 Welcome everyone. Welcome to our webinar, Authentic Storytelling with Greenpeace, a 10-step process. I'm Susan Hope Bard. I'll be your host today for this powerful event. I want to go over a few small details about ReadyTalk to familiarize you with the platform and give a brief introduction to our presenters. Right now you should see a window on the far left of your screen which is a chat box. This chat box is there for you to ask any questions at any point in time during the presentation. If you have technical challenges, you can chat those into us. No need to raise your hand. If you have questions for searing, our presenter today, please also feel free to chat those in at any time. I will be queuing those up along with our back-end support Molly. We'll be queuing those up for searing to address at the end of the presentation. Again, no need to raise your hand. If you do lose your Internet connection, you can reconnect using the link that was emailed to you in the confirmation or the reminder email that I sent out about an hour ago. All of your lines are muted, so we will be able to get a clear recording. We will be sending you an email with this presentation, a link to the recording, and any resources that are shared today. You can find our upcoming and past webinars on our TechSoup website, www.techsoup.org, forward slash community, forward slash events-webinars. You can also tweet us at TechSoup or use hashtag PSWebinars. Here is like a big tip for everyone. Sounds should come through your computer speakers. If you have any challenges or the sound isn't matching what you see on the screen, it could be your Internet connection. So we do recommend that you call in, so you can use Skype or a phone to call in. And Molly has just chatted out the number that you can use to call in. We also recommend sometimes if you simply log in and log out. So that's a little bit about ReadyTalk. And you should have received a reminder email. On the far right side, there should be a link underneath Downloadable Files, and it's September 14, 2017, and that's Greenpeace Storytelling. You should be able to click on that, and you will be able to access your presentation. Don't stress, if you can't get to it, can't find the email, I will be sending that out again along with any resources that she shares with us today. So now I would like to introduce our speakers today. We have Searing from Greenpeace, and we also have Lewis right here from TechSoup. On the back end, we have Molly, and she is going to be assisting with chat, queuing up some of your questions. A little bit about TechSoup, and also to test out your chat box. TechSoup is located in San Francisco, California, and I'd like to know where you're from. Go ahead and use that chat box right now. Tell us what city and state you're from, or what country you're joining us from. So as you're doing, oh, some people are here in San Francisco, Charlottesville. We've got some folks from Canada, Pennsylvania, Oh, Satellite Beach, Florida. I hope you guys are doing okay after the hurricane. Lots of folks from San Francisco, Arizona. Wow. We've got lots of folks here today, Searing. This is really exciting. All right, thank you so much for joining us today. This is a great group of people, and we know you're going to enjoy the presentation. Again, really quickly, no need to raise your hand. You can simply chat in the chat box any challenges or questions that you have. I am going to turn this over right now to Lewis to talk a little bit about the Storymakers campaign. Lewis? Thanks, Susan, and thanks, Searing, for presenting today. I wanted to just tell people about Storymakers real quick. TechSoup has been offering up storytelling campaigns for seven years now. TechSoup is most known for our technology donation program, but really with the rise of YouTube and social media, we realize that nonprofits need to have the capacity to tell their story, to create a video, to take strong photographs that leave an impact, that help with fundraising, that help with advocacy. So that's the philosophy and the thinking behind our Storymaker campaigns. I want to thank our sponsors, our Platinum sponsors, our Adobe and Microsoft, our Gold sponsors, our InterConnection, part of our Recycled Computing program, Mobile Beacon, provides hotspots for nonprofits, USB memory direct, and GrantStation. So now I'm going to hand it back to Susan, and we're excited to hear Searing on authentic storytelling. Thanks so much, Lewis. We are very excited about this year's campaign. We hope you join us for other webinars, and I'll discuss those towards the end of this event today. Now for our main speaker, Searing, and she has a long history of storytelling, and she is the Storytelling Advisor at Greenpeace. So I'm going to turn it over to you now, Searing. Take it away. Thanks, Susan. Hi everybody. So just a little bit about myself. My name is Searing Lama, and I'm one of two story advisors at Greenpeace International. And my background is as an activist. I've worked for about 15 years in the Tibetan freedom movement and Tibetan by birth, and I've also been a writer for many years. And so this is sort of a combination or coming together of two of my great passions, which is social justice and writing, expression, creativity. So I'm going to go through this 10-step process that we have, and I would just say that from the beginning, there isn't a single process that's going to be one-size-fits-all. Even at Greenpeace, we have to adjust, refine, and sometimes create a brand new process for the needs that we have in our global organization. But I think the presentation I'm about to give you will give you some sense of key ideas that could be interesting to try out if you haven't tried it out yet, or just give you a sense of how we're approaching it at Greenpeace right now. And perhaps we can discuss things more offline. I'd love to hear what other people are trying to do as well. And thank you again to TechSoup for inviting me to do this. Lewis and I have been talking for over a year, trying to figure out how to collaborate, and I love TechSoup's mission, and to Susan for organizing this, and to everybody who attended. So let's get started. So we have a poll. Great. Yep, we're going to get started with a poll, and I'm going to run the poll so everyone can see the results. What do we mean by storytelling? We're going to ask you to click in the box. Oh, some of you are already doing it fastest fingers. You've been here before. What do we mean by