consultants. We have Maria Bryan. She is extremely trained on trauma informed storytelling specifically. We have Frank Velazquez, Jr. He specializes in using deficit or removing deficit-based language in lieu of strength based language. And we have Sabrina Walker Hernandez. She is very well known to be like the board whisperer. She helps communities within an organization come together. So really great thought leaders with answers in this report.
But it was also really important to me to make sure we had perspectives from people who are working at nonprofits currently. So we have a list here of people who are currently employed at nonprofits that answered as well as everyone at MemoryFox. We all have worked very closely with these topics. So we all have our own distinct strategies and opinions on these things as well.
Okay. So let's get into it. The first topic is ethical storytelling. So we are starting off truly with an overview of the recurring themes that I saw again and again throughout the report here. And they kind of distilled into three big topics. So the three sort of keys to ethical storytelling. Number one, craft an ethical storytelling guide. And we're going to actually explore that later on another slide of the eight things that you'll need to do that. And you can get started on that tomorrow.
Number two, please be upfront with all of the options that you can offer your storyteller. So what options for anonymity do you offer? Are you going to remove names? Are you going to change other identifying factors? Those are things you want to tell your storyteller ahead of time. Be upfront about that. Also, what platforms would you share your story on? There's going to be a big difference between what story somebody is willing to share if they know it's going to be shared on social media channels versus maybe something like in a grant report. Do you have -- another thing that you want to consider is do you have a timeline for how long that you can use their story for? Really just laying out all of the options and all of the ways that you are going to plan to share and tell their story. Doing that upfront is what's going to make you a trustworthy story steward. My third key to ethical storytelling is to always, always, always give the storyteller the final yes or no. There really is no deadline that is more important than being a good steward of someone's story. And four, consent, consent, consent. We are going to talk about consent. There's an entire section about it. But this literally came up, I think, in pretty much every answer in the report. So something super important that you really need to be considering.
Okay. So that was the quick high-level overview. But let's talk about one aspect of ethical storytelling that I think doesn't get considered enough. And that is ethical storytelling from the view of the reader. So Maria Bryan, she's done a particularly good job at getting this aspect more widely spread and better understood. So we asked her, what is the best way to share stories while still being sensitive towards triggering others? And she said, "Content warnings allow us to share lived experiences while supporting the individual agency and the well-being of our audience."
So really what she means by the well-being of our audience is that when you clearly label distressing material, you're giving your story consumer the ability to choose if they would like to continue with that story or not.
So let's talk about where that might come into play. These are our recommendations when it comes to when you're sharing a story, what content warnings should be noted at the beginning of your story. Sexual assault, domestic abuse or child abuse, animal cruelty or animal death, self-harm or suicide, eating disorders or violence. So these are things that we really feel like you want to let people know ahead of time. Because especially with the internet, how it is, you just never know who might be triggered by a story as they're just going about their day-to-day, just scrolling. And you really don't want to be responsible for triggering potential donors. You know, there's this classic saying, "People won't remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel." And you really don't want to be known as the brand who triggered someone because they weren't expecting to read a story that unknowingly was going to have an effect on them. And it's certainly not a way to inspire someone to give. Not once, but definitely not again and again.
All right. Let's talk a little bit about trauma-informed language. So one of the questions that we asked our respondents was, how do you balance being emotionally appealing to the audience without capitalizing on trauma? So that's probably something that we've all thought about before. It's something that, you know, it's kind of a delicate balance that maybe we are all wondering about. And I really sort of came up with four recurring themes that really, I think, set themselves apart for you.
So first, you really want to consider the golden rule. So we all probably remember learning the golden rule when we were in kindergarten, or maybe first grade. And that is, you know, treat others the way you want to be treated. So the golden rule also applies to storytelling. And that is thinking about it in a way of saying, before you share a story, think about if you or a loved one were the main character, and would you want your story told that way?
And if you realize while you're reading your story, while you're reading the story that you are planning to share, that it's maybe not a way that you would like to be represented or a loved one of yours would want to be represented, then it's certainly a time to go back and make some changes. Second, it's really important to remember that positive emotions are also emotions. I think that sometimes when we're thinking about emotional stories specifically, we're thinking about sadness, or despair, or even anger. And there is a whole spectrum of emotions that will inspire audiences to give.
