 everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. We're super, super excited because we have Josh Grenowitz from Auduc. You gotta love that. And we're going to be talking about narrative frameworks and how we can work them into our campaigns and what we need to be doing that. So many of us in the nonprofit sector, this is that golden hour where we start really working towards launching our campaigns for the end of the year, holiday seasons, all of that. And so this is really going to be a great conversation with Josh. Before we get going, in case we haven't met, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Jared Ransom, my trusty sidekick, is out for a couple of days. She'll be back next week. And then hint, hint, I'll be gone. But that's neither here nor there. We want to make sure we thank all of our presenting sponsors without them. We would not be here as we are day in and day out as we march towards our 600 episode. I know, it blows my mind. I don't even, that makes me 600 days older, Josh, than when we started this so we want to give a big shout out to Blue Morang American Nonprofit Academy, your part time controller, nonprofit nerd, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique and nonprofit thought leader. And again, if you've missed any of our back episodes or you want to see this episode again today or share it with somebody else, you can find us on Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon Fire TV and now on podcast. So you can queue us up wherever you like to get your streaming content. You can take us along for your ride into the office when you're running, exercising, housekeeping, whatever, but we want to be there with you. So check us out on our podcast. Okay, Josh Granowitz, I love the name Odd Duck. Thank you. As I have felt like an odd duck in my life. Yes. Yes. What does this mean? What does this work that you do? Sure, sure. So I could actually start with the with the name odd duck because you know, I spent a lot of my career on extremely ADD. And so I spent a lot of my career, you know, kind of being odd man out or, you know, a little freakish in the best possible way. And I think when when I launched my own agency, the idea was to let my freak flag fly openly. And so that's why the the name of duck. But we are in answer your question, Julia. We are a storytelling for social change consultancy. We focus primarily on the population health and mental wellness space. And we really do we do three areas of work within that. The first is strategic storytelling, which is probably what we're going to spend the bulk of our time talking about today. The second is actual content development. So we do everything from narrativizing curriculums, gamifying curriculums to collecting oral histories, whether that's video, audio, written, or multimedia oral history projects, and a whole bunch of content development in between both fiction and nonfiction. And then the third is doing training and technical assistance in the space, whether it's helping community based organizations to navigate the ubiquitous sort of misinformation that's out there right now, or, you know, helping thought leaders and, you know, thinkers in various spaces to, you know, testify their their talk and get ready for, you know, kind of presenting on the 10 stage or something along those lines. So that's the broad range of what we do. Okay, so I my new word of the day, terrify. Oh my God, I love that. Because I'm going to terrify that. That's awesome. Because you said that and I was like, I knew what you meant. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we we even when I'm working with my clients, we talk about we have like, you know, micro stories, which are usually your 30 second snapshot, like, you know, we do these all the time, every day, you know, around the water cooler and so on. Then we have your anecdote, which is a little bit longer, maybe about 30 seconds to a minute, sometimes up to three minutes. And then, you know, we talk about your your story story. And that's the the terrified one, which is usually seven, seven to 12 minutes. You know, you get a little bit into your history, into your personal experience, into your background, your founder story and so on, and ensure that. So that's that's usually how we kind of conceptualize these units of storytelling. You know, before we get in much deeper, I love how you segmented this off. Because I feel like if we could reinforce that to our C suite, and our board members and our volunteers, yes, then we could actually amplify the story of our work and create more interest in our nonprofits, because it's that you don't know, like, when you go to pick up your dry cleaning, that you you have an opportunity to engage somebody in the story of your work and the story of your passion or, you know, the story of community need. And so I love that you've taken that into that kind of framework, because I think a lot of people think, oh, I have to be on the TED stage in order to be successful, but absolutely, you just rope this back around. That's really cool. Yeah, I mean, for for us, Julia, it was really about so we looked at we look at this is our theory of change, right? So we look at everything and through a narrative lens. And I don't know about you, but I don't remember the last time I pitched anybody in an elevator. So so for us, it was like, well, how do we how do we get those little units of of micro story where you're talking to the dry cleaner, you're talking to