storytelling? It's about presentation. It's about connecting with values. It's marketing, branding, or I have no idea. So go ahead, I'm going to give you about 5 more seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Wow, Saring, look at that. Yep, that's really amazing to see the numbers. So I think we're already at a good spot to go. Of course storytelling is all of those things. It is about presentation. It is about connecting with the values. It is about marketing and branding. And I think often people will focus on the presentation or the marketing branding side of storytelling. That's natural given that story has become kind of a buzzword. It's very popular among corporations. It's also something that academics are thinking about a lot, even people working in technology and so on and so forth. But I think especially for civil society organizations, groups like Greenpeace and the many NGOs that are joining this call, storytelling has a component that is about social justice. And for that we have to have a deeper meaning behind the work that we do. So it's not just about presentation. So I find it helpful for me to divide storytelling into two things. One is the higher order concerns, the foundational ideas and elements and ideals that drive an organization, that drive a movement or a cause. And for that there are lots of different things you can look at. But here are some main ones that I like to look at. One is the meta narrative or the master narrative. These are the big stories that are out there. So sometimes they're so big that people don't even talk about them. They don't even mention it. But there are stories about what is a good mother? Stories about what is human rights meaning? Stories about the fate of the planet and the morality of people. And these are stories that we often accept as common sense. So you can think of it as sort of a hegemonic narrative, a narrative that is so powerful that often we accept them without challenging them. So those are big, big level stories that we want to tackle sometimes as well. And then there are the next level, dominant narrative. Narratives that are maybe about a specific issue or a specific cause. And it really depends on who you're asking. Like a certain person will say this is a dominant narrative and another person will say that's a dominant narrative. But the point is that narratives are always in battle. There's the dominant narrative and there's the counter narrative. The counter narrative is what can possibly weaken the dominant narrative. And so in storytelling for social justice at Greenpeace, we're often interested in counter narratives. We're interested in how to make change that is lasting and fundamental through a narrative lens. And then there's the vision of the organization, the values, the identity. Often storytelling is not about what we do as an organization or a movement, but about who we are, how we work and how we speak and how we live and move through the world. And that is just as important for storytelling as the policy or the achievements. And then there are frames and metaphors. George Lekoff, the cognitive linguist and philosopher is a great resource whom I pull firm all the time as well for this. I'll go through some of these later on. But side B, the craft of storytelling, that's often where people focus a lot of attention on messengers and who is the best person to deliver your message, the kind of conflict, the characters, the kind of storytelling. There's a lot of focus on technology. Okay, we have VR, we have augmented reality. That's the new thing, but that comes later. We don't start with the technology, we start with the ideas. And there are structures and plots, language, visuals, etc. So this is all to say that storytelling is not about window dressing. It's not just about the language or the visuals. That's the last step. And not just as a moral perspective, but also because if you want to be effective and you want to come across as being true, it has to come from something deeper that is reflecting the organization's moral perspective, identity, values, vision, etc. So I really believe, and at Greenpeace we really believe that storytelling is something that is wrapped up intimately with power. And when we're talking about activism, to be an activist is to be a part of critically analyzing the narratives that are out there, thinking about how we can break apart the ones that don't serve us, perhaps they only serve the elites or serve to destroy the planet or serve to continue injustices, and then reshaping those narratives. So for storytelling we really see this as a critical literacy, something that all people should have the ability to, just as we want to be able to read a map or just as we want to be able to read text, we should be able to read and write and create stories. And that is a kind of activism that is very important for fundamental change. So that being said, the process of coming to a story is also an ethical issue. And at Greenpeace we've been working really hard to try to figure out how we can make sure that our storytelling is coming from a ground up, an authentic ground up place, and it's not something that we are picking from somewhere else or are being told this is your story. Of course it's very easy for just three or four people who are communications experts to sit in the room and just devise the story or for a consulting firm to come in and say, here's your story. But is that going to be long lasting? Is that going to allow you to change that narrative as a condition to change? I don't think so. I think it has to come from developing the literacy and skills and the knowledge and the awareness of the importance of storytelling within your organization so that you are able to continually evolve that story and own it for the duration of the time that you are working on your cause. And so as activists one major question we always have to ask ourselves is with storytelling, who is at the table and who isn't at the table? Who gets to speak and who is completely not speaking in the situation? How are we presenting the characters in our story? Who is being presented as a victim? Is there a hero that is different from the victim? Can the two be the same? So these are questions that are political, but they are questions that are important for storytelling when it is coming from a ground up and authentic place. Please let me know if I'm going too fast. So the best way that I would suggest to go about this is to gather