And for me, when I think about impactful storytelling, my favorite emotions to elicit are hope and relief. So when you're writing a story, in a way that gives the donor hope for the future, or feeling like they are relieved that they can help you find a long-term solution, that's actually what's going to get people to really feel super compelled to give to your mission, not just once but come back because they're going to feel like they're really helping a long-term solution. So positive emotions are still emotions.
Next, big trauma is not a necessity for all stories. So again, I think that a lot of us tend to think that emotionally appealing stories have to be about a really big trauma or something very serious. But that's not necessarily true. Our stories don't have to be, you know, as traumatic, or as awful or sad as we used to think. We actually can tell stories on a much smaller scale, especially if we commit to some creativity, and really trust the power of storytelling.
And finally, words matter, even if you're not -- even if you don't know, you know, the "right one." What I mean by that is really just be upfront and vulnerable with your storytellers. If you think that you're just not quite sure about the right language to use for something, just tell them, whether it's because of a situation, a situation that they're in, or it's maybe their background, or their race, or their gender, or maybe their physical status, approach it with humility and honesty. And just, you know, the thing is, it's really okay. We all are learning together.
So one thing I want to share with you is that Maria actually provided a trauma-informed pre-interview prep checklist. So this is a list of things for you to consider before you start interviewing somebody. I'm going to quickly go through these. But number one, you really want to explain the interview process in advance, and then obtain an enthusiastic consent. So let them know what they can expect, and then ask them if they're okay with the expectations.
Next, we recommend that you allow the storyteller to actually select their location, because it's going to be somewhere where they're the most comfortable. It could be their home. It could be their office, maybe some sort of peaceful outdoor area. But letting them select their location is going to be a priority.
Next, we're going to ask if they would like a support person, such as a close family member, or maybe a close friend, to attend the interview with them. We also want to ask them ahead of time about potential triggers and -- that you should avoid, and definitely tailor those questions accordingly. You also want to have referral information ready, you know, ready on hand. So maybe something like affordable counseling that they could attend, support groups, crisis hotlines, other relevant community resources, in the case that they are feeling like this is too much or too overwhelming, have those resources on hand to give to them.
Also, you want to build a rapport. So, you know, just be a human, have a real conversation to help them ease into the conversation before they have to start recounting a traumatic memory. And finally, reassure them that they can take breaks at any point if they're feeling overwhelmed or if they just need a break. I know, you know, Nia, you mentioned that at the beginning of the session today. Like, if you need a break, that's perfectly fine, and definitely give space for that.
All right, let's now talk about -- we talked about, that's going to be before the actual interview process, but now let's talk about the best practices for story collection. Okay. So I added our logo here to the bottom of this because these keys actually all are directly in line with how our story collection tool works. So, these are the five keys to ethical story collection. Number one, give your community the microphone.
So the thing is that with today's technology, you actually don't need to speak for others anymore. When you give your community the opportunity to share for themselves, you're going to empower them to tell their own story exactly the way that they would like it to be told. Second, we're going to encourage that they share when and where they are comfortable. So when you allow space for them to share where and when they're comfortable, this is going to reduce the stress on your storyteller, and it's also going to build trust, which might make them share things, you know, because they're in a comfortable situation. It might make them share things that they otherwise would not.
Third, you want to be upfront about how you intend to use their story. A storyteller, I mentioned this earlier, but a storyteller might be more willing to share more or less information based on how you're planning to share the story. So for example, they might be ready to share more information if it's going to be written in a grant report or a grant application versus on social media where potentially anyone could see it.
Four, you want to use prompts with strength-based messaging. So you want to think about what questions you are asking your community, and if they will elicit responses that you're looking for. And, you know, one of the things that we want to prioritize is strength-based answers, and how are you going to get those with using prompts that use strength-based messaging. And five, a great way to prioritize ethical story collection is to capture stories all year long and in real time. So instead of putting pressure on somebody because you need a story right before your gala, maybe a couple weeks before your gala is coming up, you know, when you collect that all year long, that's again going to reduce the stress of the storyteller.
And it's -- you know what, it's also going to avoid some gaps and maybe they won't remember the exact emotions they were feeling. If you capture that in real time, that's going to actually be a more authentic and more ethical story. And of course, I could tell you, I could tell you a ton of times all of the keys that I would say would make sense for a story collection.
