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Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Transforming Nonprofit Storytelling: Ethical Approaches for Authentic Impact and Engagement
What if the stories you tell could change everything about how your nonprofit engages with the world? Join us for an engaging conversation with Carly Euler, the Marketing Director at MemoryFox, as she shares her journey from coaching to championing ethical storytelling in the nonprofit sector. Carly reveals the evolution of storytelling from a tool often misused for fundraising to a more dignified medium that respects the individuals whose stories are told. Discover how MemoryFox is revolutionizing the way nonprofits collect and share stories, ensuring that the voices of those they serve are treated with authenticity and respect. We promise you'll gain insights into the shifting landscape of nonprofit communication and learn how to make these stories resonate ethically and effectively. Despite growing awareness, ongoing efforts are needed to ensure ethical storytelling becomes the norm, not the exception. Carly offers a glimpse into the 2024 Ethical Storytelling Report, which is an essential resource for any nonprofit professional committed to upholding integrity in their communications. This episode is packed with strategies to build trust with your audience, engage donors as partners, and inspire recurring giving through authentic stories that connect at a deeper level. Don't miss this chance to transform your approach to storytelling and make a lasting impact.
Click here to read The 2024 ethical storytelling report! https://www.memoryfox.io/ethical-storytelling/
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
Non-profit professionals are motivated to make a difference, but the minutia of non-profit operations can get in the way of the meaningful work you set out to do. That's where MonkeyPod comes in. Monkeypod helps non-profits get back to their mission by eliminating busy work. Their all-in-one software includes a CRM, non-profit accounting, email marketing, online fundraising and grant management. Non-profit Hub listeners can get 15% off the first year of a MonkeyPod subscription by visiting monkeypodio slash nonprofithub. Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub podcast. I'm your host, Megan Spear. Joining me today is Carly Euler, who's the marketing director for MemoryFox, Very excited to dig in to this conversation around ethical storytelling and the ethical storytelling report that just came out. But before we dig into all of that, Carly, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure to get a chance to talk about ethical storytelling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fantastic, I know you a little bit from LinkedIn, but tell the audience a little bit about you and your journey into the nonprofit space and kind of what led you to our conversation today.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'd love to. So, like many of us, my journey that got me into the nonprofit space was a little unconventional. And I say that because I sort of started my career thinking that I would work in higher ed as a lacrosse coach and that was something that I did for a few years. Okay, very different. Yeah, very different. I technically still nonprofit work, but not exactly like I was doing after that.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I loved coaching. I thought coaching was just a wonderful way that you can, you know, learn so many things about yourself, learn so many things about being in a team and leadership and sports are just great. They've been a great part of my life. But I kind of realized pretty early on into my coaching career that I don't want to offend anybody listening, but wins really don't matter most of the time and they don't actually impact really anything. I kind of decided I wanted to do something that I thought was going to really help people, because my favorite part of coaching was being able to be a part of a team again and really help the girls kind of learn things about themselves and learn things about their future careers. So I decided to go work in nonprofits.
Speaker 2:I did that for about 10 years I worked at several different nonprofits. I did a lot of different jobs Probably people listening to this might laugh at that, because my job title didn't change very much but I sure did a lot of different things. So we've all been there, right, we've all been there. But I ultimately decided you know, I didn't have one mission in particular that I felt really spoke to me as a person, but on the flip side, I was very inspired by a lot of different missions. I started thinking about what I really wanted to do with my life and I thought well, I want to do something where I can impact hundreds of missions instead of just one. That's how I ended up at MemoryFox.
Speaker 1:I love it and just give me, or give the audience, just a one sentence summary. What is MemoryFox and what do you all do?
Speaker 2:Sure so. So Memory Fox is a storytelling tool that was built specifically for nonprofits and what we do is we help nonprofits collect, organize and share impact stories, which is something every nonprofit needs. But really we kind of remove some of the biggest barriers and let people do it by collecting directly from their community. And then I know we're going to talk about a lot of ethical stuff today. Basically kind of our number one sort of claim to fame is that we pride ourselves on collecting and sharing stories ethically.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I love that and that's definitely what we're going to dig into, because you all just released the ethical storytelling report for 2024. Before we dig into that report and all of the pieces that you have to share, let's kind of level set for everybody what is ethical storytelling and how is it different than just what's in my normal annual report?
Speaker 2:That's a great question and, I think, a really important one to address. You're so right for asking that. Let's just start.