the the barista at Starbucks, or you're talking to, you know, whomever who might not want to hear, you know, all of your your your how you got involved in the issue in the first place. And, you know, when you were six, you were, you know, daydreaming about that. And they're like, okay, buddy, keep it moving, keep it moving. Right. So so this is what and when we do a narrative framework, we really take that kind of consecutive sort of concentric ring model. And we build out like here's your 25 word version, which should be around 30 seconds. Here's your 50 word version of the story. Here's your hundred word. And then here's your extended narrative. So when you're sitting down, and you have somebody who's sitting across from you at a table and wants to hear everything that you have to share, like you can go in depth and and elaborate and riff on things and and you know, follow tangents and still stay focused on the main issue at hand. Okay, I think we need to end this right now because I want to go back to my office. And I want to sit at my desk and I want to do something with that ring. Because I find myself getting challenged. How do I cram this all down hot, you know, and then it's just this like, you got to speak faster. You got to speak faster. It's like, you know, you've got to be more thoughtful. I wow. Okay, so you've like blown my mind. Let's, I know that's Oh my gosh. Yeah, Tetefi and the story. Okay, I'm there. So let's talk about this narrative intersection. If you're trying to marry these rings or have them be a logical, you know, I'm thinking of like a rock hitting a pond and you have those rooms. That's exactly it. That's how we conceptualize it. Okay, so talk about these things because this is a really, it's so logical, but I don't know why we don't do this enough. And it's, it's so it is. And so what we say is, you know, if you start in the outermost ring, so usually we talk about these concentric rings, we use six separate layers or units of storytelling. The outermost ring is meta narrative, right? So meta narrative is intersecting narratives that really are sort of the operating system of culture of society as a whole. And, you know, you can think of anything from from, you know, health inequities to systemic racism to innovation and creativity and how we conceptualize those. Those are all narratives that kind of perpetuate and keep things operating the way they are the status quo and how they intersect is usually those meta narratives. Then when we're dealing with organizations, you also have another layer of what we refer to as lore. So that's the internal organizational stuff. What people are saying about the executive director, how the board represents the issues, the causes and what they're passionate about and so on. So what we say, Julia, is that those three outer rings, you can't just go head to head with them. You can't go toe to toe with them and disrupt them because they're just way too big for any one person, any one organization, any one campaign. Period. So how do we, how do we actually shift? How do we move the needle on those? That's where those three inner concentric rings are. So you have your micro story, your anecdote and your story. And each one of those is, you know, like if story is currency, that's how we're getting buy-in. And then we're disrupting, you know, those meta narratives, uncoupling them and disrupting them. And so that's how, that's our theory of change overall. And then the slide that you just showed, which is really what we build is a scaffolding, a framework for how to structure all of those narratives. Talking to the audience, that's most important because as you're probably aware and in the work that you do, if you're trying to message to everyone, you're messaging to no one at all. Period. So you have to, you have to determine who are your audiences, who are the ones who are going to help you make the change that you want to have happen in the world. And then what are the questions they're asking? So if you distill their entire persona, who they are, their way of looking at the world down to single questions that orient to those narratives, then how do you address or answer those questions and disrupt that overall narrative that they're carrying around? And that's how we came up with the concept of narrative framework in the first place. You know, I love this because it gives everybody permission to be a little bit briefer and then also be more strategic in thinking about how it works. That's right. It's all about strategy too. It's strategic storytelling. So the first thing that we do when we're leading workshops, when we're taking people through the narrative framework process is we figure out what is your objective. So a lot of times, especially in communication, especially in nonprofit communication, folks come in and they have tactics or strategies in mind for what they want. But we want to get on the TED stage, right? We want a New York Times article. Okay, everybody does. And we want an audience with Oprah. So if we could get those three things, we're done. And it's like, okay, great. Let's take a step back. What do you want to do with the attention? What do you want to do with that once you get in that New York Times and the phone's blowing up, right? What do you want when you're sitting down with Oprah? What do you actually want? So let's start there first and then we'll build in the tactics. We'll build in the strategies. We'll figure out those other pieces. But let's start with