But now, I want to show you a video that was collected in this way.
Girl: I love the mentors, and I love that they help me, and they motivate me, and push me up when I'm feeling down, and I stop, or I say I can't do it. They always say I can, but -- I always say I can't, but they always say I can do it. Never say you can't. So I love that they motivate me all the time. And we're strong, Sick Kids!
Carly: So this is a great example of a video that was captured at the program where the family was enjoying themselves, where they clearly are having a wonderful time, and they're, you know, getting all the positive benefits of the program that they're in. So this is just a great way to say, "Hey, you know, consider collecting it in real time. You might get some great content like this.
All right. So I showed you a wonderful, ethically collected and shared video. But let's talk even more about visual and video storytelling as it relates to ethical storytelling. At this point, somebody here is probably wondering, "Okay. But what do I do if the people we serve absolutely must remain anonymous? And I definitely want to recognize that it's not always safe or comfortable for everyone to be on camera. But that doesn't mean that we can't create compelling videos.
And here are just a few strategies. So first, you could consider recording a voiceover. So if somebody writes their story for you, you actually could use your voice to tell it. You could share an artistic representation of the story. You also could use visuals that relate to the mission. So maybe something like packing a suitcase and taking it out the door is a great visual to show what's happening, some sort of transition that's happening. Other ideas might be like a painting that's in progress, or tying a knot. Another wonderful anonymous video idea is actually sharing the story of an object.
So if you can't have a human telling the story, their own story, why don't you think about it through the lens of an objection? So if you are a nonprofit that helps build homes, maybe tell me the story of the hammer and the things that the hammer has to go through on a day-to-day basis and how that impacts the mission. Or if you're a nonprofit, that maybe you are an after-school program and part of your program is that you serve healthy, nutritious food through brown paper bags. Why don't you tell me the story of the nutrition that's in brown paper bags?
Similarly, if you are a food pantry that maybe has a transition period where you have to collect the food somewhere and bring it to another location, let's talk about the story of the food delivery truck. And that's actually a specific example from the report that comes from my friend, Clay Buck. He said that, "The agents for good in Canada, they did this brilliantly when they told the story of people experiencing food insecurity through the point of view of the delivery truck." So they didn't have people that wanted to come on camera to tell their story, but they still were able to do so in a compelling video where they actually put a phone just on the front of the dash of the food truck as it was doing its mission. And then they told the story about the miles and the impact that it had.
Another option when it comes to anonymous videos is a composite video. You might know a composite video. Maybe it's sometimes known as like a highlight reel, you know, it's short clips that you put together that can showcase your mission in really fun, high energy short clips. We actually put together one of these for our 2023 holiday video. So I'm just going to show you a little snippet of how it turned out.
Female Speaker: Success stories from far and from near. Now planting, now feeding, now shelter and aid, on veterans, on families. Oh, the joy to be made. To the top of the story page, to the top of the wall. Now dash away, dash away, dash away all.
Carly: All right. So you can see that I combined several short clips from all the missions that we serve here at MemoryFox. Some tips for making this a really compelling video to watch. You want to trim those clips to the most exciting three to seven seconds.
We don't want them to be too long. We just want to show the most exciting little portion of it. Also, you can do what I did, which I layered music on top. I also put my own voiceover over the top. And that is, you know, just a way to show several missions in one short video.
And finally, when it comes to visual and video storytelling anonymously, I want to remind you that just because your program participants might not be comfortable or feel safe on camera, you are also a great storyteller. So selfie videos, which are those where one is speaking directly to a camera. Those are extremely cost effective because, honestly, the only thing that you need is your smartphone.
There are some tips here. I've got 10 selfie video tips here for you. You also can follow me on TikTok if you're interested in learning more there. But that's, I do a lot of selfie videos there. But really some things that I want to point out when it comes to video tips, that number six, which is crisp, clear audio.
So one thing is people a lot of times will really be super worried about the lighting or the angles, which those are important. But I will say nothing will make someone scroll past a video faster than if the audio is not crisp and clean. If you can't tell what people are saying, they're not going to spend time even trying to figure it out. So, that is definitely something to prioritize.