everybody that you think is representative in your room. So from your organization, and that means get your volunteers, get your office administrators, assistants, get your interns, get your EDs, or executive directors, get everybody in the room because storytelling is a democratic tool. It's a democratic experience. Just as a king's story is no more powerful than a beggar's. Everybody has the same level of value in their storytelling. So we try to do this in Greenpeace. We try to bring in a wide variety of people and don't try to have silence so that storytelling doesn't just become the communications department domain or the executive director domain, but it's something that we collaboratively across departments, across roles, or functions come together to work on. And the great thing about storytelling is actually everybody knows how to do it, but everybody is also new at it at the same time. I still consider myself new at storytelling every time I approach a narrative and I'm trying to figure out how to develop it, how to push it further, how to make it more compelling. I feel like I'm new at it. So there's always more to learn. And so it's not the space of communications experts. So the process that I'm going to show you is based off of what we did in May in Mexico City. The story team, Amrika Sharma, my colleague, and I went to Mexico and we were given the opportunity to help lead the development of a global narrative for Greenpeace's Urban Revolution campaign, which is basically a campaign on mega cities and the issues of pollution and social justice and all the issues wrapped up with mega cities. And so we had about five or six countries coming in and each with their very distinct realities and narratives. And of course mega cities being very different from place to place. And our dream for our mission was to try to come up with something that was global that would bring everything together. And so that's kind of the process I'm going to show to you. That being said, we have other processes, but there's overlap across the board. So the first thing we think about when we're building a narrative is to look at the problem that we're tackling as a narrative problem. What we're trying to solve isn't just pollution or policies around cars or politicians. What we're trying to solve are the fundamental narratives that run that. They're the foundational deep-seated, rooted ideas that have been promoted and championed by people that it benefits. So the problem is the narrative that we want to dismantle. The solution is the narratives we want to champion, going again back to dominant narratives and counter narratives. The vision is what the world would look like if we win. The values in frame, what is this project really about? It's not about carbon emissions. It's about what? It's about quality of life. It's about community, etc., etc. And then we tried to get, wanted to get into delivery of how we want to tell our stories, the audience that we want to reach strategically in order to make change happen, and the messengers. That was the mission going in. This is our process and what I'm going to go through today with you. The caveat at the top is important because it's to begin to co-articulate the key elements of the narrative. Storytelling, story building, narrative strategy is an iterative process. If the narratives around you are continuously shifting, as we all know they are, we cannot stay static with the stories that we build for our organizations or for our cause or for our movement. And so this is the first step. And of course you might be entering into a space where you already have a narrative that you and your organization have been using or the cause has been using. Again, you can use this process to analyze it, revise it, push it further. So these are the 10 pieces and I'm just going to go through them today. So the first step is the story landscape to really understand that you're entering into something that is already in conversation. There's already players involved. There are already telling stories. They're already making people, they're already connecting with people in various ways. So we never get an empty slate or like a clean slate. We don't get a fresh start. We enter into something. And so what we want to do is really understand the narratives out there. So for Mexico we gathered five dominant narratives around mega cities. And those narratives came from our opponents. They came from our allies. They came from neutral, powerful players. They came from our target audience. And they came from ourselves. And the exercise which is linked, we'll show you the instructions for how to do this exercise. It's really simple. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it's very powerful. And what we do is we basically try to analyze together collaboratively the content and the delivery of each narrative. What is this dominant narrative saying? What's their argument about the nature of the problem, the possibilities for the solution, and what is the solution? And what do they say about the possible impact an audience member can have? And then the delivery is how do they tell the story? Is it inspiring? Who is their messenger? Is it representative? Is it diverse? Is the language inviting? Is it accessible? Et cetera, et cetera. So doing that helps us to identify the old, or really it's the dominant narratives that are existing that are out there, and then find out what are the new narratives, the counter narratives that we want to promote. So when I say old, I don't mean that counter narratives are always new or anything like that. It's just the point is to just say we're going from here to here. And so what we might find is that through this exercise it becomes very clear what are the major ideas that are out there, the big master narratives or dominant narratives that are out there regarding your issue or your cause. And so this is a selection of old and new narratives that we were able to pull rather quickly from this exercise. And yes, that's basically what happened there. And then our identity. As I said before, identity is really important for storytelling of an organization. And when you look at the people around you you can really tell who you are. And when you analyze people around you it's very clear like the more you see how other people function or other organizations function the clearer you get in your organization's identity. Or if you don't get clear then that points to a deeper problem of course. So