Speaker 1:Let's start for the baseline of what it is before we dig into how it's impacting the sector. Sure so.
Speaker 2:I think it might be a little easier to set the stage by taking us back maybe five, 10 years if we're thinking about nonprofit storytelling and how it's evolved.
Speaker 2:10 years ago, even five years ago, it was very common to think about storytelling as a tool for fundraising exclusively and to say I'm going to take a story from someone who we have maybe helped at our nonprofit, someone who has participated in a program, and I'm going to find a way to make that story the most emotional or the saddest or frame it in maybe the most through a lens of despair and I'm going to now take that and make it seem like, hey, our non-profit really led them to this really huge growth onto happily ever after right. People now kind of refer to that type of storytelling as poverty porn style storytelling. Yeah, but maybe even you know that does sound a little dramatic in some cases, but it really is true that we don't really have to focus on that as a way to tell our stories any longer. We actually have found that ethical storytelling and telling stories through the lens that does not exploit your storyteller and does not make them feel disrespected in any way actually still will raise funds, which is ultimately always our goal.
Speaker 1:I love that. So I thank you for the baseline, but I also just love that idea because, you're right, it's so easy to like. All right, well, if I just embellish this a little bit and make them sound even worse, but then what does that do for their dignity? How do we want to preserve that? And I love, I love the idea of taking a stand against that.
Speaker 2:And I think so many people who work at nonprofits. You know we don't get into nonprofit work because we want to make people feel that way. We sure we want to help people. That's right, that's at our core. This is sort of I'm more like to refer to it as kind of a traditional nonprofit storytelling and we're kind of breaking that old tradition and sort of rewriting the way that we're going to tell stories. I love it.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the Ethical Storytelling Report. Then what kind of was the genus behind that? Where did it come from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's a really interesting story actually in itself, and that is in 2023, when I joined the MemoryFox team, we started really trying to get ourselves out there. We were doing some webinars, we were doing podcasts, we were presenting at conferences and we were talking about video storytelling, how important it is to share your story via video and it really didn't matter who was speaking, what the audience was or even what the medium was that we were talking. Somebody always asked during the Q&A something along the lines of okay, but what do I do if the people I serve absolutely must remain anonymous, or they have sensitive stories that we just don't feel comfortable asking them to share? Sure, and we just got this question so many times and here at Memory Fox, you know, we were like, well, wait, we just know about video storytelling, we haven't really thought too much about the actual logistics of the collecting stories or the ethical complications of that, sure. So we thought, okay, you know what? Here's what we're going to do. We're going to host a panel and we're going to find four panelists that are dedicated to this work and I'm going to collect questions from the audience and we're going to get them answered. And then, you know, our audience will learn and we'll learn and we'll know everything right. We just thought we'll just do a panel, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2:But then I opened registration and we had 400 people register, which meant that we had over 150 questions that were submitted. And if anybody here has watched a panel before, you probably know that panels get to about 10 questions at the most Sure. So we quickly realized that there really wasn't an easy path forward for us to actually learn all of the nuances of ethical storytelling. I don't know. We kind of thought maybe we could get a good grip on it in 60 minutes and we were wrong. So we decided one day my boss, chris he's the founder of MemoryFox he kind of said to me gosh, these questions are so good. I wish there was a way that we could get these all answered. And you know, if you ask him he's sort of the idea guy and I'm kind of the one who likes to get things done so I was like now wait a second.
Speaker 2:I think we could find a way to do that. So what I did was I reached out to just those four panelists that I had on the panel, as well as everybody that they knew that was working in ethical storytelling, and I sent them all the questions and I said would you mind just submitting some responses? I'm going to make a little book and I'm going to send it out. And I got flooded with answers. People really enjoyed sharing their perspectives, sharing their advice.
Speaker 2:So then we thought let's make it more of a really educational report, right, so these are questions and answers, but what is really going to stand out is also serving the community and saying or serving the community really, so we can get a baseline of how people are feeling about ethical storytelling. Do you currently feel like it is something your organization does well? Do you currently feel like consent is important to you or to your organization as a whole? These are all things that a lot of people who are thinking about these topics you might inherently know, kind of what you think the answers to those survey questions might be. But I really haven't seen anyone else actually ask before. So we thought let's put some numbers to this stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so interesting. Obviously, if there's 400 people registering for this panel, it is definitely a topic that is peaking people's interest. Tell me some of the top questions. Were there themes that you saw emerge within those? Yes, we have to assume that there's not 150 individual questions that have no overlap with each other, right?