All right. Let's talk about consent and privacy. So, like I said, consent was mentioned in most of the answers that were part of the report. Here are kind of the three keys that were again and again that came up. So number one, consult with a legal counsel or consider your state laws. The thing is, laws are different in every state. And also, when you consult with an expert or, you know, if you have the ability to add a legal expert to your board, that's something that I would highly recommend. That is just a way that you can be absolutely positive that you've included the correct language that is going to, you know, keep your storyteller, that's going to benefit your storyteller, but also it's going to benefit your nonprofit as well.
Number two, we want to get written consent or electronic consent. So what I mean by that, verbal and implied consent is no longer acceptable. We're not going to just go on someone saying, "Hey, it's fine if you use my story. It's fine if you use my photo." We really want to make sure that we have some way that we are capturing that and keeping that organized. So, for example, if you are hosting an in-person event, and maybe you plan to have a photographer there or a videographer there, consider asking people during the registration process to go ahead and say, "Hey, it's okay if I'm featured in videos or photos at your event."
You're going to want to do that up front, because it's actually going to save you a lot of hassle later. That could be a huge hassle. You'll be very thankful that you did it up front. And then also, let's talk about -- oh, my third key to consent is that consent is not in perpetuity. So this is kind of a new concept for me that we have recently adopted. But, you know, the thing is, we want to always provide people with the option to remove their consent. They might say a couple weeks later, maybe a year later. This is not a story that I'm willing to have shared publicly anymore. And that's perfectly fine.
We actually added -- to our own website, we added a consent removal form. So when people submit a story, they're able to retract it at any time. In our follow-up email, I'll include that, so you can see an example of what that might look like. But also, in terms of consent not being in perpetuity, it's also a great idea to check back in with your storytellers pretty regularly, especially if you're planning, like I said, to share a story maybe a year after you collected it. Check back in with them and say, "Hey, is it okay if I still share this story?" And that's going to be really important for two reasons. Because, first of all, we want to make sure that they're still okay with it. They don't want to be surprised by it. But second of all, you might find that, "Hey, they have an update to that story, and they actually have something else they want to add. Maybe they're ready to share some more. I know that this topic is so massive, and there's so many more things to share. But I do want to move on.
But first, I want to just say that I recognize how important consent is, and that's why we're actually hosting a panel specifically about consent that's coming up on September 4th. So I'll drop that in the -- or I'll give you that link in the follow-up email as well. But highly recommend. The big thing about this panel is we actually have Allie Levine coming, and she is a nonprofit attorney. So if you have those questions, submit those, come to the panel, and we'll be happy to answer that.
Okay. Finally, we get this question all the time. One of the biggest hurdles we see is it's kind of the building the culture of storytelling at a nonprofit. So while you might be on board with all of this ethical practices, the strength-based language, maybe everything. How do you empower your org as a whole to do that as well? So we asked our -- the people who gave -- our contributors, right? We said, "How do you convey the importance of collecting stories to our program staff?" We found that there was five ways that you can best do that. So number one, it's -- we now know that fundraising campaigns that include a video actually receive 114% more than campaigns that don't. That was a study that was done by Classy.
I don't know if any of you work with Classy, but they actually found that. So, really simply put, let your program staff know that the more stories that you're able to share, that you're able to collect and share, that's actually just going to increase their funding, which is going to be more money, which is going to be more resources for them. Next, you want to show -- you want to build trust. So you want to show your program staff that, "Hey, here's how I stay organized. Here's how I handle consent. Here's how I keep stories secure. When you do that, and they're able to see that you are a good story steward, they're going to be a lot more likely to connect you to the next great storyteller.
All right. Now, similarly to how I was telling you, you can do a selfie video. Let's not forget that your program staff also has great stories to share. So let's give them some recognition. They know that your nonprofit -- they know your nonprofit's impact, you know, better than anybody. So, they have a passion for it. They understand it front to back. Capture that.
Those are great stories to share as well. So, empower them. Also, storytelling promotes transparency. So just when you -- just as I was saying earlier about being upfront with your storytellers about your process, about the anonymity, about your timeline, start also by telling the other people you work with, like, "Hey, these are the processes here. This is how it's going to work."
And finally, remind them that, "Hey, we are one team and we have one goal, right?" This is an organization-wide priority. And you might be wondering, "Okay. How exactly am I going to make everybody on board and have it be their priority?" Well, like I mentioned at the top, I actually think that having an ethical storytelling guide at your nonprofit should be a high priority for you. And it's super easy and you can start it tomorrow.
