“So… I don’t want to live in rural Ohio...”
What we can learn about narrative layers from dating and trust-based philanthropy
Sometimes, my husband complains that I misrepresented myself when we first started dating. I counter that I could make the same complaint about him.
We met on a panel about rural education. Mark was a regional economist focused on developing human capital in rural communities. I’d taught in the Arkansas Delta and then in a Bulgarian village on the Black Sea, and was writing about the unique challenges of rural education. Shortly after the conference, I moved to Santa Fe to work for the school district there. Mark and I emailed back and forth. I sent him pictures of the stark rolling hills of New Mexico and waxed poetic about the richness of rural communities. I told him about how living in the Delta had made me open to things I’d never have considered elsewhere, like religion; I’d gotten baptized there. I texted him pictures of the farmer’s market and links to recipes of grain bowls that I was trying out. Mark sent me bucolic pictures of his training routes for an upcoming half-marathon, rhapsodized about the richness of the written word, and mailed me books. He told me how he meditated daily and attended silent retreats to restore his energy.
I blush as I type all this. But excuse us; we were young and very annoying.
Fast forward some years later. I tell Mark that I don’t want to live in his rural Ohio hometown, and drag him to Boston. He complains that it’s too cold to run in New England and buys an under-the-desk cycle. Mark notices that I rarely make grain bowls and that my fingers are not infrequently stained orange from binge-eating Cheetos. Mark’s meditation pillow has vanished and, far from seeming to find solace in silence, he talks loudly and constantly. He points out I never go to church. I point out that he barely reads.
We agree that we still like each other. We also agree that neither of us had been dishonest in our whirlwind (7-month!) courtship.
As with any human being, each of our stories consist of a million narrative layers, all of them true. I do have a deep appreciation for rural communities, having lived and worked in three. I also prefer to raise our family in Boston, where I can easily buy daikon, bok choy, and red bean paste, and send my son to a Mandarin language immersion daycare. I do enjoy grains and roasted vegetables, but Cheetos fulfill a fundamental craving of my soul. I did have a powerful religious awakening in my twenties. It has since subsided. For his part, Mark does enjoy reading, but when work is demanding, he enjoys playing video games and listening to podcasts more. Mark does re-energize through moments of solitude, but he gets enough alone-time during remote work, and is eager to socialize.
So: how did I decide which narrative layers to forefront when Mark and I were dating? It was more intuition than calculation, but in retrospect, I chose the layers that I thought Mark would find most compelling, that would make me stand out from any competitors in his orbit, and which I could tell authentically given my current context (which, at the time, was living in the Santa Fe River canyon).
Recently, I found myself grappling with the same decisions as an early stage entrepreneur. I started Little Tiger Strategic Storytelling because 1) I saw a gap and an opportunity; social sector orgs were generally bad at storytelling, and 2) I could bring skills from my career as a social sector strategist and from my years of studying the craft of fiction writing. Thus, one layer of Little Tiger’s organizational story was about a sector-level need for better storytelling, and another layer was about its unique process. While both layers can and should co-exist, only one could be on top—i.e. only one narrative could star in the mission statement, collateral, and the one-minute elevator pitch. Otherwise, the overall story would become muddled.
Every social sector organization has at one time grappled with the question of how to tell their story. Perhaps your organization is grappling with that question even now. But nine times out of ten, the real question isn’t how to tell your story, but which narrative layer to forefront. To make that decision, we can begin with a few gut-checks:
Which narrative layer illustrates the most compelling need and impact?
Which narrative layer illustrates your organization’s unique value add, as compared to all the other organizations working in the same space?
Which narrative layer can your team tell most authentically? (See my post on the importance of narrating your team.)
for example…
The One by One Project is a philanthropic organization that partners with direct service nonprofits to help families avoid eviction, keep the heat and lights on, pay for food and medical bills, and get to work. Here’s how it works. A nonprofit sees a family with an urgent funding need (e.g. mom’s car is in the shop; she can’t drop the kids off at daycare or get to work) and puts in a request ($900 for auto repairs), and One by One pays the bill within 24-48 hours. No lengthy RFPs, no lengthy grant report, no overhead. It’s a pretty awesome model.