Speaker 2:You're exactly right. So what happened when I asked people to submit their own questions is I then went through and read each one of them and I categorized them sort of by a theme. And you're right, two years ago when we first launched this initiative, it ended up becoming about eight topics, and that's how the 2023 report ended up being written. And then, even now that I know so much more, when I was creating the 2024 report, I actually got all of the questions down to three topics. So this year's report is actually in three sections and each section has four subsections.
Speaker 2:So the first section is just strategy and implementation. So actually how to collect, how to share, how to make a process at your nonprofit. So those are all practical things, actionable things. The second section was about consent, and that might sound on its head like it's a small section, but literally we have gotten so many questions about consent. Every day we continue to get questions about all the nuances that go along with consent, so that's its own section in the report. And then I created this third section that I just called special considerations in story types. So that includes stories that involve youth or families. So those have special nuances to consider that involve youth or families, so those have special nuances to consider. Or even using AI, and what type of ethics to consider when it comes to sharing stories that have been created either fully or partially by AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a whole separate component, because you would I mean, certainly if you're talking about children, if you're talking about anything medical, anything, that's maybe an abuse situation. There's so many nonprofits that deal with that super sensitive data, even some with HIPAA, where we can't talk about it. But then the AI is a whole different component of that and it's interesting because the report has answers from 30 different people.
Speaker 2:So basically, you get perspectives of people who are very pro using AI and they're saying here's how I recommend using it, here's what you can do for profit today, and then there's some answers in there that are, like you know, I actually don't recommend it, and this is why. So I really enjoy collecting the responses from so many people, because you can kind of find what might work best for your organization, because, as you just mentioned I mean, you just mentioned like 10 different missions in one sentence, right? So every nonprofit has different considerations.
Speaker 1:MonkeyPod brings financial and people management together into one platform. Nonprofits can manage their accounting and grants from the same software they use to send emails, collect donations and track donors, instead of using three or four different apps to run your nonprofit, monkeypod brings all those features together into one single platform, saving you time and money. Nonprofit Hub podcast listeners can get a special 15% off discount on the first year of their MonkeyPod subscription. Learn more by visiting monkeypodio slash nonprofit hub. So let's talk a little bit in that first section, on the strategy side, because I'm sure that there are folks listening, going, you know. Yeah, this is actually something that we should consider. If somebody has not ever even dipped their toe into the idea of ethical storytelling around their nonprofit, what is maybe on the strategic side? Where do we even start? What's your first like as you're dipping your toe in? These are the first things to consider. Where does that start?
Speaker 2:I love that question. There are quite a few ways you could start, but let me, let me think. Maybe the two easiest ways that you can fully just get started you could start tomorrow. Number one would be to consider strength-based messaging. So take a look at your website, take a look at the way you historically write stories. Try to look through and see if you see any language that might pop out to you as deficit-based or pop out to you as potentially exploiting your community. It might not be obvious to you. You might need to ask a few other people, some trusted colleagues, what do they think about the way you've been telling stories about and wording things about your community? But I think once you sort of get a handle on a few language changes, like we no longer want to use this phrase. We want to substitute with this phrase go through your website, go through your social media accounts and actually make those changes to feel so much better that you did that and you're also going to let everyone externally from now on know that when they come to your website or when they come to your social media page. This is something that you believe in and this is something that you are adopting. So I would say that's a kind of maybe not a simple one, but sort of one that can really get you going thinking in an ethical storytelling lens. And then I would say, when it comes to actual ethical storytelling, we know that really it sort of starts with the story collection process. So, rethinking how you are collecting stories from your community, what types of prompts are you asking your community? Again, do those include strength-based language? Are you asking your community to respond to you in a strength-based way? Very important to consider, especially since we a lot of us are. When we're story collectors, we're also maybe grant writers or we are maybe looking over grant applications and we see so often that grant applications continue to use deficit-based language. So it might not even be something that you are taking in on purpose, but you might just be coming across it.
Speaker 2:Definitely, thinking about the way you're collecting stories, there's kind of a few quick changes you can make that will make your story collection more ethical. Number one would be, obviously, to collect consent up front. You want to make sure that we're not implying any consent. We don't want people to. We don't want to feel like people are being coerced or feeling like they gave consent sort of informally. We want to make sure that's really formal. Actually, let's get people to sign something, let's get people to click a checkbox, let's make sure they know what they're agreeing to, and kind of a bigger one.