So here are kind of the eight must-haves for this ethical storytelling guide. Number one, you want to have the deficit-based key phrases that you're going to avoid. So this is super, super important, especially if your nonprofit currently has a way that you -- or historically had a way that you talk about a community that you want to avoid in the future. Put it on paper so people are aware. We are avoiding these phrases now.
Second, you definitely want to provide the strength-based alternatives. So you don't want people to feel like, "Well, I'm just not sure how to talk about it anymore." Give them the alternatives. Give them the replacements, and then they're going to be like, "Okay. Here are the terms I know how to use moving forward."
Third, you can dig in a little deeper and actually put in full sentence examples using your new language. So take your mission, take your actual brand, and give them, empower them with real phrases that they can use, full sentences. So, that would be the specific mission-focused examples.
Four, we're going to make note of any communication guidelines that might differ by channel. So what I mean by that is there might be an instance where you need to use deficit-based language in a grant report. That could be maybe because the grant report's asking you a question using deficit-based language. Put that down in your ethical storytelling guide and talk about how you might overcome something like that or how you would address something like that.
Next, it's a really good idea to look for others for inspiration. So add some links in your guide to some other orgs that you feel are doing it really, really well so everyone on staff can go ahead and reference them later. For me, one organization that I always recommend is Horizons National. They have this wonderful strength-based messaging guide and they have disseminated to all of their affiliates and they all are really on board. So they're doing a really good job over there of making sure that strength-based messaging is something that is happening everywhere in their organization.
Next, you also want to include some exercises that allow your board, your staff, and your volunteers to actually practice using the new language, right? So we might all read it and think, "Okay, that makes sense." Sometimes it's actual practicing saying it out loud, which can be a little bit of a hurdle to overcome. Okay. Seven, this one's super important, but make a commitment to reevaluate your document. So, it could be one year. It could be two years down the line. It really doesn't matter what timeline you pick, but commit to it and go ahead and reevaluate. It's also perfectly fine if when you reevaluate, you don't make any changes, but just make sure that you stick to your commitment.
And finally, collect your team signatures. So, this is how you're going to gather. This is the key to gathering your buy-in as an organization. When people place their signature on a document, they are saying, "I have read this. I will do my best to follow these guidelines, right? This is super important. And it's also a really easy way to add it into your onboarding when you have new hires and new board members and really just to make sure everybody's on the same page.
And with that, I'm going to wrap it up with some key takeaways. So if I had to pick just six things about the ethical storytelling report that really encompassed the entire thing, I would say number one, let's just remember that ethical storytelling is a journey. It's not a destination. So, please just keep going. What you are doing by being here today is helpful. But what you're doing to educate yourself, that's all part of the journey and we're all on it together. Number two, there is an immense power of elevating diverse voices.
So it doesn't always have to be your program participant that is telling their story. You have great stories to tell. Your program staff has great stories to tell. These are all diverse voices that are going to bring great power to your organization.
Number three, we're breaking some rules, right? There's a lot of traditional fundraising practices that we are actually going to break. And we're going to start rewriting them together. Number four, being transparent and meeting people with kindness will always serve you. Five, I said it once, I said it twice, I'll say it again. Consent, consent, consent. And six. If it feels wrong or if it feels icky, it's probably a good indication that it's time to reevaluate that story or that collection technique or that sharing technique.
So thank you all for taking in all of my information. As a reminder, if you would like to download the report, you can scan the QR code or you can go ahead and put that link in and download it. But probably the most exciting thing is I actually do have a goodie bag for you too. So, it does have the report in it. So if you want to scan that or if you want to head to the goodie bag webpage, again, I'll follow up with this link. But the goodie bag also includes a special offer for you. So, if you do want to learn more about MemoryFox and end up becoming a MemoryFox customer, we will commit 10% of your contract as a donation back to you. But the goodie bag doesn't have to just be about MemoryFox. You know, I've got the report in there. I've got tips about telling video stories. I've got Canva templates for you, a bunch of storytelling resources. So, thank you all so much.
And I'm so ready to answer some questions. And that's it. That's my goodie bag for you.