what are you actually trying to accomplish? And it doesn't have to be explicitly cause-related. It can be internal things, infrastructure issues. We want to build up this department, or we're getting into food distribution now. We've never been into food distribution before. And so we really need the apparatus internally to actually be able to manage all of those pieces. So, you know, those could be the objectives that you're trying to, you know, and then that you're trying to communicate. And then we figure out, well, okay, what are the things that are actually going to make those happen? And so first, you know, who are the audiences that are going to help you achieve success? And then what do they need to hear from you? Right? And so we build an entire story map. That's the core of a narrative framework is a story map, which maps out your core audiences, what they're telling themselves or what they subscribe to now about the issue, about the concept, about whatever, and then what they need from you as an organization to help you get to the outcomes that you want, whether that outcome is, you know, fundraising or, you know, anything. Yeah, yeah, building community support. Okay, so part and parcel of this, I'm like, totally now an odd duck groupie. I'm like, and I totally get, I'm like, I'm all in with this. I'm so fascinated, because a lot of what you're talking about is cultural. That's how we communicate and how we think about communication. So talk to us about big culture and little culture. I'm fascinated to hear about that. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So big culture, you know, culture with a capital C, right, is, is what we, what we live and breathe in all the time. So that's, that's how we go around. So I actually, a lot of this is modeled off of literary theorists who did the first evolutionary analysis of literature. So what is the psychological, social and anthropological needs from an evolutionary perspective that story and play and all of that serve our species? Right. And I'll just ask, because I asked this in my, in my question. So if it's okay, Julia, I'll just ask you, what do you, what do you think it is? And I will say that I would have, if I didn't know this, answer this question wrong. Well, sure, you know, I think it's about, so I think, believe it or not, I'm a geek. I think about this type of a question a lot. And I think ultimately it comes down to ego and place. And I think it has to do with longevity. How long do I survive on this planet? Interesting. Interesting. Yes. So that's, that's not too far from, well, it's, it's, so where I would start is I would say, oh, story serves meaning making. It's, it's a meaning making purpose. That's, that's what I would, I would argue and articulate. I would be wrong. So it does do that. It does serve that. But for the species as a whole, and this does, this is, this is where you are totally on point. For the species as a whole, story serves for social cohesion. Yeah. So when everybody, everybody in a culture is bought into collectively bought into a story, right? They're willing to do things for that story. That becomes the vision that they want to bring it to reality and they're committed to it, right? So that's the big culture. And we can think of all sorts of big culture, big C stories that we subscribe to for, for culture at large. And I, I like to say if it does that for the species, imagine what it can do for your organization, for community-based group or for your nonprofit, right? And so that's, it's all creating and bringing into alignment in the same way you have those concentric rings, all of the narratives that you're trying to, to, to share into a strategic framework. Okay. I got to say this really quickly. And then I want to know about little culture. I serve on the board and we just launched a big, a situation, a big promotion program, whatever, for our community called social cohesion dialogues. And I'm not making this up. It has to do with social justice. Yeah. And so the concept is that we all have prejudice and bias and we have all these things that we don't know about, but if we are able to talk and if we're, if we're able to discuss things and hear different stories and point of views, we build a stronger society. Yeah, absolutely. It's really an interesting thing. I mean, you said that and I was like, holy crap. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's it. That's really awesome. And that conceptualization is perfect, Julie, because there are so many misconceptions or misunderstandings of that broader narrative that we have around social justice, that we have around race, that we have around safety and security and public safety and all of that feeds into, that's where those meta narratives come from. So then, you know, those are where they couple up and a lot of times it's like the individual narratives are, you know, like there, there are racial components to it. There are, you know, justice components to it. There are social justice components to it. There are, you know, legal issues and those all kind of feed together. And it's like, how do you define those narratives first and then do exactly what you're saying, like get everybody together to have some cohesive conversation and, and, and arrive at some of the same shared solutions in a shared space. I love it. I love that shared solutions and shared space. So Josh, then, as we're, so that's, you know, big culture. Now, little culture, what, how do you see that playing