When 'Good Stories' Go Bad
Michael Kass
Transformational Coaching, Facilitation, Training and Convening Design for those ready for a new story
As we head into the year-end fundraising season (not to mention Giving Tuesday), I wanted to share this brief reflection from about a year ago:
During a workshop for about 80 nonprofit fundraising professionals and leaders, I asked how many of them told stories that followed the ‘hero’s journey’ structure that follows a client from extreme challenge, through interaction with their organization, to dramatic transformation.
Almost every hand went up.
Then I asked them to raise their hands if those stories accurately reflected what ‘success’ looks like in the daily life of their organizations.
Not a single hand went up. ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘Do we tell these stories if they don’t reflect the realities of our work?’ I may have jumped up and down a little when I asked this question. I get excited.
The discussion that unfolded revealed that we tell these stories because we’ve been trained to believe that only stories that adhere to the ‘Big Transformation’ structure will tug at a contributor’s heart strings or generate enough interest to get people involved in our work.
The truth is that these stories do sometimes work in fundraising. There’s lots of data to back that up. But if that fundraising success comes at the expense of an organization’s integrity and with misrepresenting the complexity of its work. . .is that exchange worth it? Or are we ultimately hamstringing our own vision of change and unintentionally supporting inequitable systems by adhering to an outdated, inaccurate, and misleading storytelling practice?
These are big questions that ask us to reconsider the role of ‘story’ in our work and how both the way we tell stories and the stories themselves may have a deeper impact than many of us realize.
For ideas about how to move outside the 'Hero's Journey' box, check out:
- The Ethical Storytelling community
- The Community-Centric Fundraising Community
- This article that shares concrete strategies to keep your storytelling aligned with your mission
#nonprofitstorytelling #nonprofitcommunication #fundraising #ethicalstorytelling #decolonizingstorytelling #nonprofitfundraising