Nia: Thank you, Carly, so much. Wow. You really covered a lot here. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who's hearing a lot of these insights and best practices for the first time. This is one of those events where I really walk away with an entirely new toolkit and perspective. So I'm really grateful for you taking the time to share that with us today.
I'm excited because we do have some really exciting questions that I want to get to in a second. Before we do that, I just want to give a little shout out in case there are folks in here who haven't had a chance to hear about Instrumentl yet.
If you're writing impact reports or you're sharing your nonprofit story in other ways, my guess is you're also applying for and probably winning and managing grants. And with Instrumentl, you can do a lot of that work faster. You can find better fit grants and win more of them. You can explore new funders, manage your opportunities, and collaborate with your team all in one place. So there are a lot of reasons to give it a try.
Folks estimate they save between 3 and 15 hours per week using Instrumentl. And a lot of that is because Instrumental does the work for you by matching you with best fit opportunities tailored to your mission and needs. So, if you're looking for funding for storytelling, for example, you can let Instrumentl know and it'll pull a list for you. Or if you want grants specific to farm worker services or for your art center, I know that we have some people in the event here today who work in those fields, you can just specify that and Instrumentl will pull that for you. And it's all sourced from our database of over 19,000 active public and private funding sources.
We have an incredible team of grant builders and they're adding about 150 opportunities every week. So this number is only going up. I mean, 150 new grants a week is a huge amount. So, if you haven't had the opportunity to explore Instrumentl, I highly encourage you to do so. You can take advantage of the discount code from our partnership with MemoryFox. Make sure you save this for later.
And there's also a unique link you can use to set up your trial. You can see how when you click that link, you'll go to Instrumentl and you will be in a place like this. You'll be able to set up some of your initial matches. So you can see here, I got about 300 funding opportunities for a particular search for my nonprofit. And then you can use this tracker to save and stay updated with relevant opportunities. You can bring in any grants you're tracking outside of Instrumentl too. So, it all lives in one place. So it's just something to make our lives a little easier.
And also while we're at it, we find and win more grants. So with that out of the way, I'm gonna get into our questions for today. We have some really good ones. I'm excited to have Carly answer. So Carly, feel free to pop back up here. The first question we have from Rachel. And she says, "I may have missed this. But how do you talk, how do you navigate storytelling with minors, i.e. consent of the parent or guardian? And how might you specifically frame prompts or questions for kiddos?
Carly: Wow, love this question. We get this question so much.
Okay. So let me try to -- I know I don't wanna get too in the weeds, but so let me try to keep it shortish. But there'll be some differences with collecting consent from minors. And I would say that if -- the first thing you need to consider is, are they with the parent while they're giving the story? Or is it a situation when they're not with the parent?
So obviously if they are with their parent, it's very easy to capture that consent from the parent, which is absolutely needed in order to share their story. If it's a situation where you're -- maybe you're a afterschool program or something like that, where the parent is not present, we want to make sure we have the contact information for the parent to follow up later and show them the story that the kid submitted or the photo or the video, whatever it might be, and make sure that we do get that consent. So, that's absolutely imperative.
One thing that I do wanna mention when it comes to consent with minors, I had talked a little bit about checking back in with your storyteller to ask again for kind of a renewal of consent, right? And maybe there's like an expiration date of some sort. And I think with minors, that expiration date is going to actually be much shorter because children obviously, so much changes in their lives so quickly.
So I would recommend that you put some policy in place where every six months or maybe every time you plan to use that story again, that you do go back and reconfirm that consent. I hope that helps.
Nia: Yeah, that's super insightful. And I'm sure it's relevant to a lot of people on this call. If you work with kids, this is super important to keep in mind. Valerie asks, my nonprofit is in Latin America, and their legal ways are much different from ours. Like, how they would like to have things approached. How would you go about this? And her nonprofit specifically is about storytelling.
Carly: Oh, interesting. So I wouldn't -- ooh. Let's see. Wait. What was the beginning part of the question? The legal?
Nia: So her nonprofit is in Latin America, and I guess the legal frameworks that they operate in are a little bit different than what might be standard here. So I guess how would you navigate different legal frameworks around storytelling?
Carly: All right. Interesting. Okay. So I'm definitely not equipped to give legal advice. So, I think I legally have to say that. But I will say in terms of consent and actually writing like a consent form, there are certain things that should always be included, right? So it's things like we're planning to use your story in this way.