when we did this it became really clear to us that we're not a sink tank. We're not people who believe that cities are going to be solved just by technology. So we're not Silicon Valley. We are grassroots. We believe in the genius of ordinary people and what they can achieve. And so we were able to come up with a very concrete and simple set of identity markers. And of course it's multifaceted, right? Like no human being has just one identity. Just as no organization has one identity. And like Greenpeace Germany versus Greenpeace Russia they will have different approaches but we're just trying to find the commonalities and put aside the differences. Because the differences they can be dealt with locally. We take the commonalities and then locally people adapt it to their regional or local conditions and audiences and sensibilities and that's fine. And that's our approach. So we're always just trying to find the central things that everybody can agree on and find consensus on. Thanks, Searing. And you know it's very similar to our TechSoup and our partners and our global community. We're going to ask you another question. Some of you are already ahead even before I start reading this. Great. So what does winning look like for your organization? Do you have a clear vision of what that means? The first option is your organization's vision is concrete and it's inspiring. Maybe it's kind of vague or underdeveloped or no. It's secondary to your day-to-day work. Or you're just not sure. I'm going to give you about five seconds to go ahead and log your responses or you can also feel free to chat them in the chat box. Five, four, three, two, one. There you go. All right, thanks. Yeah, so I mean that's heartening to know that a good percentage of people feel that their vision is concrete and inspiring. I think it's really a challenge to get there especially for civil society organizations or organizations that are working for causes because we often start with the problem. We want to start with what's wrong and then when we start with the problem we think about how to solve it. And so then everything gets driven around policy level frames. So it doesn't get to that higher level and more inspiring level of thinking. And I can say this as somebody who's worked in environmental cause and in human rights and self-determination. It almost seems like frivolous to come up with a vision because how can you do that? We know the world is imperfect and always will be imperfect. We don't want to manipulate people or sell them like fairy tales. But it's important to recognize that the vision part is what progressives can do much better across the board and when I think back to Martin Luther King Jr. speech, I have a dream. That's a long speech and there's a lot of stuff in there about policies and changes that need to happen. But the part that's the most compelling and the one that elementary school students memorize just as I did is the part that's about him talking about the Red Hills of Georgia and what his children will experience. And the reason that that's so compelling is because I can see exactly what he sees. I can feel exactly what he feels. I am not a black person, but I want exactly what he wants. I believe in that and I connect with that. And that's why that vision in such visceral, concrete terms can be compelling to people all over the world who have nothing to do with your cause. As long as it's something that is coming from a true place. So we try to do visioning exercises every time we do a story workshop. Some people might say this, some people will be skeptical or whatever, but it can be incredibly affirming and valuable for people. And it's something that we should be able to communicate clearly to our supporters and the general public. So one exercise, and there's many exercises for this, one basic one is to do an exercise of imagining a day in the life after we win. And whatever that win means is of course personal, but it's also organizationally specific. And we ask them to imagine waking up, going to their fridge, turning on the television, taking a shower, going to work, entering the office. What's changed? Who's in your cell phone that wasn't in your cell phone before? Who are the new community numbers you have? What do you see on the road? Name one individual or one key group that's been impacted by your work you've done. Name a key infrastructure that's changed by the work you've done. This is very basic, but it can allow you to go to a space that you don't allow yourself to go to day to day because you're just in the grind of figuring out how to put out fires. And another exercise you can do is you're 90 years old, what are you proud of? How did you get there? And to think about that in this very long-term piece, as people working in nonprofit or social justice, we don't often want to give ourselves that space, but I think it's really important. And another reason why it's important is because our opponents are often very good at presenting their vision. And it's often totally not believable, but they do it really well, and people will buy into it. This idea that technology will save all of us if we just download every app and get every laptop and every cell phone, everything will be great. That's, of course, when you think about it critically or logically, that's nonsense, but we are drawn to beautiful dreams like that. And it's emotional. It's not necessarily rational. So then the next step, after you kind of collectively define the vision, using co-states and all that, I can get into more of the beauty gritty of that if people want later, but I didn't want this presentation to be too long. So the next thing is to think about not, again, not about the problems or everything that's going wrong, but everything that's going right, all of the positive trends that are pushing us towards that vision, the vision that we collectively were able to articulate in very concrete terms, what's everything that's going right now? Let's identify that. And then the protagonist or the hero, if you want to call it that, those are the people that are pushing us towards, those are the people pushing the trends essentially. Who are the people making the trends happen? So we're not always the key people making change happen. We're entering into a space where lots of other actors are doing amazing work. So we need to know who's everybody who's on our side, who's pushing for the same world that we're pushing for. And then we want to really