out? Yeah, yeah. So little culture is really like, what can, you know, so the organization or organizations that are driving this initiative that you just shared, right? What can they do to sort of harmonize and, and, you know, advance cohesive narrative that sort of disrupts these existing narratives, right? And so a lot of it, you know, when we go back to narrative framework, a lot of times we're working with organizations to say how do they tell their story? How do they get this out in the world? And, you know, we shared, you know, you had the slide teed up, but what we look at, you know, is, is kind of concentric. If you picture like a, a Venn diagram, right? And you have each of those concepts. So you have your, your concept branding, and you have your messaging framework, and you have your, your organizational change or change management piece, right in the middle of that, the connective tissue between all three of those is narrative, right? And what often happens, and I know I've worked on campaigns like this in the past, but what often happens is, you know, you get your branding right, you get your messaging right, and you say, okay, well, you know, this is so beautiful, and we've got this new logo. And once the new logo is out everywhere, everybody, everybody's going to just fall in line. And like what we forget, we forget two things. One, we forget like how, how, you know, change is hard, change is hard at any level, right? And so we, we forget that like, you know, when we're making this change, sometimes we're not thinking of all of the people who are backing the organization, who are part of the organization from, from like, you know, the frontline workers and staff and social workers and so on, all the way up to the, the board members. And how do we harmonize them and get all of them on board so that it's not just an externally facing campaign, or not just an externally facing rebrand, but that everybody is, you know, pulling from the same playbook, right? And telling the same story. So that's, that's, that's where that concept comes from. And when we talk about, you know, lowercase, little culture, right, it's all about getting the organization harmonized first. So, you know, yeah, you can go out and you can make all sorts of changes in the world and the grand scheme of things, disrupting, you know, big C culture, but you're most effective when you have complete alignment of your, your organization, your little C culture, right? Wow, Josh, you know, I love that you brought this up because I don't think we, and you probably can amplify this, but I don't think we do that. I don't think we ever think about our own teams. And again, it's, you know, that phrase preaching to the choir. I don't need to preach to the choir here every Sunday. They know what I'm going to say and they're going to say it, not necessarily, not necessarily. We need to start, you know, with our own teams so that then they can go out and evangelize and just, you know, move it forward. So that's a cool thing. I appreciate that you brought that up because it kind of sets things, it sets things in a little bit of a different way. And what I hear you saying is you got to back up, start testing, working with your own teams and your own people before you go out into the community. And I would even say, take it a step further, Julia, like for, for us, what, when we've been most effective, it's when the, the, the staff member who's been in an organization for 20, 25 years, right? Like suddenly sees that 25 years of history contributing to where they're going in the future. So maybe the organization has a new name, it has a new identity, has a new logo, everything is aligned and ready for this campaign. But how does that, you know, 25 years of history inform, you know, that new direction that the organization is going, right? And so that's, that's what we're talking about here. And, and you're 100% right. And I know that I've been guilty of it before in, in organizations and positions before it's, Oh, well, my team's going to fall in line. I mean, how can they not like, this is a beautiful logo. How can they not love this logo? This is an amazing, like we were doing such great work. How could they not be aligned with this? And then you, you know, when, when, when you actually have these conversations, when you slow things down enough to engage your entire team and bring them up to speed, you, you recognize that there is often a lot of fear and anxiety about just the change in general. And so the beautiful new logo is great. But you know, how does, what does that, how does that speak to me? I put in all this energy into this old organization. And so, you know, so it's bringing them up to speed and making sure that their story, their history, their personal experience is incorporated into the future direction of the organization. Okay. I love this. And I'm like, I'm totally, yeah, I'm going to move to Chicago next week. Yeah, I don't know how I'm going to function in the winter, but I'm going to show up on your doorstep. Now, so much of what you've been sharing with us today, Josh is, is a very logical strategic approach to storytelling and the narrative. But at the end of the day, we do have emotional things that we're dealing with. And I think we can exploit them. We can, you know, sometimes have a problem that's so overwhelming that you can say my $1, my $10, my million dollars will never change the situation. So how do we blend emotion and storytelling and make it effective