Do we have approval to use your story in these places? So you might say on your website, on your social media channels, in your newsletter. If you're not planning to share those publicly in any of those ways, you don't even have to put that in there. Like, maybe just tell the person exactly how you're planning to share their story. That's definitely something that always needs to be included as opposed to like a blanket consent can be something that can make people really nervous or it can be something that can maybe jeopardize things legally. I think I don't want to -- again, I don't want to give legal advice. But I hope that maybe that helps a little bit.
And then definitely, make sure that it's not a verbal, of course, consent or any sort of like implied consent by them being at an event. You definitely still want to get, like, their signature or have them check, have it do a checkbox of some sort. That would be kind of standard everywhere.
Nia: Thank you, Carly.
Michelle was hoping you could repeat the item you mentioned about Horizons National.
Carly: Oh, I'd love to. So Horizons National, they have a strength-based messaging guide. And so, in Horizons National, they have 40, maybe more than 40 school affiliates that do like afterschool and summer programs. And they basically at the national level created a guide that they gave out to everybody. It was a whole language shift that they overcame or that they decided to do together.
And I actually went to their national conference in February, and I was so inspired by how everybody really was on board. They had all really read the guide. They all believed in it and they all really took it to heart. And they had some really good, really great discussions where they just talked about certain situations like grant writing, for example. That one came up a lot because sometimes grants can ask you a question that is using deficit-based language. And how are you going to approach that? Or how would you normally approach something like that?
So, that was a great discussion that they had. So I just feel like they do an exceptional job of really making it an organization-wide thing that they all have overcome. So, that was their strength-based messaging guide.
Nia: Yeah, that's a really good case study, I guess, to dive into. I think we have time for one more. And this is maybe a bit of a loaded question, but I think you're the expert here. And a lot of people would benefit from hearing what you have to say about this one. But Arnold wants to know, how do you know that the folks in your nonprofit are doing storytelling in the right way?
Carly: Oh, okay.
Yes, big question. You're right. All right. I would say the first thing I would say is there isn't a right way to do storytelling, right? I gave you a lot of strategies, but I think sometimes we put extra pressure on our storytellers and on our staff and on our board, our volunteers, if we make them feel like they might do something wrong, right? So we wanna empower them with language alternatives. We want to empower them with maybe some educational stuff, like a little bit, like I shared today. Encourage them to share their own stories with their own voice. Things like that are going to kind of be like, I guess, "The right ways to do it."
But really, I really would just recognize that I think we want people to feel like anything they're comfortable sharing is kind of the right way. And, yeah, and that we just want more diverse voices. So I don't know if that really answers the question, but that was kind of a hard one, I guess.
Nia: Awesome. Well, thank you, Carly, so much.
Once again, this was so informative and so many good takeaways here for everyone. I think this is just such a -- this is a topic we could explore for hours. But I think this was a really good crash course if anybody --
Carly: Yeah, trust me, I have.
Nia: Yeah. Exactly. So, yeah, really good crash course for anybody who's new to this or wants a refresher, or just wants to take a deeper dive into the ethics, how you talked about. So, thank you, Carly, for taking the time to do this today. And thank you everyone for being here. I'm actually going to share some final resources for folks. We would love to hear your feedback on this program. I'll drop a link in the chat, or Rachel's already dropped one.
This is a great way for us to get a sense of how you enjoyed today's event and the things you'd love to learn more about in the future. And then lastly, I also want to plug a couple of cool events we have coming up. Next Thursday we have Jennifer McKenzie from Organized Synergy exploring key indicators of grant readiness and how your organization's grant architecture can build more intentional strategy around grants. And like I mentioned at the beginning, we have the Nonprofit Growth Summit coming up to explore emerging indicators of high-performing nonprofits. There's going to be panel discussions. There are going to be hands-on workshops, networking, a bunch of cool sponsors.
And like I said, early bird registration is filling up. So, go ahead and click that link right now. Take advantage of, like, the three minutes you have left in this hour to go ahead and register. All of those links are in the chat.
And then lastly, if you have any friends or colleagues who would benefit from our webinars, you can invite them to an upcoming one. That link is also in the chat box. We all know learning is more fun together. So, bring some friends next time. And with that, thank you all for joining us. I'm going to go.
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