understand the motivations and values because the space where we can connect with their values, that's where we have to do the storytelling that will be compelling to them to bring us together. I have a little note that sometimes the protagonists and the audiences are the same, not always. Sometimes the people that are already pushing for change are the ones that you want to speak to and get them to work with you and work further and deeper or whatever. But sometimes the protagonists are frontline communities who are far away dealing with a very specific set of challenges. And your audience is, you know, urban world millennials, or sorry, just urban millennials, let's say. You're talking to this audience in order to get them to care about what's happening for these heroes, these protagonists that are pushing for the positive trends. So they can sometimes be the same and sometimes different. So that's an important distinction to make obviously. And then the antagonists. This is often called a villain. At Greenpeace we believe that we have no permanent friends and no permanent foes because people can shift. And so we use the term antagonist. Basically who is basically getting in the way of our protagonists doing the work that they're doing? Doesn't mean that they're evil, doesn't mean that they're stupid, doesn't mean that they'll never change, but right now who's in the way? And what are their motivations? So we want to find that out and talk about it in terms of storytelling because it allows us to empathize with them. It allows us to enter their consciousness and their ideas and their worldview. But essentially we're trying to figure out, can we neutralize them? Can we bring them on our side? Or can we defeat them? And then step seven is thinking about frames. And again, I would really highly recommend George Wachoff for this. He has very accessible books on frames and framing. But basically a frame is a lens that changes the structure of what's placed underneath it. So it changes the way you look at something. Everything gets transformed by that frame. And frames are very powerful because they work on a subconscious level. And Cognitive Language has studied this, the synapses that are created by certain words that trigger deep, deep frames that are put in us over decades and decades. And often conservative or powerful bodies out there have put in decades of work into pushing certain frames in the public consciousness. And we need to do a better job of investing in deeply thinking about frames and really being consistent with the frames that we trigger with our words and our images. So just to give you a concrete sense of what frames means, this is some of the language from the Dakota Pipeline on the right. Each of these little, and I just found these by just doing a Google search of images for Dakota Pipeline. And I found all of these as being consistently used in their banners. And each of these triggers a specific kind of frame. Defend the sacred as a religious spiritual frame. Who does that appeal to? That appeals to people who are religious or spiritual perhaps, or people who are sympathetic to that. Water protectors. Okay, so you see that the term protectors is important as opposed to activists. Who does that appeal to? People who are interested in protecting things, people who are interested in the value of protection rather than fighting, or being an activist perhaps. Each of these triggers a specific kind of frame, and I've just listed a few different examples. The Dakota Pipeline, like a lot of issues, uses a system of frames. It's not just one frame, right, because it's a complicated issue. And so they have a system of frames, each one working towards appealing to and communicating with different audiences. So for climate change, you know, often at Greenpeace we're using the environmental frame, but I think just like anybody else, we can be creative about thinking about other frames that will be interesting and will be compelling to new audiences. And of course, you know, your frame choice, you know, it cannot be totally out of line with your value. So that's also an issue. But just to say that any issue has multiple ways of – multiple possibilities. And just quickly, for a frame to work, it really has to be, again, like a Venn diagram. There are the values of your audience members, and there are the values of your organization. And what's in the center? What crosses over? That's your sweet spot. And you want to find frames that work with values that span your organization's values and your audience's values. And this is really, again, the thinking of George Lekoff. So, and frames have to be spread consistently over many, many years. You don't really want to try to dismantle frames. You just want to try to promote the frame that works for you. And never repeat the frame of your opponents, because that only strengthens their frame. So, part two of the framing is really defining the conflict. And there are lots of different ways to define the conflict that you're trying to present. But of course, storytelling is about drama, and drama is about conflict. And so you should really – I think it's really helpful to think about how to define the conflict in a very basic way. The story itself can be complicated, but the conflict, if you can come up with a simple way of talking about it, it can be very illuminating for people outside. So, one classic way to frame your conflict is a unity of opposites. And this comes from drama or plays. And the idea is come up with A versus D, and really define that. And so we did this in Mexico with posters, and people just writing what they think are the unity of opposites. And we just try to compile it, and see what's coming out, and we do dot voting, and that sort of thing. But these are some of the unity of opposites that came out that really make it simple for you to frame the issue. So, storytelling, the power of stories is basically the power, the psychological power of wanting to know what happens next. This is not an idea that's new. This is the reason why you turn the page to find out what happens next. This is why you keep watching an episode, because you want to know what happens next. And that's a power that we should be unafraid to use. So, the central question of any social drama, any large-scale drama that we're all engaged with, different dramas on a social level, including climate change being a very big social drama. There's always a question at the center of it, and we want to be