Where are all your people at?
What we can learn about narrating “your people” from Survivor and a philanthropic foundation
For me, one of the silver linings during the pandemic shutdown was Survivor, the show credited for launching American reality TV. When it premiered in 2000, I was in high school and not allowed to watch weeknight television—a teenage misery when it felt like everybody was talking about this epic show where strangers were dropped into some isolated wilderness to compete for a million dollars. Twenty years later, I finally had my chance to catch up on the 40 seasons to date and learn what all the hype had been about.
Survivor touts that it’s actually three games wrapped into one: a strategic game, a physical game, and a social game. A player might claw their way to the finals by scheming with allies or extracting information; winning immunity through physical challenges like clinging to the top of a pole or balancing on a small perch for hours; or making themselves so likable that their fellow competitors never vote them out. In the final episode, the two or three remaining contestants must convince a jury of their peers that they deserve to win the title of Sole Survivor and the million dollars.
The show’s premise assumes that the jury will vote for the contestant who makes the best case for their strategic, physical, social games. But after binge-watching hundreds of episodes over the past three years, I realized that the winners often didn’t play the best strategic, physical, or social games. Instead, they told the jury the most compelling story about who they were and how that influenced the game they played.
Often, that story drew deeply from outside the confines of the game. For example, in season 41, Erika Casupanan talked about how being a small Asian woman meant that people never took her seriously—either in her job as a communications manager outside the game, or as a contender inside the game. She said that she leaned into this perception by entering the game as a “lion dressed as a lamb.” Although largely unpopular during the game, she won the votes of every jury member except for one.
This impulse to act based upon the compellingness of a story and the person or people at the center of that story is not unique to Survivor. It’s how we tick as humans. As faculty member and impact investor Angela Jackson said at a recent Harvard workshop for early stage education ventures: “People don’t give money to ideas. They give money to people.”
This is not a new idea, although in the social sector, we often forget it in the rush of drafting mission statements and theories of change. Here’s the thing. Stories compel people to action using three rhetorical devices: logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos appeals to your audience’s reason by building up logical arguments, say impact data. Ethos appeals to your audience by establishing the storyteller’s authority, competence, and trustworthiness. Pathos appeals to your audience’s emotions by making the audience feel affinity, empathy, or anger, for example. And stories can only tap into ethos and pathos if they have well-developed characters—the people at the center of and who drive the story.
A mission statement on its own, no matter how great, won’t compel people toward action—whether that action is giving money, volunteering, or even just agreeing to a conversation—because it doesn’t tap into the audience’s reason, trust, or emotions. Organizations need to build that more robust story. In doing so, the instinct is usually to narrate org impact (logos). For example, the Make A Wish Foundation can say that it has granted the wishes of hundreds of thousands of children with critical illnesses. That’s pretty powerful.
But a lot of social sector organizations are deep in systems-change work, which is slow and laborious and continuous, and can’t offer a story of that kind of immediate impact. But what they can offer is the assurance (ethos) that the people who are doing that kind of hard work have the passion, dedication, and skills to advance the change they seek, and the hope (pathos) that people’s lives will be better as a result of that change.
So, social sector orgs need to start by thinking about how people fit into their stories. And they should start with the people who drive the work—or the plot—forward. It should be clear to any organization’s audiences:
Why do these people work here?
What knowledge, skills, passion, and lived experiences do these people bring to their work that helps drive it forward?
How does each individual person’s story align with the organizational story?
for example…
Nellie Mae is New England’s largest philanthropic organization focused solely on education. In the three decades since its founding, the organization has made several strategic pivots. In 1990, it started as an education-financing company focused on college accessibility. In 2008, it pivoted from college accessibility to education systems change. In 2019, it pivoted yet again to focus on advancing racial equity in public education. A behemoth challenge!
Their storytelling has reflected this shift, consistently and compellingly. “Advancing racial equity in public education,” is the headline on their homepage. Their LinkedIn is headlined with conversations with Nic Stone and roundtables with Black women leaders in philanthropy. And their storytelling is bursting with the presence of the people who drive the work forward at Nellie Mae.
For example, in a recent blog post about the importance of teaching Black history, Nellie Mae’s Senior Program and Equity Officer Ellen Wang, starts off with this: “As a Taiwanese immigrant and parent of a bi-racial child, I believe it is important for every young person to have options in their learning. When I was growing up, I loved reading and pored over books. It was an escape for me into faraway lands both real and fantastical; books opened my world in understanding different concepts, cultures, and ideas.”
Even the staff bios reinforce the story of a cast of nonprofit professionals passionately carrying out Nellie Mae’s mission of racial equity. Rather than canned summaries of each team member’s resumes, the bios start with lines like this:
The precept In Lak’Ech by Luis Valdez and Domingo Martinez Paredes has been my mantra for the past few years. “Tú eres mi otro yo. You are my other me. Si te hago daño a ti, If I do harm to you, Me hago daño a mi mismo. I do harm to myself. Si te amo y respeto, If I love and respect you, Me amo y respeto yo. I love and respect myself.” Julita Bailey-Vasco, acting Chief Communications Officer
As a child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, my family instilled in me two valuable lessons: 1. Access to quality education would offer the greatest opportunities. 2. Everyone is not educated similarly. I would not come to understand the second lesson and the factors contributing (race, class, citizenship status) to this lesson until many years later. Alexis Harewood, Senior Program Officer
I have kids and grandkids, so I know that every little bit we can do for our schools and for the education system helps. Sometimes, school is too regimented. We need to make learning work for everyone. Doreen Bergstrom, Administrative Assistant
Each bio is then followed with relevant professional credentials that make the case for why each person is suited to execute the job. Rather than a page of random people in business casual on their website, Nellie Mae’s staff have become a rich and integral part of the organizational story. Their continuous presence helps build audience trust that Nellie Mae can and is making strides toward racial equity in public education, even if the world hasn’t transformed overnight.
long story short…
Just as characters are fundamental to compelling plotlines, people are integral to organizational stories. Yet when they are not wholly absent, they show up in social sector in three limited ways:
as charismatic leaders and founders, which may tap into ethos and pathos but also risks leaving the organization high and dry should that leader ever leave
as beneficiaries of our work, which may tap into pathos but also risks problematic characterizations
as professional robots characterized by resumes rather than beating hearts and lived experiences, which taps into… nothing!
So let’s end with this piece of advice. As social sector organizations, we need to invest in telling the story of our teams. This is something that we can all do, and if we have a better understanding of how and why we came to the work we do, we will tell a better story about our organization as a whole.
Also, if I ever pause this Substack for a month without notice, it will hopefully because I’m in Fiji, trying to win the title of Sole Survivor. Root for me!