Speaker 2:That is sort of a new concept to me since learning all these things in the report. But before you've actually submitted that story anywhere or before you've shared that story, check back in with your storyteller and say, hey, this is how the final product came out. Are you still okay with this? And I know that can be a challenge for some people because you know we have deadlines, right, and everything feels really important and really time sensitive. But I would say that if we're thinking about ethical storytelling, we really need to be good story stewards in order to ultimately get better stories on the long run. So really just being a good story steward is super important, even if you need to push back a couple deadlines here and there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, First of all, I've never even heard the phrase a good story steward, but I really like it and I'm going to continue to use that because what a great image. Let's double back for one second from you on something that is maybe like a deficit-based phrase that we don't want to use anymore, and what a strength-based alternative would be.
Speaker 2:Definitely, and you know what the ones I'm probably going to share you probably have heard be reframed several times at this point. They're sort of common ones. But, for example, people are no longer really using the term homeless, where we talk about populations that are of people being unhoused first. So we want to make sure that the person with their dignity is put before the actual thing that has occurred to them. So people who are unhoused versus homeless.
Speaker 2:Another great example that we tend to see for domestic violence situations, for example, would be victims. We're not really referring to people as victims. We don't see that language as much anymore. We see a lot of people refer to people who have been in those situations as survivors. But I would say these. So these are kind of maybe the most common examples that you might see on TV or you might see on the course, when you're referring to your community and how they would like to be referred to. There is no better way to refer to your community than the way they tell you they would like to be referred to. So asking them is this a way that you would like us to talk about your neighborhood or about your street, or about the area that you live in, or the city or the state, whatever it might be. That is really the way you can be definitely assured that you are using the strength-based term.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's so interesting. Between the 23 report and the 2024 report, were there significant changes? Are there things that we're starting to see? Oh, this is a trend in ethical storytelling that is emerging. Anything, stand out to you there in the newest version?
Speaker 2:Yes, I would say that probably the most significant things that stood out to me were actually the things that did not change, and that's because I think about these topics all day, every day.
Speaker 2:So I, you know, tend to think that others are too. But when it came to the survey results, I did a survey this year that really reflected the same questions that I asked back in 2023 as well, and I found that some of the questions they really showed no improvement, which was shocking to me, for example, when we're talking about consent. So I already said consent you know it's its own section this year in the report because it's so, so important, and I was very pleased to see that in 2023, as well as 2024, most people by far the most people over 80% both years they said that they also believe that consent is extremely important. So that's great, right, that's the baseline, that's what we want. However, sort of the sadder part of the report is that I then asked the same people, the people who submitted the survey, how do you feel your organization feels about consent, and only 24% said that they felt their organization felt it was extremely important. So that's obviously a massive difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. So the individual people might be trying to drive change. But organizationally that has not maybe caught on yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because you would think that if you're in the role of collecting the stories or sharing the stories you know that might be the marketers or the fundraisers or the communications directors you would think that would mean they would be prioritizing something like that. And I'm not saying that doesn't mean that they are prioritizing it, but at least the perception on their end is that they don't find it to be important for their organization. So it's just very interesting when you think of it that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a much larger gap than I would have anticipated there to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:But I will say one really positive thing that came out of the report, out of the survey this year, was I asked respondents how do you feel ethical storytelling will impact fundraising?
Speaker 2:Because, you know, sometimes we talk to people and they mean well, but they'll say you know, I just think the sadder stories are going to raise more funds and that's, you know, what my leadership thinks, and that's what our board thinks, and that's what I'm going to continue to do.
Speaker 2:But I would like to share today that we actually found in the report that 42% of our respondents said that they have seen ethical storytelling be an effective fundraising tool for them and 37% said that they haven't personally had success yet with ethical storytelling, but they believe that it is true that they will raise more funds. So together, that is the vast majority of people saying hey, I believe in ethical storytelling and it will raise more funds. So together, that is the vast majority of people saying hey, I believe in ethical storytelling and it will raise more funds. On the flip side, we only had 17% say that they thought it would not raise more funds or that it would make no impact on their fundraising, so it wouldn't make it less. So I think that's really telling that the sector definitely is beginning to shift and say this is important to us and therefore we believe it's important to our donors and it's going to impact us positively to tell stories this way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is an interesting gap and I understand it's kind of certainly the old school mentality, right, but I think there's something to be said for authenticity.