able to try to define that question. So, climate change is a question that could be several ways to look at it, but one might be, like, will humanity get our act together? Will the politicians recognize the voice of the people? Can we get beyond the systems and structures that have been serving only an elite few and not most of the world? So, these are the questions that, again, these are kind of meta-level, but it's helpful to try to figure out what your central question of yours, organization, is called, story is. And then the persona of the organization. So, this is something that, like, often when we think of the organization story, we just think, okay, there's the identity, that's who we are, and that's it, and that's solid, but one exercise that I found very useful is to try to figure out the gap between what you think is your identity and what's actually out there in the world. And so, I've done this a few times at Greenpeace, and I've asked people to just basically pull out your cell phones or your laptops, and do a quick analysis of channels, you know, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or your email even, that go out to supporters. And if you could characterize the organization as a human being, what would that person, how would you describe that human being? And often this very simple question and, like, kind of distancing exercise can help you to see the organization from an outsider's perspective, and it can lead to surprises. And so, the, you know, one of the findings for Greenpeace Mexico's meeting was that, you know, often we sound very well-educated, liberal, or young, or we sound very expert, or rational, or judgmental, or even negative. Negativity is an issue for the environmental movement given, I mean, it's understandable because it's a really big challenge what we're facing with, but if that is the persona that's constantly out there, is that the right persona for us? And then people are very clear on how they would want to sound. You know, they want to sound this way, this way, that way, based off of the values and identity and all the things that you articulate, but the persona might not be delivering that. But only to say that a persona does not have to be static, right? Your personas can shift from situation to situation, because sometimes that kind of angry, tough activist persona is very useful in specific situations like when confronting a CEO or an opponent or something, but other times it may not be practical or useful if you're trying to bring in new kinds of people that don't identify with activism. And so, being very conscious of that can be helpful. And you can think of personas or identities in an organization like kind of notes in a symphony. There can be some variation of the sound, but there should also be a harmony and some sort of consistency of tone and sensibility. So there is flexibility, but you want it to kind of all be in the same family. And then the final step is to try to put the story of the organization or the campaign or the specific issue into a story arc. And that's just a trick to get you to be able to talk about what's going on in very simple terms. First there was this, now there's this, and we're heading towards this confrontation, and the future could be this or the future could be that. We don't know what the future is going to be like. We don't necessarily enter a story at its climax or at its highest peak of confrontation. We usually enter at a point where something is about to kick off. So one way to do this is to articulate all the sequence of events that led up to this moment where the conflict is going to kick off. And really collaboratively do that. And you can do this by setting these questions around the room and having people post it what they think is the step, how they would articulate these events or these moments. And then the plot point, this is critical for us at Greenpeace. We're really trying to think about how to bring in our supporters more so that we are less at the center. And so at each plot point, which is really a point when something important will happen for this cause or something important will happen for this organization that we do kind of project into or sort of imagine, what is the entry point for the audience? Because the audience should always be key in determining the future of that point, the range of possibilities. And so we really want to be clear about articulating that if possible. And then the resolution is you don't have it, but there is a vision. There is a heaven that's possible and you can articulate that. There's also hell. The hell may be that nothing changes. The hell may be that people don't join you. The hell may be that the opponent gets more and more powerful. But that's also important to articulate. To give people both the heaven and the hell of what we're facing. But often we just give them the hell. We don't give them the heaven or the possibility of the hope. And then the final step I would say, especially in a big organization or an organization that's very diverse, is to try to identify the must-haves. The things that everybody can agree of the 10 things that we identified, this works for me, this works for me, this works for me, identify those as non-negotiables. Everybody will agree to that. And this is what we did in Mexico. And then there's the negotiables, things that, you know, it's okay. If you don't want to do that, it'll be okay. So people can pick or choose other elements. This kind of unity of opposites doesn't work for us. Or this kind of character protagonist doesn't work for our context. That's okay. But to have the non-negotiables or the must-haves, and this can be done through dot voting, you know, or just voting with dots, so that it doesn't become a sort of, often speaking, to vote can lead to certain power dynamics overwhelming the room. So the next step, of course, as I said, it's not iterative. There's no silver, it is iterative. There's no silver bullet. So after Mexico, the next step for the offices was to try to run the session locally and then to workshop the story that they came up with, get feedback, really look at it, understand your audiences more and more, identify the best messengers for your story, try different mediums of storytelling. And the way that you figure out what medium of storytelling is best is probably just to see where your audience is going. You want to go to them. And that will probably save you a lot of time. So where are they going? Go there. Study