and not a pity party or just something that overwhelms us? So what I would say, the first thing that I would say to that Julia is that for us, you know, we spend a lot of time when we're doing these story maps, when we're doing the narrative framework, we spend a lot of time on what we call tone. So what we say in these trainings in the narrative framework is often how you say something is just as important, if not more important at times, than what you're actually saying. And that's that emotional tone, right? Because how it's received, everybody is bringing into their engagement with a story, engagement with another person, engagement with an organization, engagement with an institution, engagement with, you know, a university, whatever, they're bringing in their own emotional baggage, they're bringing in their own experience. We're seeing this play out around COVID, right? Where it's like, you know, we, since the pandemic started, we've worked on a number of campaigns with community-based service providers, you know, around, you know, adoption of, you know, different, whether it's the safety protocols or, you know, you know, economic interventions or so on, right? And the thing is, you know, people are, people are understandably scared. You know, what happens when you're moving from a space of fear, you're often, even in your personal life, you're not making the most rational decisions. So you're not processing information. And there's this whole push of like, well, you know, if people just knew the facts or if people just had the science behind this, they would, they would understand it would be, and it's like, no, we have to focus on the emotion first. We have to create a safe space where somebody can actually feel comfortable sharing what their concerns are, expressing their fears, you know, same with like the social cohesion, you know, that's, that's another issue that's very charged, you know, that's very, like, when you're talking about, you know, public safety, you're talking about, you know, you know, years and years and years of state sanctioned oppression, right? And abuse, like, there's a lot of emotion there. And so you have to actually, before you can even, again, interject or disrupt, you know, the, the, the narratives that exist, you have to create a space for emotions to be expressed and, and, you know, be felt. And then you have to deliver in a tone that resonates or harmonizes with, you know, the, the, the where, where folks are at after they've cleansed the palate, so to speak, you know, to, to meet them where they are and to deliver a story that's, you know, in tone in tune with where they're, where they're thinking is. Wow. Okay. So you've like super engaged me and blown my mind. I'm thinking I need to like come to Chicago and become one of your actors. Let's do it. Let's hang out. Yes. Oh my God. Because you're speaking my love language. I mean, I, I think this is just, you know, we, we go Josh by this, this notion that there are 1.8 million registered nonprofits in this great country of ours that has nonprofits because we have problems. Yeah. So, and things that we want to solve and opportunities. And so we have a lot of competition for time and money and motion and action. And so what you've been talking about with us today is just at the core of so much success and opportunity. No matter what it is, your nonprofit is trying to do it really, this is I think one of those foundational discussions. It's been such a pleasure to get to know you across the wires. As they say, Josh Granowitz, founder and narrative strategist of Odd Duck. I want to be on your flock, my friend. Birds of a feather. Birds of a feather, man. You're totally talking my language. I just am so interested in this. And I think you've really taken us on a journey of reexamining this narrative. Because so many of us, we're, we're, especially this time of year, as you know, Josh campaign, campaign, get there, get us ready. We, you know, printing the new landing page, you know, and it's like, wait a minute, let's rethink this. So really cool to hear your message. I'm really, I'm really impressed. I'm going to have to digest some of this, um, tetefi. Super cool word. Those concentric circles of how we navigate the depth and the breadth of what we're trying to communicate as opposed to one thing and trying to all get it out there. I loved that. Really interesting concepts that I think we can all share and gain from. So it has been an amazing time. I told you that it would go by fast. Yeah, it really did. It really did. Wow. I know it went fast for me. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, my co-host, Jared Ransom. We'll be back with us next week. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors. This is why I come to work every day to have these discussions with these amazing thought leaders around our great planet. And so it's Josh Granowitz. You have been just fabulous and you are here thanks to Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, non-profit nerd, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, and the non-profit thought leader. What a magical way for me to start my day for some of you viewers. You're maybe doing lunch or ending your day, but this has been really amazing. Josh, thank you so much. Thank you, Julia. Appreciate it. It has been great. Hey, as we end every episode of the non-profit show, we want to remind our viewers, our listeners, ourselves to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.