Telling Tales; why charities should learn the art of storytelling

As the government funding drip is turned off many charities face closure.  The Big Society agenda encourages third sector organisations to adopt a private sector approach and to generate more income from running public services. It also seeks to stimulate a culture of personal and corporate giving .

Yet, if we look at the issue of giving and philanthropy, we hit a couple of fairly big hurdles. Firstly, private donations have not increased since Margaret Thatcher was in power and secondly, the third sector is relying on a decreasing number of donors, (albeit ones who are giving more).

So, competition for donations is tough and any charity looking fund it’s activity through philanthropy needs to be able to enthuse, inspire and motivate the person with whom they are communicating.

Given this situation, I am always amazed that more charities aren’t harnessing the power of storytelling.  Stories are one of the most powerful communication tools there is, conveying information in a way that is memorable and less likely to make the person you are communicating with feel as if they are being lectured at.  More importantly, at time where apathy is the greatest barrier to action, a powerful story can make people care about and respond to an issue.

The ones that focus on only one or two individuals make the most powerful stories of all. An often- quoted example occurs in 2002, when $48,000 was raised to save a dog stranded on a ship adrift near Hawaii.   What made this story so powerful, was that every dog owner visualised their own dog on that ship, in turn, moving empathy into an act of giving.

In contrast, there is a negative correlation between an increase in the number of lives at stake and our ability to empathise. Paul Slovic from the university of Oregon refers to this concept as ‘psychic numbing’.  In his article “If I look at the mass I will never act”: Psychic numbing and genocide he states;

The reported numbers of deaths represent dry statistics, “human beings with the tears dried off,” that fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action.

This view is upheld in a study by Deborah Small, a marketing professor from the University of Pennsylvania.  The study examines what motivates people to give. In one trial she took the issue of famine in Africa.  Participants in the trial were given a case study that focused solely on the plight of Rokia a seven year old girl from Mali who was facing starvation, they were then given a second case study which set out an array of impressive, hard-hitting statistics about whole communities facing food shortages and possible starvation  finally,  they were shown a  case study which combined the two approaches, (an individual’s story backed up by statistics).  They were then asked to identify which of these examples would motivate them to donate.

The overwhelming response from participants in the trial was to give to Rokia, the single individual over the faceless many.  When confronted by statistics, no matter how alarming, the participant’s interest tailed off.

What Small’s study unequivocally demonstrated was this; it is feelings, not analytical thinking, that compels people to give.

The formula is so simple and yet far too many charities choose to emphasise the need for their service using statistics and corporate jargon.

Take this example;

The mission of the National Autism Association is to educate and empower families affected by autism and other neurological disorders, while advocating on behalf of those who cannot fight for their own rights. We will educate society that autism is not a lifelong incurable genetic disorder but one that is biomedically definable and treatable. We will raise public and professional awareness of environmental toxins as causative factors in neurological damage that often results in an autism or related diagnosis. We will encourage those in the autism community to never give up in their search to help their loved ones reach their full potential, funding efforts toward this end through appropriate research for finding a cure for the neurological damage from which so many affected by autism suffer.

The National Autism charity is an impressive charity, but sadly not many people will bother to read beyond the second line.

In contrast, some charities do break the mold and successfully exploit the formula.   Save the Children use the image of a single child on their adverts where the NSPCC focuses it’s marketing around the story of one or two children.

For now, the big question is whether the current climate will encourage more charities to re-evaluate how they communicate with their audience. I suppose it’s still too soon to tell, but at time when charities are having to compete harder than ever for limited resources, one thing we can be sure of is this; charities who know how to tell their stories will be several steps ahead of those who don’t.

The Big Society Break Up

Liverpool and Big Society have finally gone their separate ways.  Not that it was ever destined to be a match made in heaven – more of an arranged marriage, with Whitehall ending up as the bossy, dominant one, whilst Liverpool played the increasingly reluctant suitor, feeling that everything was moving far too fast and that ultimately Whitehall was taking more than it was prepared to give.

Lets face it; it didn’t get off to a very good start did it?

Liverpool’s first date with Big Society was a rather confusing affair.  Describing Big Society as his, “big passion” and setting out an alluring vision to redistribute power, “from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street” it was in Liverpool that David Cameron choose to launch his shiny new idea.

Joe Anderson, Leader of Liverpool City Council sat in the audience, an invited guest, whilst Phil Redmond, who had independently agreed with Whitehall that Liverpool would become a Big Society Vanguard, took centre stage. Phil spoke of a new opportunity for the city, one that would be driven by National Museums Liverpool and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service.

It quickly became clear that, without Local Authority support, the Big Society vision would never be fully realised.  Liverpool City Council agreed to support the role out of Big Society and fostered a genuine hope that by investing resource and energy in to Big Society it would yield benefits both to Liverpool’s citizens and the third sector.

And it did bring some benefits.  Excellent work that had previously gone unrecognised shot overnight into the limelight, as the media hungry for big society in action, trawled Liverpool for newsworthy examples of community-led initiatives.  Previously unsung heroes were on television and the radio, talking about innovative projects, many flourishing in some of the most deprived communities in the UK.  Beyond Westminster on radio four illustrates this very well.

The spotlight was on the city and it did galvanise debate, “how can we improve our approach to volunteering?  How can we support some of our communities to become more digitally included?”.  People wanted a slice of the action and external agencies were keen to support.