from the best storytellers in that medium. Feel from them. Steal from genius. This is what all storytellers do and go from there. And then get feedback and test. See the outcome of your story. Not every story is going to be brilliant or perfect, but you can try new things and see what works and keep testing. These are the resources that I would recommend. If any of these ideas in this presentation strike you as interesting. There are some great things out there. At the bottom is the Greenpeace Story Team's temporary home. We're working on a new home in which we will try to post all of the processes that we've developed over the last year. So the home right now isn't fully up to date. It doesn't have the new workshops that we've developed, but we will have that by next year. And thank you very much. You can reach me via Twitter at LitPointer. And that's it for now. Thank you so much, Sering. That was such a detailed and organized presentation. We do have a couple of questions that we have the time to answer. The first one is, where can we see the story that resulted from this Greenpeace process? And I think we've chatted out the link, your temporary home, is that where folks will be able to find that? For the Urban Revolution, that story is still in process. So it's not ready to be, it's not done. It's still being workshopped, and it takes a long time, especially for a big organization like ours. Is that what people are asking? They want to see the finished results? Yes, and I'll ask Elizabeth to continue chatting in to make sure we can clarify the question. And as she's doing that, we have another question. Can you give an example of a meta narrative and a narrative? Yeah, so a very basic meta narrative would be what it means to be an expecting mother, a woman who's pregnant. And for a long time there was this idea that you were just supposed to be glowing and happy and everything's wonderful and your life is fulfilled and all this stuff. And then I think because of people, the counter narrative or the counter strategy that we see is celebrity figures and certain people speaking out and saying, actually that's not my reality. People like Bookshelves talking about postpartum depression. And that really changed the narrative around what it means to be a mother and what it means to exist in that state. Because up until then women were not, in a sense, given permission to feel anything but joy. And they couldn't speak about the pain and the kind of depression that they were experiencing after going through this incredibly life changing experience or in the midst of it. And so that narrative has really shifted, I would say, as a result of people speaking about their personal experiences. And that would be a very basic counter strategy to that meta narrative. It's personal experience putting that out there, not to say that it was easy, but that is something that I think has shifted. Thank you. Another question we have is, do you have specific examples of ways you've used different media to tell these stories? I mean there's endless examples. I mean for Greenpeace we often do photo essays because we have a lot of, you know, we're out in the world. We're in the ocean. We're in the forest in the Amazon. So we do a lot of, we have this incredible media library where we collect hundreds and hundreds of photos. And so we do work with journalists, photos essayists, and to try to create beautiful stories through photo essays. We do a lot of video storytelling. A lot of our storytelling I think happens on Facebook and Instagram these days because that's really where our audience is. But we are trying to, you know, always trying to expand that because we're not interested in just speaking with urban millennials or urban sort of wealthy folks or, you know, activists or progressives. Right now we have this in our three-year program strategy or our ten-year strategy actually. We have an emphasis on urban populations but also frontline communities. So my colleague, Enrica, will be going to the Philippines in Tacloban, sorry not the Philippines, but in Tacloban. And she will be working with the community there because they're already doing a lot of storytelling but using traditional modes like oral storytelling, plays, you know, music, that sort of thing. And that's an area that we need to become better at understanding and amplifying and translating to the greater world because we're interested in understanding these communities and also amplifying their narratives to the people elsewhere. So yeah, endless possibilities. A lot of our storytelling right now is happening on social media. Great. Thanks so much. And I think a lot of folks are just looking for examples, like your ten-step process and how that applies to very specific stories that Greenpeace tells. And I think some of the resources you've provided should help answer those questions. There are some folks looking for some guidance in terms of their specific audience. We have someone who's asking, what do you recommend for a story supporting children? There's a local youth center that has a lot of great programs but nobody's dying and there's nothing really dramatic. But they do want to try to create a story that expresses the urgency of the need. I think children, to me it doesn't have to be about people dying or it doesn't have to be high drama. It doesn't have to be climate change or hurricanes or typhoons for it to be compelling. When you think of stories that are the most compelling for me, it's always just about really focusing in on the central character. So really get personal. Don't be afraid to get personal. I think often in nonprofit storytelling we really want to be rational. We want to get into the policies. We want to take bird's-eye view. But storytelling is most powerful when you get personal and you really zone in on the person. And you can think about some of the most powerful photos that came out last year of Syrian refugee children. I drowned on the shores of Europe or rescued from a crumbling building in Syria. It's the personal individual focus, this very human-to-human connection that is the most powerful thing about storytelling. And that's something that reports, press releases, these things cannot accomplish what the personal kind of connection can. And for me like Persepolis, the story of this young girl, that was the most compelling thing that I saw that really made me feel connected to that part of the world and the struggles of women in Iran. So really get