Storytelling for Small Charities: A Lesson from Peru
In this edition of Stories For Social Good, I discuss how storytelling for small charities:
provides magical opportunities for authentic, dynamic storytelling
can open doors to uniquely empathetic and productive relationships
deliver maximum value for clients
My first experience of working with small purpose-led organisations was in 2010, 11,000 feet above sea level. Cusco, Peru, to be precise. A kind, knowledgeable and ambitious conservationist named Dionysius discovered that I worked in advertising.
'Can you help me with my marketing?' he asked. Dionysius had been our local guide, muse and friend across all our volunteering exploits in the Amazon rainforest for the last two months. I could hardly say 'no'.
Dionysius wanted to move from conservation to eco-tourism. His request for marketing advice wasn't unreasonable. After all, I had ten years of top London and Manchester advertising experience behind me. I'd even worked for the BBC.
'Er', I said.
The thing was, I'd always been an account handler – the person who corals lots of specialists into some kind of order to deliver an expensive 'above-the-line' TV commercial, glossy outdoor campaign, or hilarious radio ad (this was 2010: 'digital' was still pretty niche; 'social' was the name of our favourite bar on Great Portland Street).
But I, personally, didn't actually 'create' anything; that was for the creatives.
With outrageous disregard for my audience's level of interest and understanding, I began to explain this to a doubtful and bemused Dionysius, who had spent most of his life working with nature in the Peruvian rainforest. He just needed a business card and maybe some leaflets.
I panicked. I was no copywriter, still less a designer. And who was going to do the strategy?
I fumbled through the rest of the conversation, made some half-hearted suggestions and gave him my email address. Given his breadth of knowledge about conservation and sustainability, and his generosity in sharing it during our two-month stint, I felt suitably silly and inadequate.
Seeing the Wood For the Peruvian Rainforest Full of Trees
Fifteen years on, I'd like to think I'd handle my conversation with Dionysius better. I’m still not much cop at design, but I have picked up experience developing strategies, writing copy and sharing knowledge with all kinds and sizes of organisations – including charities and companies of one or two people.
Back in the noughties as a wide-eyed young advertising bod, the bigger the client the better. I wanted to work on the household name brands, the TV commercials everyone recognised, the clients with the biggest budgets.
As I've got older, those things have become less motivating (my experience in South America also led me to move out of advertising into the non-profit world, but that's a story for another newsletter).
Nowadays, I love working with smaller organisations at least as much as bigger ones. And that's because they provide particular conditions for agile, empathetic and compelling storytelling.
It's a Relationship Thing
It all begins with the relationship. Often, a small charity client is the chief executive or at least the key budget holder and decision maker. This is a boon for us writers, strategists and consultants, because right from the off, we get to know the person or people with the most insight, investment and motivation for the project.
It's a relationship built on empathy. After all, as companies of one, we're running our own small organisations too. Like you, we've become expert hat wearers and ball jugglers. We're the chief executive, finance director, marketing lead and head of legal. We're also responsible for service delivery – the part that really matters, of course. So we understand a little of the pressures that small charity leaders face.
Small charity clients don't have big, fancy teams of brand, communications and fundraising specialists to draw on, so they look to freelance copywriters, strategists and consultants to help fill the gaps. That requires a leap of faith, so the relationship must be built on trust – trust built through direct contact and the open, transparent sharing of each other's knowledge, skills, experience and visions.
It's not that projects with larger charities can't produce brilliant storytelling – done well, they can harness multiple viewpoints and areas of expertise to create deeply insightful narratives. But with smaller organisations, we can often think and create from a deeper level of understanding about the project and organisation, because we're right there working with the person or people who can share that understanding from the outset.
Delivering Value and Taking Responsibility
Like small charity clients, we're also used to not having a great deal of money swashing around. We know that for small charities, it's critical that every pound not going directly to the cause must indirectly contribute to your impact. The good news is that, as clients, you have the opportunity to wring the best possible value from your copywriting, creative, or storytelling consultant.
Yes, we can deliver a project to meet a specific brief, like a brand story, case for support or impact report. But we also appreciate that this won't be the only thing on your plate. So when working on specific projects, we'll also be on hand for chats about your broader strategic, brand, comms and fundraising challenges and objectives – all the while bringing the benefit of our wider skills, insights and experience.
The broader and deeper the support we provide, the greater the responsibility we take. Of course, with larger charities, we're striving to produce the best possible outcome first time. However, we also know that our work will be passed through various departments and commented on by different people over multiple stages. It's a form of comfort blanket: the more people involved, the more responsibility is shared.
Working with smaller charities, we don't have that luxury. We may not have multiple teams providing sophisticated audience segmentations, extensive sector research or detailed comparator mapping. The work may not benefit (or be hindered by!) many people offering their two penn'orths of advice. We have more power over what we create together.
And of course, with greater power comes greater responsibility.
Unleashing our Storytelling Instincts
Smaller budgets, simpler processes, fewer people in the room, and shorter timeframes. A lot is resting on us getting this right. Storytelling is under the microscope, and this brings our storytelling practice into focus.
Without extensive research, processes and data to hide behind, our gut storytelling instincts can break free. Between consultant and client, we have enough knowledge, passion and experience to create something special. To embrace the flow and work quickly together. It's exciting, and it can produce magical results.
I had a brilliant experience of precisely this with Emma Bracegirdle. We worked together on a brand story, copy and messaging for The Saltways, her small ethical charity filmmaking company. The budget was small and time was tight. But over two focused, highly generative sessions, we created something really special.
Emma was kind enough to say that I managed to put into words what she had struggled to explain for so long. That was what I could bring to the project, but the other side was Emma's deep passion and expert knowledge, which, together, we could quickly surface and turn into a story.
Our storytelling instincts have more chances to shine when working responsively, with agility over time. I'm loving working with Sarah Caton, Co-Founder of Inspiration For All, a genius peer mentoring programme that brings together business and school leaders to drive social mobility. Initially commissioned to develop a brand story, we've since watched it grow into a whole suite of materials over nearly a year.
The lovely thing about working with Sarah and her other Co-Founder, Paula Kennedy, is that with every conversation we're able to tweak and improve the messaging for each new mini-writing project. Inspiration For All is a young and growing social enterprise. So it's important that we learn, adapt and build on the stories we tell in response to learnings from the fast-growing numbers of schools and businesses that participate.
Wrapping up
Working with small charities and organisations provides fertile ground for agile, authentic and passionate storytelling from the heart. Part of me wishes I'd understood this better during my conversation with Dionysius. But it's also interesting that I still reflect on that situation so many years later – it clearly triggered something about relationships, needs and impact that I wanted to explore more. You can't help but live your life forwards, even if you join the dots backwards.
Do you have any advice about small charity–consultant relationships?
What was the moment that triggered a career shift for you?
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