Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell

The Science Behind Storytelling & Movement Building with Sheela Mahajan

August 10, 2022 Julia Campbell Season 1 Episode 48
Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
The Science Behind Storytelling & Movement Building with Sheela Mahajan
Show Notes Transcript

Today's podcast is sponsored by Community Boost, a digital marketing agency empowering social ventures changing the world. We invite you to join The Nonprofit Marketing Summit: Fundraise To The Future for free on August 16-18th, the biggest virtual conference for nonprofit professionals!  Get your free ticket to the future at https://www.nonprofitmarketingsummit.org/

Do any of these situations sound familiar? 

You know what a difference your organization can make, but your team struggles to accurately and consistently measure the impact. You know that the work you do is layered and complex - and worry about the additional challenges that have been popping up due to the pandemic. You care deeply about making a real difference, but wonder about the impact you’re making in relation to the effort you’re putting in.

 Sheela N. Mahajan, the founder of the Nonprofit Science Institute and Host of the Nonprofit Science Podcast. The Nonprofit Science Institute is on a mission to challenge nonprofits to think differently - namely, like scientists - and they are leading the effort in bringing scientific thinking to the nonprofit field.  

Sheela coined the term "nonprofit science" to describe the application of scientific knowledge, theories, and methodologies to the function and strategy of nonprofit organizations. In this episode, she gives us tips on how to leverage the power of science for better storytelling and movement building.  

Connect with Sheela

Do me a favor? Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts (or your podcast player of choice) - it helps this podcast get seen by more people that would enjoy it!

About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:

Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.

She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.

Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass,

Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts

Julia Campbell:

today's podcast is sponsored by community boost a digital marketing agency, empowering social ventures changing the world. Community boost invites you to join the nonprofit marketing Summit. fundraise to the future for free on August 16 through 18th. It's the biggest virtual conference for nonprofit marketers. You'll be joined by 20,000 Like minded professionals as we step into the future of digital strategy, and you'll be learning from leaders like Mallory Erickson, Amy sample Ward, Adrian Sargeant, Mehta, Tiktok, myself and many more, get your free ticket to the future at WWW dot nonprofit marketing summit.org. See you there. Hello, and welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently Find Your Voice. Definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, thrilled to be here with you today. So how can nonprofits better think like scientists and adapt scientific principles to their work to be more effective and create more impact? That's what we're talking about today. My guest is Sheila Mahajan. She's the founder of the nonprofit Science Institute and the host of the nonprofit Science Podcast. When she joined the nonprofit workforce, she quickly recognized similarities between her new role and her years of scientific study. And she noticed that her background in neurobiology and behavior helped when building relationships with donors, I can't wait to talk about that. Sheila also relied on her public health background to design and evaluate programs. Now the nonprofit Science Institute is on a mission to challenge nonprofits to think differently, namely, like scientists, and they are leading the effort in bringing scientific thinking to the nonprofit field. Sheila, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation. Yes. So let's talk more about how you got into this work. And where's your current focus? You know, I always say I kind of fell into nonprofit work, and most of us do, most of my guests do. You're not alone there.

Sheela Mahajan:

