As humans, we’ve always gravitated towards stories. We’ve gathered around fires and passed them from generation to generation. Good stories can elicit understanding and empathy, and great stories can turn empathy into action. As storytellers, nonprofit professionals are tasked with a great deal of power and responsibility. The individuals your organization serves likely have rich stories that you can utilize to both show the impact of your work and to communicate it to the public; but this needs to be done intentionally and genuinely in both words and visuals. Every organization has a story (or many stories to tell), but how we tell them is just as important as what we tell.
This is where the idea of ethical storytelling comes in. Ethical storytelling means centering your storytelling process—from first interacting with story sources to writing and publishing your story—on being respectful and true to those with lived experiences.
Ethical storytelling is an ongoing commitment to putting your communities and audiences first. When done correctly, it fosters mutual respect, strong relationships, and more poignant stories. In this roundup, we’re exploring resources and tools to help you integrate ethical storytelling practices into your organization.
1. Listening as Surrender: Ethical Storytelling and Narrative Change Webinar
Listening is an “act of surrender.” In listening to the people whose stories our organization aims to tell, we are making space to learn new information that may ultimately change our perceptions and work. In this ComNet Webinar, which is a great introduction to ethical visual storytelling, StoryCorps experts break down how we can use listening and narratives to tell rich and inclusive stories. They show examples of ethical storytelling and share practices that organizations can begin to integrate into their process.
2. Making Your Content More Human-Centered
Making your content “human-centered” means placing the needs, motivations, and concerns of your audience at the center of your content creation. When telling stories, often your audience’s own stories, it’s even more vital that you focus on being human-centered to ensure you are properly representing those who trusted you to share their experiences. Paul Sternberg, Director of Strategy and UX at Constructive, breaks down some of the questions you can ask yourself before, throughout, and after the content creation process to recenter on why and how your story serves your audience.
3. Getting Proper and Informed Consent
Many nonprofits serve communities that are historically underserved or marginalized. While it may be crucial to share some of these individuals’ lived experiences through your communications, it needs to be done with informed consent. Storytellers have a right to keep any aspects of their identity, story, image, and voice anonymous if they choose—without pressure or a lack of documentation. This example media consent form from Ethical Storytelling can be a great jumping-off point for your organization to create your own.
4. Interviewing Vulnerable Sources without Exploiting Them
Telling the story of your lived experience is inherently an extremely vulnerable experience, and nonprofit professionals who are interviewing community members will naturally hold a certain degree of power over interviewees. Many interviewees will not have prior experience working with journalists or communications professionals, and thus need to be guided through the process. They are trusting you to hold their best interest at heart. NPR offers a guide and toolkit to refer to when conducting your own interviews.
5. Ethical Storytelling Principles to Follow
There’s plenty to remember when trying to source, collect, and write stories with a focus on ethical storytelling, so a list of principles like this one from Voice of Witness makes a great resource to refer to. The principles center on how you can approach honoring your interviewee to create stories that not only move audiences but are built on respect. Those with lived experience are the experts, and we need to approach them with a trauma-informed strategy to erase bias.
6. Visual Ethical Storytelling Resources
Any accompanying visuals to your written stories need to follow many of the same principles. In a recent Constructively Curated, our Senior Designer Doug Knapton explored how we can incorporate ethical storytelling principles into our design—from avoiding vulnerability framing and moving towards solutions-oriented storytelling to finding inclusive imagery, making our content more web-accessible, and more.
7. Strengthening Every Aspect of Your Storytelling
Making your approach to storytelling more ethical or inclusive is only one aspect of writing a great story. As nonprofits, storytelling can be one of our best tools for advocacy and fundraising, so there’s still a lot to learn to ensure our stories are doing the best work possible to turn empathy into action. The Chronicle of Philanthropy recognizes this, so they compiled this large group of resources that are tailored to help your organization tell better stories all around.
More Constructively Curated
- Sharing Effective Climate Stories: 7 Resources for Nonprofits
- 7 Resources for Ethical Storytelling in Design
- Stand Out on Giving Tuesday: Tips for Meaningful Engagement with Your Nonprofit
- Launch Your Nonprofit’s New Brand to Build Buy-in and Drive Engagement
- Member Survey Best Practices for Your Nonprofit Brand
- 6 Ways to Build a Strong Brand Through Your Team
