STRATEGY TOOLKIT

Lay the foundation for

strategic storytelling.

What Youll Learn

Storytelling contributes to social impact by inspiring and engaging people
who can contribute ideas, effort and resources to advance a cause. But
storytelling must be strategic in order to achieve the desired impact. An
effective strategy begins with a compelling goal and a clear understanding of
the people who can help achieve it.
This Strategy Toolkit is a step-by-step guide that will help you identify your
audiences, set strategic objectives, develop a narrative framework to guide
your storytelling, and choose the appropriate digital platforms (such as
Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) to engage your audiences.
A worksheet follows each section to help you take notes and gather your
thoughts in one place.
The accompanying worksheet can be used to help you take notes and
gather your thoughts on each of these questions. Wherever you see the
pencil icon, you will find a space to write in the corresponding worksheet.

Strategy Toolkit

Storytelling Goals
Storytelling can raise awareness about a cause, change peoples attitudes,
and motivate people to take actions that advance your cause.
What do you hope digital storytelling will help you achieve?
Are you working in any of the following categories?

TIP: You can track your progress toward meeting some objectives with simple but powerful
measurement tools. Please refer to the Evaluation toolkit for more information.

Strategy Toolkit

Audiences
Now that youve set your storytelling goals, its time to identify your
audiences. Your stories dont need to be for everyone, they are for people
who would be interested in your cause and have something to contribute
to your success. You should have a clear idea in mind of what you will ask
people to doyour stories will often include a call to action that encourages
people to get involved in your cause.
Fill in the chart with your top three priority audiences, based on what role they
can play in advancing your cause.

Strategy Toolkit

Narrative Framework
Strategic storytelling is all about inspiring and engaging people to support
your organization in achieving its goals. Psychological research shows that
motivating people to work toward a goal requires painting an inspiring vision of
the future and explaining the challenges that must be overcome along the way.
The diagram (below) is a simple but powerful narrative framework showing
people involved in a cause as protagonists seeking to achieve a meaningful
goal. Social impact organizations offer solutions that help people solve
problems and overcome obstacles to achieve their goals.
You can use this narrative framework to plot out the main ideas you want to
convey in your stories. Then, you can create stories about specific individuals
and situations that illustrate these ideas.

Strategy Toolkit

This framework will help you stay focused on key ideas that your stories must
communicate in order to motivate people to support your cause. Using this
framework to guide your storytelling connects stories of individuals to larger
ideas, encouraging empathy with the individuals in your stories while also
promoting understanding of the larger problems addressed by social impact
organizations.
The guiding questions that follow will help you identify key ideas that your
stories should convey.

Strategy Toolkit

 People
Stories put people front and center. Your audiences are more likely to
understand and care about your cause if they can relate to the people in your
stories and see how the issue affects peoples lives.
Who are the people most affected by your cause?

TIP: You can encourage respect and empathy for the people in your stories by talking about
their hopes and values, and showing them taking action to create change.

Example
A high school diploma is an important
step in preparing a young person to live
an independent, secure and happy life
and to contribute to Americas economic
competitiveness as part of an educated,
innovative workforce. But one-quarter
of our high school students drop out of
school without getting a diploma more
than 1 million every year.

What are they like as people? What are they doing to create change?
Who contributes to your cause? What are they doing to create change?

Importantly, people are more motivated to support a cause when they feel
that theyre joining forces with others who share their values and interests.
Its important to share stories about people who help make change happen,
whether they bring ideas, effort or resources to the cause.
TIP: They could be your own staff members, volunteers, donors, thought leadersanyone who
is contributing to the cause in a meaningful way.

What are they like as people? Why do they get involved?

Strategy Toolkit

 Goals
Youve thought about the people affected by your cause, and people who
support your work. Now its time to articulate the goal that your organization
is working to achieve.
TIP: The goal should be both aspirational and achievable. It should be a goal that gets people
interested and excitedwhile giving them hope that progress can be made.

Example
The work is powered by the belief that
all children are capable of learning
and thriving, and that every individual,
institution and sector shares the
responsibility to help young people
succeed.

What goal is your organization trying to achieve?

How does that goal relate to the hopes and values of your audiences?

Strategy Toolkit

 Problem
In order for people to support your organizations work, they need to
understand both the needs addressed by your organization and the specific
solutions you offer to meet those needs. You might deal with highly complex
problems, but its important to keep the explanation as simple as possible.
Complexity demotivates peoplethe problem needs to sound solvable, not
insurmountable. To encourage people to care about the problem, you need
to show how it affects peoples lives.

Example
Far too many young people are growing
up without the support they need to
succeed in school and life. More than 20
percent of high school students do not
graduate on time.