personal. Pick some charismatic and interesting people who you're serving. Go and see them and see how you can translate their narratives in various forms and express that. That's the first step that I would go for. And of course stories can be episodic. It might not just be a one thing, but people love to follow the journey of people. We love to see where things go. And not only that, we love to be a part of the conversation. Game of Thrones is so powerful because of the meta-discussion around it. Everybody talks about Game of Thrones and they have an entry point to start entering into that world and theorizing and things like that. So create that journey for your audience. Give them an arc that's long, not just a short soundbite or a short little story about somebody. Give them time to get to know people. Go very personal. Let them enter into a new world in a new person's story. As an immersive experience, something that you yourself find compelling, I think other human beings will find compelling. So that's where I would go. Go personal. Go deep. Give that time. Give it that space so the story can evolve over time as well. Great. Thanks. I think we have time for one more question, and then I'm going to let Lewis talk a little bit about our Storymakers campaign this year. So how do you share the personal human stories without being exploitative? So this question I think is trying to balance the need for creating the urgency, but also being respectful. Yeah, I think that's a really important question. And I think that for me that is something that I'm always thinking about. And going back to what I said earlier about the process of creating the story, being just as important. And for anybody who's creating stories, to be really conscious of the hazards of the stories that they're creating, what stereotypes does this push? Who actually has a voice in creating the story? So if the story is being created without the impact of communities having a space to be a part of that creation, that might be a red flag. That might be something to really think about. So the best way that I can think of is to involve them. Do they feel empowered by the story? Do they feel that this is representative of their narrative? And as a Tibetan person, this is something that I feel is very important because for centuries everybody but Tibetans has told our story. So it's really important to involve the people. They know best what they feel is true and representative of their experiences. So if you can do that and not create your stories in isolation and to speak for people, I think that is a mistake, speak with them. Thanks so much. And Sirene again, we are going to turn this over to Louis and then we'll come back to you for some last comments. Louis will be talking about our campaign for story makers at TechSoup. Louis, take it away. Thanks Susan and thanks Sirene. That was really valuable. Something TechSoup will be able to use for ourselves. So I just wanted to let people know about our story maker campaign. The URL is info.techsoup.org forward slash story makers dash 2017. This year we want everyone to submit and we are going to be collecting all the stories and we have a new tool that will allow us to really showcase the work. So yes, we have five prizes. We have $10,000 total in prizes. Each category will be for $2,000. What's new this year is we divided the first three categories by budget size. So the small organizations, you won't be competing against Greenpeace if you submit a video. The local impact is for nonprofits under $500,000 US. Our driving change award sponsored by Adobe is for nonprofits with a budget of over $500,000 to a million. And then shifting the future is for organizations over a million. We also for the first time have an award for non-US NGOs, the Orbis Unum One World Award. And then we will have one award that is based on community voting. But the key thing is we want you to share your story so that we can share with the larger nonprofit sector the different ways that nonprofits are creating videos, whether videos promoting the environment for your local community, serving the poor. We want to be able to showcase this, share it back out, and that is one of our key goals this year. So please submit. The contest goes from now through October 31st. You have some time. And I just want to thank Serene again, and back to you Susan. Great. Thank you. And as I thank our presenters today, I would like everyone to actually share a story or something that you learned today that you are going to be able to apply or something that you are going to share with a colleague. I do want to take this opportunity to thank Serene. She has put a lot of effort and energy into this presentation and practicing with me and ensuring that we also gathered information from you in the polling questions to engage you because storytelling is about engagement. I also want to thank Lewis. He does a lot here at TechSoup to promote the Storymakers campaign. He does work day and night, and I know because I was there last night to promote this event. And I really want to encourage everyone to submit. There are lots of ways you can get ideas. Serene's presentation was the first in a series. As you see, there will be other events. On 928, we will have our second Storymakers webinar. It is free, Driving Action with Video, Storytelling, Production Tips. So this is all about today was about really pre-production, right? And then next time we will talk about production tips. And in October, we will have a post-production event. And then in case you are wondering, and you are looking for some funds, we have a whole series of events about fundraising and GrantStation. So I do invite you to all of those. They are all free. You can go to our website and you can check out these events and register. Searing, again, I really want to thank you for all of your time, your expertise, and your commitment to the community for storytelling. Thank you, Susan. Thank you, everybody. Great. Thank you. And Lewis, thank you so much. Thank you, Susan. And finally, Molly, Molly Bacon on the back end for doing all of the chat and helping connect the links to the things that Serene was saying. All of you, I want you to have a wonderful weekend. I want you to come back and join us for another event soon. Thank you so much for your time. We know it is your most valuable asset. And again, thanks to our ReadyTalk, our sponsor for this platform. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Bye-bye.