So I fell into it. And then eventually, I fell in love with it. When I was in college, I started you know, way back then, I volunteered at a nonprofit student run clinic on the weekends. And at the time, I had really no intention of embarking on a career in the nonprofit space. But as a volunteer, I would meet so many patients who couldn't adhere to their medication plan, simply because they couldn't afford their medication. So these were patients who kept coming back to our clinic week after week, because they had chronic health conditions, things like diabetes, or high blood pressure. And the only time they could get their medication was when they could get samples from our clinic. So I don't want to age myself too much. But this is clearly well before the time of the Affordable Care Act. But when I was working at the clinic, one day, I got assigned some paperwork to complete. And this was a grant application for a prescription voucher program for a large chain pharmacy. And so with this voucher patients who couldn't afford their prescriptions could literally take this like coupon and their prescription and take it to this pharmacy and get the whole thing filled for free. So it turned out that the only reason it ended up on my desk is because no one else wanted to deal with this grant application. So that's what got passed on to me, the lowly college student. But you know, as tedious as the application was, I saw the opportunity that it presented, because with access to these vouchers, our patients could finally get their medications. They wouldn't have to struggle with you know, finding a way to get to our clinic waiting in line, taking up an entire Saturday just to get a few doses of the medications that they really needed to be taking every day. So long story short, we got awarded this grant and our patients who previously were unable to get their medications. Now they had a solution they could take control of their health. And for me, I was like Wait, what? Like you need to tell me I can fill out this grant. And just like that solve a huge problem for our patients. And that was kind of it for me, I was sold on nonprofits, I knew it was what I wanted to do with my life. And I became kind of obsessed with finding those small actions that make a huge impact. And you know, that's still really what I'm obsessed with to this day. It's kind of how I came up with this idea of nonprofit science. So my current focus is on helping Nonprofit Professionals leverage scientific research and data so that they can identify what those small actions are, that have a huge impact. So whether it's to, you know, raise more money, become a more effective leader or create more impactful programs, how can we identify just small changes that have huge downward impacts?

Julia Campbell:

I absolutely, really resonate with that I think that finding your unique talents and finding those unique insights that you can apply to your job, but also, the fact that there was this seemingly simple solution, and you were able to, you know, navigate how to really get it done. I think that is the most frustrating part of probably working in healthcare, is that it's just so challenging to get people to actually take the advice and to actually take the medication or get the medication or be able to afford the services that are required. And I know a lot of nonprofits out there can really relate to that struggle. So what is nonprofit science, you've coined this term, you have the nonprofit science, podcast and nonprofit Science Institute. So when you say nonprofit science, what does that mean?

Sheela Mahajan:

Yeah, so I define nonprofit science as the application of scientific knowledge, theories and methodologies to nonprofit strategy and function. And so what that means is drawing from a wide range of disciplines and applying new ideas to our work, to really generate curiosity, find ways we can innovate and ultimately create a greater impact. I think there's a lot we can learn from other fields. If we, you know, kind of look outside the box and start seeing, you know, what can we learn from Tech? What can we learn from biology? What can we learn from, you know, from business, there's lessons to be learned. And it may not have a direct one to one correlation, but we can bring creativity and curiosity and see how we can apply that to our work.

Julia Campbell:

So you said that your background in neurobiology and behavior helped you when building relationships with donors. Can you talk more about that?

Sheela Mahajan:

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so my background in neurobiology helped me figure out ways to connect with donors in a unique way. I think it helps me with figuring out looking at body language, speaking with donors and understanding what was resonating with them and what wasn't. So for instance, if I was talking to a donor who had a young child, and I could tell them the story of of a participant that we help that also had a young child, and I could see, you know, are these stories actually captivating their interest? Or do I need to switch gears and focus on something else. And another way, the neurobiology, this is kind of interesting. But when you just talked to a donor, and they really honed in on one of your programs, there's a way to really relate everything back to them. So for instance, you know, there's a kind of a common analogy of activating something called your reticular, your RAS. So what ends up happening is, it's kind of like when you are going to go buy a new car, and you start seeing that car everywhere. And because you're thinking about it, you start seeing it everywhere, right. So when a donor is interested in your work, and they're really interested in one specific aspect of your program, they'll start to see that in everything that you're doing. So if you know that and you can relate everything that you do back to that one factor that they're interested in, you're going to be able to better connect with them and better keep their attention on your work. Does that make sense?