TIP: Think about an experience that opened your eyes to the problem. Could you tell stories
that open other peoples eyes in a similar way?

What specific problem is your organization trying to solve?

Strategy Toolkit

 Solution
Your solution should connect directly to the problem, in a simple and
straightforward explanation. People are most likely to take action in support
of concrete goals, rather than abstract outcomes. So be as specific as you
can about your solutions and how they improve peoples lives.
TIP: Think about an experience that showed you how the problem could be solved. Could you
tell stories that open other peoples eyes to the solution?

What solution do you offer?

Example
Americas Promise frames its work
around Five Promises that it believes
must be made and kept to every young
Americancaring adults, safe places,
a healthy start, an effective education
and opportunities to serve. With the
supportive environment of these
promises at work for young Americans,
Americas Promise believes that we can
achieve a 90 percent graduation rate by
2020.

Strategy Toolkit

Supporters
Helping the people you serve reach their goals requires another group of
peopleyour supporters. These supporters may be staff, volunteers, donors
or partner organizations. These people can also play an important role in the
stories you tell. They are people who want to see themselves in your work,
so be sure to paint a clear picture of who can help and how.
In this section, youll describe the people who will play a role in advancing
your cause.

Example
Americas Promise is a national
partnership that brings together
hundreds of national nonprofits,
businesses, communities, educators
and ordinary citizens behind the idea
of making the promise of America
accessible to all young people.

Who is helping to overcome the problem and advance the solution?

What are the most important ways these supporters can help your organization
advance your cause?

TIP: Your stories dont need to be for everyonethey are for people who would be interested
in your cause and have something to contribute to your success.

Which of these best describes the geographic makeup of your supporters?

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 Call to Action
Your stories should always include a call to actiona message that creates
a sense of urgency to act, followed by a specific action that people can take.
Emotion works hand-in-hand with cognition to aid in attention, retention and
motivation. This has important implications for storytelling: If people dont
feel an emotional reaction to a story, they wont remember it, much less be
motivated to act.
TIP: People are motivated not only to achieve goals, but also to avoid loss. Think about what is
to be gained if people actand what would be lost if they dont act.

Why should people take action right now? What will be gained if they act? What
will be lost if they do not act?

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Storytelling Objectives
Storytelling is a great way to educate, inspire and engage people, because it
helps you connect with people on multiple levels. Your narrative framework
provides key, overarching ideas about your cause that you can communicate
in your storiesbut youll need to connect those to your audiences as well.
The chart on the next page shows how a strategic story can help motivate
and mobilize people to take action in support of your cause.
Strategic stories can:
Raise awareness of the cause
Encourage people to care about the cause
Help people understand the problem and solution
Create a sense of urgency to take action
Show people what actions they can take to help
If you follow the steps in this toolkit, you will be well positioned to
strategically design and deploy stories that can inspire and engage people to
actively support your goal.

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12

Answer the following questions to identify specific information and ideas that
might motivate your audiences to get involved in your cause. You can then craft
stories that communicate these ideas.

AWARENESS

CARING

UNDERSTANDING

URGENCY

ACTION

In order to support
your cause, what
do your audiences
need to be aware
of?

Why will your audiences care about

your cause?

What do your
audiences need to
understand about
the problem and
solution?

Why must your

audiences act right
now?

What specific
actions can people
take to support your
cause?

TIP: Surprise is an
emotional reaction that focuses
attention. Surprise
people with a fact
about the issue that
opens their eyes
to the cause in a
meaningful way.

TIP: Put people in

the picture. People
are most likely to
care about a cause
that affects their
livesor the lives of
people they can relate to in some way.
Think about how
your cause affects
the lives of your
audiences, people
they care about, or
people with hopes
and values they
could recognize and
respect.

TIP: Use the ideas

you identified in the
narrative framework. Are there
nuances for different
audiences? Keep
it simple: identify
specific problems as
well as tangible benefits your solutions
provide.

TIP: Think of what

will be gained if they
do act, as well as
what will be lost if
they do not.

TIP: Show how

these actions will
help.

Now that youve completed these storytelling objectives, look back at your audiences and think
about each one of them in relation to this chart. Some audiences will be aware of the cause and care
about it, but not understand the problem and solution. Others may understand, but not feel a sense
of urgency to act.
Thinking about what each audience specifically needs to hear will guide the creation of your stories.
One story can help move people from awareness all the way to action but some stories can focus
on the information needed to raise awareness or only focus on changing attitudes. Produce stories
to help you meet your objectives based on where your audiences currently are. See the Content
Toolkit for how to produce these stories.

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Visit www.hatchforgood.org to see the

other toolkits that can help your organization
implement strategic storytelling.