Storytelling, since the beginning of time, has been key to building community, understanding context, sharing lessons, and deepening understanding.  Recently, Scale Strategic Solutions has engaged with powerful reminders about engaging story in strategy, research, and evaluation.

Interact for Health, a Greater Cincinnati philanthropy for which Scale Strategic Solutions has conducted research on equity in recovery housing and an evaluation on a tobacco cessation campaign, asked community members: What does a healthy and thriving community look like to you? The foundation then asked Cincinnati’s Poet Laureate, Dr. Yalie Saweda Kamara, to write and perform “A Chant for Access”, a spoken word poem based on the community’s voices and vision for a healthy, thriving community. The piece beautifully illustrates that storytelling can go beyond connecting events and experiences. Storytelling can weave visionary and actual accounts to convey information. Storytelling can anchor our organizational and community strategies so we know what success will look like.   

Research and evaluation can also rely on story. The American Evaluation Association has chosen for its 2023 conference theme, “The Power of Story”. The association’s topical interest group on nonprofits and foundations evaluation released a series of blogs on storytelling in evaluation. While we may traditionally think of capturing stories in interviews, focus groups, or other qualitative data collection methods, stories and storytelling can be leveraged to develop logic models, visualize quantitative data, and present findings.

Scale Strategic Solutions continues to be inspired and motivated by powerful stories and will look at ways we can best use story to transform information into action with expertise and love.