Julia Campbell:

It makes sense. I teach a lot about focusing on your audience, and their what drives them, what motivates them. And it's funny, because I always tell my fundraising clients, my marketing clients that they need to be journalists. So not only do we need to be journalists, we now need to be scientists. But I completely agree with that. I always think that learning from other professions, I agree with you, learning from other professions, there's a lot we can pull from it. So when I talk to my marketing students, I say we really do have to think like journalists, we have to think about what's relevant, what's urgent, what is in the news. What is that story that we're telling, how are we going to grab attention and how are we going to pique that curiosity? And I've always wanted to study psychology actually, I've always wanted to study the science of influence and the science of why we behave in certain ways. I think it's so interesting. And I definitely believe that fundraisers can benefit from this. So in other ways, how, what are other ways that we can leverage scientific research and data? And is it just for fundraising? Or how can we use it in other parts of the nonprofit?

Sheela Mahajan:

Yeah, definitely. So I think it can apply to all aspects of running an organization. You know, there are so many experiments and studies going on around the world right now that look at how, you know, nonprofits can only raise more money, they study leadership methods, there are case studies about programs that are successful and programs that are unsuccessful. But the problem, I think, is really that they're locked away in academia. And in a lot of ways, academic research sometimes speaks a different language than you and I do, you know, so unless you read them often, or you have some training, it can be difficult to decipher much of anything from them. So what I do is I share summaries of academic articles, and I translate them so that my audience doesn't have to have years of scientific training to gain value from the studies. So what I really do is draw out the key takeaways. So you can just apply the lessons from these studies to your work. And I can give you an example. It's one that comes to mind as a fundraising example, but it kind of gives you a taste for kind of how to take scientific research and apply it to your work. So most nonprofits run a pretty hefty year end campaign. But if you think about it, you know, the end of the year is when people are stressed, they're trying to buy, you know, gifts for friends and family, there's a lot going on with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And for a lot of companies, the end of the calendar year is also the end of the fiscal year. So there's kind of that scramble. And on top of that, you know, there's the headache of holiday travel. So there's just a lot going on. Well, there was some research that questioned whether the end of the year was really the best time to ask for money. And, you know, as a total side note, for me, I always say, you know, scientific thinking means questioning everything. And this is exactly questioning everything, you know, like, I never thought to question your own giving, you know, as a fundraiser, just what you do, you do with the status quo, right? So, you know, but could we raise more money if we asked at a different time of year, when donors aren't being pulled in so many directions? So these researchers ran experiments to test this. And they found that they could raise as much as 30% More by running fundraising campaigns in the summer. I mean, my mind was blown. But that's just what the pelvis research said. And these are experiments. So what about you know, your own nonprofits now, we got to take this idea back to our own organizations, and run our own experiments. So now we can leverage the research and run our campaigns at different times of the year and track the results. And, you know, maybe we'll find for, you know, for our communities, maybe we can raise more money in the spring instead of the year end or the summer, or, you know, maybe your end really is the best for you. But the point is, you won't know until you question it, and you question the way you operate, and then test it out.

Julia Campbell:

I think that's so interesting, because I feel like when people hear the word science, and you must get this all the time, they think of test tubes, and rafts and experiments, and they think of the lab coat, just a very stereotypical mad scientist or scientist working away in a lab. But I love what you said about science, just really being the principle of questioning things, and not necessarily accepting things the way they are, and always trying to either prove or disprove a hypothesis and asking questions and being curious. And I think that's so important for nonprofits to do. Because just like you said, your end giving is not something that I do, I do monthly giving because of my lifestyle, because I like to plan because I have to buy 50 million LEGO sets at the end of the year. And we've got huge family, extended family, that kind of thing. So I agree with you that and the sort of like when COVID happened when the pandemic happened, so much of the status quo was thrown out the window, those Gallas those walks those marathons, those golf tournaments, everything that the sector was used to relying on really became almost, you know, it just didn't work because we couldn't get together in person. So they had to transition to all of these different virtual or hybrid events, that for some nonprofits really worked well. So I love the idea of not thinking of science in this traditional stereotypical way, but thinking about it more as questioning riffing and being curious, I would love to get access to that study and put it in the show notes. If you want to share it with me, was that something that you're instituted? I'll

Sheela Mahajan:

send you the link to that study. Yeah, for sure. It's a really interesting one. And it really questions. I think it really demonstrates Well, this idea of questioning things that we just kind of take for granted as that's just how things are.