Pam Rosenberg co-founded One by One because, after decades of volunteering at various nonprofits, she kept seeing gaps between what children and families needed and what the nonprofits could provide. This isn’t to slam any of the direct service providers. They usually provided excellent services aligned to a particular mission, e.g. afterschool programming, emergency shelter, food. The problem was that the people with whom they worked often had a range of needs, some of them not mission-aligned, and there wasn’t a social service system in place that could quickly address the more urgent needs.
When I worked with Pam recently, she was pulling out her hair about how to tell the organization’s story. After a few conversations, I realized that, as usual, the problem wasn’t how to tell its story but which of two narrative layers to forefront.
One narrative layer is about the impact of neighbors helping neighbors; One by One donors can help other Great Boston community members get back on their feet after unexpected circumstances pulled the rug out from under them. The example of the mom with the car in the shop is a real one; the impact of promptly paying that $900 bill meant no missed days of work. One by One has 500 other examples like this one, in just two years of operation.
The other narrative layer is about systemic failures in the U.S., including a broken and bureaucratic social safety net and a distrustful and cumbersome philanthropic culture. There’s a lot to be said about the wonderful direct service workers who don’t limit their work to their job descriptions. They find themselves trying to figure out solutions to challenges outside their purview, e.g. how can I connect the mother of this child with whom I work to a car? But the systemic challenges are real. As one One by One partner explained, “There are so many well-meaning funders… however, unintentionally they will burden the organizations with mounds of paperwork or data gathering and sometimes that slows down the process of trying to help students or families.”
These are both important narrative layers… but which layer should the organization forefront? Let’s go back to our three gutcheck prompts.
Which layer illustrates the most compelling need and impact?
For most people, the impact on individual children, adults, and families is going to be the most compelling. We’re humans so we instinctively jive with the human element in stories. As a mom who spends roughly two hours on public transit doing daycare dropoff and pickup but has the luxury of a remote job, I immediately feel for this mom who depends on her car to get herself and her children to so many different places. Comparatively, a narrative about the gaps, disconnectedness, and red tape of our social service systems can come off as political soapboxing or academic pedanticism.
Which layer illustrates One by One’s unique value add, as compared to all the other organizations working in the same space?
And yet! Of the 30,000 nonprofit organizations in the Greater Boston area where One by One operates, a good chunk tell organizational narratives that center around the impact upon the lives of individual children, adults, and families. Trust-based giving, on the other hand, is a relatively new concept—and a provocative one. If you’re not familiar, I highly recommend reading Vu Le’s article on the subject in the link. Also, there has been an increasing push in the social sector to talk about issues as systemic rather than individualized, although I’d say the majority of organizations haven’t shifted gears to meet that push yet.
Which layer can the One by One team tell most authentically?
When I asked Pam why she started One by One, she immediately talked about her corporate background, mostly in healthcare technology. As an executive, she liked things—systems—to work well. If she saw gaps in the way in which systems worked, she would fix it. She saw One by One as a way to fill immediate needs due to gaps in the social system. Pam also has a personal drive to help out neighbors. But that drive has already manifested in a variety of ways—e.g. decades of volunteerism and philanthropy—and didn’t need to manifest in the founding of a new organization.
Based on these gut checks, there are pros and cons for advancing either of these narrative layers to the forefront, with Pam leaning toward the layer that focuses on systemic gaps.
long story short…
Every social sector organization should start thinking about their story by examining their various narrative layers, whittling them down, and then deciding which goes on top. And if you’re thinking, “But you never told us which narrative layer you forefront for Little Tiger!” You’re right! Because here’s my chance to informally poll you on how well I did in configuring my narrative layers to create a compelling, distinct, and authentic story.
Based on this newsletter, which narrative layer do you think is on top?
the need for and impact of better storytelling in the social sector
the unique process of bridging social sector strategy and creative writing techniques
Share in the comments, or at hello@ltstrategicstories.com!
