by Upma Kapoor
Nonprofits and social impact organizations often emerge because they have a solution to a pervasive problem in our society. After focusing efforts on fundraising and scaling impact, storytelling and communications efforts often fall to the wayside. How can organizations built upon the foundation of problem-solving rebuild their communications framework to make their stories as good as new?
While the elements of a good story are timeless, the reboot in our framework requires a deeper, understanding of your audiences, especially their motivations and challenges, where they go to find out about your organization’s work, and what they want to know about your organization. At its core, the surprising reality is that the problem-solving used to start these nonprofit and social impact organizations is no different from resolving a storytelling challenge: you design your way out of it using design thinking.
What is design thinking?
Nonprofit and social impact professionals reading this may gawk at the notion of a Silicon Valley darling and private sector buzzword being adopted to navigate challenges, but these organizations have unknowingly adopted this discipline and methodology without realizing it.
Design thinking is a discipline grounded in navigating complex problems and creatively designing effective ideas to meet people’s needs. Consequently, this approach can empower nonprofits towards creatively navigating communications challenges by how they frame problems, identify effective solutions, and allow experience to drive your team’s actions and interactions.
How do I find my story with design thinking?
STEP 1: FIND THE PROBLEM WITH YOUR STORY
Design thinking is about finding market opportunity by looking into your problem or challenge, and framing it creatively to bring breakthrough innovation. When we are talking about stories, the first step is to identify the problem or opportunity with your story. For example, maybe the lead does not resonate with audiences, or maybe your story is shared on a blog that does not get a lot of eyeballs.
Here’s the reality: design thinking does not assume that you know the problem, and you do not want to start with a solution in mind. For instances like this, let data and your experiences carry you. For storytelling, data can help pinpoint the weaknesses of your hook or trajectory of your story.
STEP 2: REFRAME THE PROBLEM
In design, reframing is key; in storytelling, it allows your organization to examine and reconsider the focus of the story. Are visitors responding to your call-to-actions? Are you prioritizing your online visitors on how they fit into your story? Does the online visitor relate to your story?
Stories and design thinking are alike in the shared power of communicating experience. What experience are you providing your supporters when you share your story?
When you aim to create for experience–and a unique, human-centered one–you outperform in part because you are building empathy for your readers and users. Understanding what your followers need and are looking for is key to creating a good experience. Reframing the problem of your story brings you closer to identifying and building towards the experience.
STEP 3: IDEATE AND PROTOTYPE
Based on the insights you have gathered about your problem and audiences in steps one and two, you should be able to define the problem and begin building the solution. When it comes to design thinking and innovation, we lean towards building a prototype—or physical product—that helps us deeply understand and define the solution we are leaning towards building.
When it comes to storytelling, we are hesitant to make changes after having a legacy trajectory. Design thinking pushes or the opposite: experiment and test what works quickly; tailor your story to include strategic elements of storytelling, and put it to the test.
Testing is imperative to ideation when it comes to storytelling. If it fails, it fails fast. Failing fast means that you and your organization can revise and and re-examine your approach, and rebuild something better. Rewriting the story does not mean overhauling the entire story altogether; instead, we are empowered to consider medium, delivery, and character to evaluate story success.
STEP 4: TEST AND EVALUATE FEEDBACK
Strategic nonprofit and social impact storytelling requires measuring meaningful engagement to promote and advocate for an organization’s mission.
With design thinking, testing and evaluating feedback for each story helps nonprofit observe and uncover wants and needs about audiences that they were previously unaware of. This ongoing discovery does not go away, but instead allows organizations to be curious and find patterns in what makes their stories work and with which audiences. You are always asking yourself what success looks like within your organization, why not figure out what success looks like for your audiences?
What’s next?
Design thinking can be liberating for some organizations’ storytelling tactics and is limitless in growth. The hallmark of design thinking success for nonprofits and social impact organizations such as the San Francisco Opera lies in the ongoing nature of the work. Organizations don’t stop telling stories, so why should their processes? Regularly identifying new ways to build empathy and engage new audiences can revitalize your day-to-day work and tell your stories anew.
Upma Kapoor is a student in Georgetown University’s masters of professional studies in Public Relations & Corporate Communications and is a strategic communications professional with a passion for helping nonprofit organizations amplify their impact through digital efforts. She specializes in building brands, cross-platform storytelling, digital communications strategy, and user experience research. Whether a website, tweet, or blog post, she believes in finding the right medium, narrative, and process to help others engage with your organization.