Julia Campbell:

Exactly. There's so much of the sector that does that. So you've done a lot of research on the science behind storytelling and movement building, and I teach more the art of storytelling. So what is your approach to understanding storytelling? And how can we leverage scientific research to tell better stories?

Sheela Mahajan:

Yeah, so I'm going to fan girl here for a moment. But you've done an amazing job of convincing nonprofit professionals of the value and the power of storytelling, you provide really practical tips for infusing stories into communications. So I think for anyone who is still on the fence about storytelling, one of the biggest barriers that we face in nonprofits is we kind of get conflicting messages about demonstrating impact. So you know, on the one hand, there's clearly very a lot of power in sharing stories, there's really no other way to get that emotional connection with our communities. But then on the other hand, we're also told that quantitative data is what really matters. And if you can't count it, it doesn't count. So how can we merge these kind of seemingly contradictory ideas, and determine where to focus limited resources. And I think that the answer to this can come out of scientific research. And I wanted to give an example, actually of kind of a vague idea that I've been able to use with a client. And hopefully that means your audience gets a practical takeaway. So there is a tool that's often used in scientific research. It's called thematic analysis. So thematic analysis involves analyzing qualitative data, and involves identifying repeated patterns. So the steps involved in this include combing through qualitative data, such as transcripts of interviews, to identify patterns, and then the patterns then get coded to, then you'd go back to the original data, and code the transcript itself. So now that the qualitative data is coded, now you can count the number of times a code appears throughout the data. And then after the transcript groups are coded, you can then group the codes into themes. So with thematic analysis, what you can do is pull out the quantitative data from the qualitative. So to me, this means now you can focus on collecting stories, and still extract the quantitative data that you need for things like grant reports, and annual reports and other communications. So one of the ways that I've been able to use this is a client that I've been working with, they are working to end homelessness in the DC region, they help 1000s of people every year. So they have a lot of impact stories to share. But it's often difficult to get permission to share those stories publicly. So I think this is something a lot of nonprofits can relate to, you know, there's sometimes a stigma associated with being, you know, associated with a certain organization. So people, for instance, who have experienced homelessness, they don't want that label, they, you know, don't want the spotlight, they kind of just want to move on with their lives. So what we've been able to do is collect stories and analyze them for themes, which allows us to then boost the impact of the stories that we can share publicly. So for instance, we share the story, we'll call this man John, he was a veteran had a corporate job, kids, a strong family. But then he had some pretty severe mental health issues that went untreated, then they slowly chipped away at his life until he pretty much lost everything. I mean, the trust of his family, lost his job, eventually lost his home and ended up sleeping on the streets of DC. And he was in and out of different programs around the district until he got referred to my client who helped him completely turned his life around. So it's a great story. You know, I know all nonprofits have these types of stories that they can share. But that's just one story. And it's important for donors to know that for every one impact story that we're able to share, there are dozens, hundreds or even 1000s of people just like them. So with thematic analysis, you can say, you know, there are 200 other men just like John who faced untreated mental health conditions that we help every day, there are 1000 men just like John who have been in and off the streets two or more times. You can even pull a quote and indicate how many other people agree with that statement. So something like John says, this organization changed my life and 400 other participants feel the same way. So you can really quantify not only how many stories are similar to the one you shared, but you can also elaborate on what ways that they're similar. And so the impact of that one story now gets magnified. And your community understands the full scope of the work that you do.

Julia Campbell:

I love that. That's really fantastic. So much is involved with that?

Sheela Mahajan:

Yeah, it's it's a pretty interesting way of looking at storytelling, and it bridges that gap between qualitative and quantitative. But there is, you know, a bit of work that does go into that. But I think the value in that is that you can really focus efforts on collecting stories, as opposed to being pulled in multiple different directions.