But, as anyone who has been in a successful and rewarding relationship knows, it’s all about a bit of give and take.  Sadly, as one of the worst hit areas in the country for government cuts, Liverpool is experiencing far more ‘take’ than ‘give’.

The Centre for Cities Annual Index pitches the number of jobs that will be lost in Liverpool’s public sector at between 7,900 to 10,600.  It also identifies Liverpool as an area that will take longer to recover than many other cities such as York, Milton Keynes and Reading, who to be appear more resilient and better able to recover quickly due to far higher levels of private sector employment.

Liverpool City Council faces a deficit of 141 million over the next two years, only last week it was announced that 1,500 city council jobs will go and that that a further 300- 500 jobs will be lost from third sector organisations, reliant on city council contracts or grant aid for their survival.  Liverpool’s CVS this week announced that it will have to lose over half it’s staff.

In truth, things are looking pretty bleak.

As Joe Anderson wrote it in his letter to David Cameron;

How can the City Council support the Big Society and its aim to help communities do more for themselves when we will have to cut the lifeline to hundreds of these vital and worthwhile groups?

Liverpool City Council can no longer support the “Big Society” initiative, as a direct consequence of your funding decisions

Significantly he adds

“Despite Whitehall’s promise to remove problems and blockages to the delivery of Big Society, to date, not one of Liverpool’s requests for change has been met”.

There will be those who dismiss Liverpool’s withdrawal from Big Society as a politically motivated decision, there may, or may not, be an element truth in this.  However, you cannot deny the fact that, despite having made some recent headway, Big Society remains largely unformed as an idea.

The argument that Big Society is just a cover up for cuts is compelling and unlike Liverpool’s vanguard does not seem to be going away.

If fairness means “giving people what they deserve” – what did the people of Liverpool do to deserve this?

At the Tory Party conference in October David Cameron used his first keynote speech to set out his commitment to fairness. Yet, as we saw in Manchester last week, Coalition cuts are hitting the most deprived areas of the country hardest.

Liverpool City Council faces a £141m budget shortfall between now and 2013 due to a combination of cuts in government funding and an existing budget deficit and it doesn’t stop here. Right across the public sector there will be further reductions, resulting inevitably in job losses and services. To give you a sense of the potential impact of all this, you need to appreciate that Liverpool’s public sector currently accounts for 40% of all jobs in the city.

When Eric Pickles announced that no authority would face a reduction of more than 8.9% for any of the next three years, this figure did not include any non-formula grant aid programmes such as Area Based Grant, (worth £110m to the city ) and programmes such as Building Schools for the Future, (worth 350m) both of which were abolished early in the Con-Dem alliance. The BSF programme would have seen 24 Liverpool Secondary Schools brought into the 21^st century. Areas like Liverpool and Manchester rely on funding streams like these to help them tackle deep seated social problems.

Like Manchester, the cuts will hit Liverpool hard in areas such as unemployment and life expectancy. Experian, which ranks England’s 324 councils by their ability to withstand economic shocks, identified Liverpool as being likely to perform, “very poorly in terms of community resilience”. Add to this the fact that Liverpool already experiences some of the highest levels of deprivation in the UK, has the third worst life expectancy for both men and women and one of the highest levels of unemployment in the country, (Liverpool’s worklessness figure currently stands at around 70,000) and you begin to get a sense of what potentially lies ahead.

Yet in Liverpool it is not all doom and gloom. Between 1998 and 2007 Liverpool was one of the fastest growing regional cities in the UK. Liverpool’s docks are the busiest they’ve been since the Empire and it boasts a series of impressive developments ranging from 42 acre, £1bn shopping centre, a multimillion pound arena/convention centre and a new cruise liner terminal. It has ambitious plans afoot including, Peel Waters , a Manhattan style vision for either side of the River Mersey. In short, Liverpool has seen impressive growth from a low base.

As we wait for local budget decisions to be announced the big question for the people of Liverpool is where the cuts will fall. There is a popular argument for cutting so-called ‘back office’ staff whilst protecting ‘frontline’ staff- you may wish to treat this with caution – in my experience, back office staff are mostly employed as a cost effective way of freeing up the time of frontline staff to concentrate on what they do best. The growing trend of the police force to employ so many civilian staff has been to free up police officers to focus on crime prevention and resolving crime. I am not arguing that every back office role is essential, as with everywhere else there opportunities for efficiencies, however these largely administrative role are often an efficent way of supporting the frontline. Do you really want to see your highly specialised medical consultant spending his/her time booking appointments?

At Liverpool City Council the political leadership are facing some very tough choices. They have expressed a committment to protecting frontline services but this in turn raises a question mark over many other services which will inevitably bear the greater brunt of the cuts. One potential area for making savings is that of Community Engagement. Merseyside Police have already announced plans to disbanded their citizen focus team although they will try to retain some of their functions in other posts.

As somebody who has been involved in setting up, and driving some of the key developments in community engagement in Liverpool over the last 10 years I will be interested to see how all of this plays out .

At a national level David Cameron’s, ‘big society’ claims to put communities and individuals back in the driving seat but with many local councils seeing community engagement as a soft target for making savings, (ironically made possible by the new Localism Bill) it will be a true litmus test to see whether public sector bodies really do believe that local knowledge and insight can help them navigate the difficult choices that lie ahead.