Ethical Storytelling for Fundraising Communications - How to Create Compelling Content without Exploitation: A Step by Step Guide (Recording)

In this recorded webinar you will learn how to apply the principles of ethical storytelling to transform your fundraising communications. 

This tactical session will guide you step-by-step in evaluating your own communications, defining ethical excellence in your storytelling process, and securing buy-in from your team so that you can launch your new strategy with success.  

By the end of this 90-minute webinar you will walk away with a clear understanding of exploitation and ethics in fundraising communications and possess a plan of action - that you create! - fully customized to your mission and tailored to the size of your organization.   

During This Nonprofit Webinar You Will Learn:

STEP 1: How to Assess Your Current Storytelling Strategy

a. How to assess exploitative elements in fundraising communications
b. How to gather evidence to inform your storytelling process
c. How to collect and apply feedback from your story contributors
d. How to collect and apply feedback from your audience 
e. How to identify your own strengths and limitations as a storyteller

STEP 2: How to Create an Ethical Storytelling Strategy 

a. How to engage your team in a collaborative process to define (and refine) shared principals
b. How to determine what codes and guidelines you need
c. How to identify key messages in your storytelling strategy
d. How to identify the best methods for communicating your key messages

STEP 3: How to Launch Your Ethical Storytelling Strategy

a. How to launch new initiatives that educate and inspire donors
b. How to determine which metrics you need to measure success
c. How to engage all stakeholders throughout the process
d. How to keep your team growing and learning

Our presenter, Caliopy Glaros, has helped organizations in more than sixty countries around the world build storytelling processes that are contributor-led, donor-educating, and money-raising, all while instilling principles of ethical storytelling in their teams. 

Caliopy is specifically qualified to teach this webinar because:

1. She has consulted many organizations that support communities vulnerable to marketing exploitation such as children in orphanages, trauma survivors, and refugees.
2. She has trained small grassroots nonprofits as well as large multinational NGOs on ethical storytelling. 
3. She has spoken on ethical storytelling at sold-out events with standing-room-only audiences across the US. 
4. She has been in your shoes - before becoming a consultant, she spent years as a front-line Development Officer where she was responsible for both mass market communications and major gifts. 
5. She is a practitioner as well as a scholar, leveraging the best research in social psychology and anthropology to be immediately actionable and applicable to your nonprofit’s communications.

Do you struggle to portray your program participants as their own agents of change, while admitting that they also need your organization’s help? Do you worry about jeopardizing the dignity of the people in your stories for the sake of raising money? Do you find yourself debating ethical storytelling principles with colleagues who don’t see eye-to-eye?

You are not alone.

Despite the numerous resources and articles online, many organizations still struggle to communicate their impact in a way that authentically represents the issue and preserves the dignity of those affected by it. 

This session takes you from theory to practice, from confusion to clarity, and from conflict to collaboration.  

This webinar is about more than the messages themselves - it’s about the entire storytelling process, from acquisition of content, to interpretation, to crafting the narrative and measuring its effectiveness.  This webinar will help you to see all the ways exploitation and ethics manifest in your storytelling process and exactly what to do about it. 

Storytelling never happens in a vacuum. To be successful in transforming your organization’s communications you need to be a change-agent yourself - bringing your entire team and stakeholders along - and that includes your audience and contributors! We’ll show you how to get feedback from them to inform your process and how to forge a collaborative path forward.

You’ll Get These BONUS Materials:

1. Worksheet: How to Assess Your Current Storytelling Strategy
2. Worksheet: How to Create an Ethical Storytelling Strategy
3. Worksheet : How to Launch Your Ethical Storytelling Strategy
4. Sample: Donor Feedback Questionnaire 
5. Sample: Contributor Feedback Questionnaire 
6. The Webinar Slides 
7. The Webinar Recording 

About Your Topic Expert:

Caliopy Glaros helps organizations transform their donor engagement strategies into catalysts for positive social change. As a consultant for Philanthropy without Borders, she works with organizations to create impactful virtual and in-person opportunities for donors to connect directly to the programs they support. After years of seeing nonprofits struggle with power dynamics and exploitative elements often inherent in site-visits and mass market communications, she developed tools and strategies to help them curate better experiences and design communications that build empathy and intercultural competence in their supporters. In addition to her extensive research, writing, and speaking, she provides group training, individual coaching, and project consulting on mass market communications, one-on-one stewardship, events, site-visits, tours, and travel programs. Caliopy has an academic background in Anthropology and Adult Learning, is a certified trainer in Intercultural Communication, and the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access (IDEA) Chair of the Oregon and SW Washington Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.