Speaker 1:Old school mentality, right, but I think there's something to be said for authenticity.
Speaker 1:And so often I feel like, when we either over-exaggerate or embellish to make something sound worse than it was, so that our fix looks better than it was right, I think that audiences are smart enough to see the inauthentic nature of that, right. Yeah, we have a very savvy population at this point, right, because we're bombarded with so many messages, I think it's easier to discern that feels too contrived, that feels too made up, or it couldn't possibly have been that bad right. That feels too made up or it couldn't possibly have been that bad right. Where it would seem to me and I think I would put myself in that population something that is a more authentic story to me is going to drive more funds because people aren't going to ignore it and see through it, because they don't want to. No one wants to feel manipulated at the end of the day, and I'm not going to give to organization that makes me feel manipulated or where I feel like my emotions are being played on just to get more money out of me.
Speaker 2:Yes, because it's all about trust. Right, correct, right. I'm not going to trust that. And we are finding I mean anecdotally, but also in the report you're finding that more and more nonprofits that are continuing to put people up on stage and make them cry and make them tell their story. Yeah, these aren't things people are wanting to see anymore. Because we're saying, hey, I want to be as a donor, a part of a long-term solution. I don't really want to feel like I am saving this person anymore.
Speaker 2:That's kind of an old narrative that a donor is kind of saving lives. I know that many nonprofits do save lives and I think that you know the work they're doing is so important. But this, it's not as easy as saying this person saved this person, right? Sure, we are trying to find long term solutions so things don't impact people in the same way that they used to. That's really what most nonprofits are in the market for doing. So you're exactly right when we're putting people up on stage and we're making them cry or we're filming them and interviewing them in a way where they must tell the worst things that have happened to them or relive the biggest trauma they've experienced, it's very few and far between that, those people walk away from those experiences feeling better and, to your point, right, somebody who has had some sort of traumatic situation in their life.
Speaker 1:The last thing I want anyone to do is exploit that for dollars. There has to be. That's why I'm very excited about this whole report, because we have to do better as a sector than continuing to exploit the people that we serve for the sake of a few more dollars. Where I think the authenticity of yep, here's what we do, here's how it impacts lives. There's better ways to do that, then you're right. Then making somebody get up and relive this trauma over and over again for the sake of our fundraiser dinners?
Speaker 2:Definitely, and what we're simply saying is you can tell stories from different perspectives. Yes, you can tell stories from you know, you're the program manager and you experienced these things in real time working with people. You experienced the hope that they lived through, the hope that you felt when you gave that call, that their grant was made to them. There are things that you can do that are really inspiring and really elicit positive emotions and again bring those donors into being a long-term part of the solution. You know everyone's talking about recurring giving. That's a constant thing that people are worried about and wanting to increase, constant thing that people are worried about and wanting to increase, and I truly believe that when you are giving donors the positive outcomes in a way where they feel like they were a part of that impact, that's what's going to make people want to give again, because they want to help more people. That's kind of just how it works.
Speaker 1:I love it. Carly, this has been a fantastic conversation, Really really interesting. If somebody wanted to go find the ethical storytelling report or connect with you to learn more, where would they go to do that and how would they find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm also on TikTok. I post a lot of videos on TikTok. So if people are worried about how to take a selfie video or how to talk to a camera, you can see all my examples. But in terms of finding the ethical storytelling report, that can be found at memoryfoxio backslash ethical dash storytelling. So I will send you that link. And, honestly, if anybody wants to follow us on LinkedIn, on Instagram, facebook I'm posting on there constantly from our account as well. I'd love to stay connected.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, carly, thank you so much for joining us. I am sure that there will be a ton of people going to check this report out, because it really is just a fascinating look at what I think is a really important topic.
Speaker 2:I hope that it is. I hope people find it helpful, and there is within the report a way where you can submit feedback as well. So if you have questions they want answered next year or they want to see a topic highlighted, please let me know. I am dying to figure out what else to include and how I can better help people.
Speaker 1:I love it Awesome. Well again, my guest today has been Carly Euler, who's the Marketing Director at MemoryFox. Really appreciate all your insights, carly. Thanks for your work in this space and thanks for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear, and we'll see you next time.