The importance of storytelling to nonprofits from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Expert gives tips on how to bring causes to life

When it comes right down to it, nonprofits and public-benefit organizations have a hard time telling their own stories. They assume that the public shares their passion for the cause, and so they move on to conveying dry stats and research reports to buttress their case instead.

Wrong approach.

Cave painting of a dun horse at Lascaux, France. At 17,000 years old, the oldest story?

They should be telling stories. Suzanne N. Smith, head of Social Impact Architects in Austin, Texas, discusses why storytelling is so important to nonprofits — and, indeed, any organization. She gave this 15-minute video interview at the recent Social Enterprise Alliance Summit atop the Hyatt in downtown San Francisco.

Says Suzanne: “I’ve seen nonprofits bury themselves in text and data, and we’ve forgotten the stories that are inherent in the work that we do.” Her stirring presentation was about how to surface those stories and balance them with the hard data that makes nonprofits effective and efficient.

Why do nonprofits have a hard time telling their own stories?

“I think we drink our own Kool-Aid and think what we do is such a great idea — why wouldn’t people want to help the homeless or be a mentor? And we forget that … we have to use persuasion and influence … to get people to believe in those same things the way we do.”

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

Stories are our universal currency, and they help us break through the clutter of the 3,000 messages we’re bombarded with each day, she says. But there’s hard science behind why storytelling is so important. In research on the brain, scientists have found that hearing a story rather than simply reading text fires up a richer set of connectors, it sparks emotions, it summons up connections with memories, and so “you remember things when they’re in a storytelling format two to seven times more than you do than if you just get the text alone.”

Suzanne recommended these books as providing effective communication strategies:

• Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
• Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
• A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
• Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin

Continue reading »

Events guide for nonprofits & social change outfits

Here’s a roundup of conferences and events scheduled in the nonprofit and social change sectors for the month of June. For the full year, see: Calendar of 2010 social change conferences.

On Wednesday I’ll be co-presenting the Mobilize Your Cause Bootcamp — today’s the last day to register — at Personal Democracy Forum in New York.

Even if you can’t attend a conference, you should be able to follow part of the proceedings on Twitter — type in the name of the event in Twitter Search and look for the hashtag associated with it (then click on it).

If you’re interested in social media, tech and marketing conferences, see the June calendar on our sister site, Socialmedia.biz.

If you know of other events, please share by adding the info in the comments below.

Conference	Date	Place
June
Cause Marketing Forum	June 2-3	Chicago
The 8th annual Cause Marketing Forum brings together business, nonprofit and agency executives dedicated to doing well by doing good together.
Personal Democracy Forum	June 3-5	New York City
The annual gathering of political activists, government reform advocates and techies, with an “unconference” for the Saturday after the formal conference ends.
Journalism That Matters	June 3-6	Detroit
Journalism that Matters invites persons of color — journalists, entrepreneurs, programmers, technologists, bloggers, videographers, venture capitalists, artists, funders, educators — to a “mashup” to explore how voices often unheard or misrepresented can reshape the future of journalism.
IJ7 & JTM	June 7-11	Palo Alto, Calif.
The 7th Conference on Innovation Journalism and Journalism That Matters will be held back to back at Stanford University with a look at journalism in the innovation economy.
New Media Consortium	June 9-12	Anaheim, Calif.
The NMC’s annual conference is an opportunity to learn about how higher-education institutions are using new media to improve teaching, learning and research. This conference offers presentations, workshops and networking opportunities and attracts an audience of hundreds of highly skilled professionals interested in the integration of emerging technologies into teaching, learning and creative inquiry.
Allied Media Conference	June 18-20	Detroit
The conference seeks to cultivate strategies for a more just and creative world. Attendees come together to share tools and tactics for transforming our communities through media-based organizing.
Salsa Community Conference	June 24-25	Washington, DC
The conference brings together savvy strategists, Salsa users extraordinaires, important partners, great speakers and more. Get hands-on training with the Salsa-savvy support team and fellow users, have one-on-ones with leading strategists, geek out with customizations and integrations in Salsa with SalsaScript, the Salsa Market and more.
NCTech4Good	June 25	Chapel Hill, NC
This conference brings together people from the nonprofit and technology sectors to identify and address the technology needs of the nonprofit community in North Carolina.
Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference	June 25	Washington, DC
Ever attend a conference, for a keynote, and find the rest of the content to be wanting? Nonprofit 2.0 delivers the best of both worlds, offering great keynote sessions led by Amanda Rose, founder of Twestival, and Wendy Harman, Social Media Manager for the American Red Cross — in an unconference format — at SEIU.
National Conference on Volunteering and Service	June 28-30	New York City
The annual event provides attendees with an opportunity to learn, connect and be inspired through exciting and informative plenary sessions, workshops, special events, service projects, exhibits, specialized corporate tracks and more.

Continue reading »

Anyone taking more than a passing glance at the kiwanja.net website shouldn’t need long to figure out my four key areas of interest. I’ve always maintained that if your ideal job doesn’t exist, then you have to create it, and being able to combine my passions for technology, anthropology, conservation and development is for me – through kiwanja.net – that dream job.

Saying that, it doesn’t go without its challenges. Putting aside the difficulties faced by the global conservation and development communities, most of my thinking today centres around the sometimes uncomfortable tension between appropriate technology and the mobile phone, and the potential role of applied anthropology in helping us understand what on earth is going on out there. We can’t always rely on Indiana Jones, Hollywood’s answer to anthropology, to get us all the answers.

Continue reading »