Julia Campbell:

That's what I think people need to focus more on is that system for collecting and crafting the most effective stories depending on who they're telling it to, what they're trying to do, what is their goal, and something that I love about your podcast in particular, that I love that you do? Take this research that's been done, and you contextualize it. For nonprofits. I think that's so like, effective and so important, because I for one, I subscribe to the Stanford Social Innovation Review. I subscribe to a lot of periodicals and magazines, and I get a lot of research studies. And I do see it almost as my job to contextualize it because people don't need more information. They need to understand how they can use the information. And they need to know like you said, the takeaways, or how can they leverage it and adapt it for their own work. So one of your podcast episodes that I thought was very interesting, the best time to solicit gifts from former participants. And that one is a study that was done at the University of Pennsylvania, the field study of charitable giving, reveals that reciprocity decays over time, and it provided guidance for fundraisers. So can you talk more about maybe some other research studies you found that you've analyzed that you think would be really applicable to the nonprofit fundraisers listening?

Sheela Mahajan:

Yeah, definitely. So there have been studies that are done on best practices for programs, which I thought was really interesting, because we have best practices, you know, for almost every aspect of running a nonprofit. But because programs are also different from each other, I feel like there is not really like a go to resource for that.

Julia Campbell:

I've read a lot of research about digital marketing, best practices, and I read a lot about what nonprofits are doing. But I feel like I now am inspired to read more about what the average donor is doing, or the lay person or a person not working in nonprofits is doing because I feel like a lot of the research that I collect and analyze involves serving nonprofits themselves. And it's maybe not as effective in teaching nonprofits, what they can learn to sort of better their own practices and better their own day to day tasks. So when I was looking at your podcast episodes, I really, I thought that's such an interesting approach, first of all, for a podcast. But secondly, just really helpful because there's so many research studies out there that could help the sector that we don't either have access to, or we don't really know how to analyze and how to contextualize

Sheela Mahajan:

it. Thank you. Yeah, that that was kind of my hope with this podcast was to expose our field to work that other people are doing that may not necessarily seem like it has a direct impact on our work. But I think what's also you touched on is what's really interesting is that when people do research, they're not necessarily nonprofit people. They're coming from outside of the day to day of working in a nonprofit. So they have a completely different mindset. And they're asking different questions.

Julia Campbell:

That's really true. That's really true. And that's all important for us. I think we get very insular, and siloed. And a lot of the time we're reading the same reports from the same five institutions that are focused on nonprofits. But there's so much research out there that could actually benefit us. So I actually wanted to talk about your scholars society, which I think is really interesting, your membership program. And is this a program open? Only to nonprofits? Who is it open for who's a design for?

Sheela Mahajan:

Yeah, so the scholar society is not necessarily just for people who work in nonprofits. So I would totally welcome consultants, anyone who's interested in learning more and engaging in the community. And really what it is, is, it's a way for all of us to get together and learn from the research that's happening all around the world and figure out how can we apply it to our own work? But also, if you're running these mini experiments, share your risk faults with the rest of the community, because we can all learn from each other. So I think, you know, we can, we can gain inspiration for running our own mini experiments from published research. But we can also gain inspiration from our peers. And see if something's working with one organization, maybe I can take it back to my organization, try it out, test it out, see what works and figure out what doesn't.

Julia Campbell:

I love that idea. I love that it's a community based on experimentation, inspiration, and wanting to learn more about this, but people that are potentially doing research that can share their research. So based on maybe some of the studies that you've read, in the past year, the past two years, what can we expect going forward? into the next? I don't want to even say the next year or the next six months? What are some of the major maybe most important trends that you see in the sector based on scientific research?

Sheela Mahajan:

Yeah, so I definitely see, there are so many more overlapping research studies that are coming out. So for instance, you talked about influence, and you talk about marketing, there's been some studies that have come out of UPenn. I know is one that does that focuses on this. But, you know, we're starting to see that there's kind of this overlap of these fields that you wouldn't think have anything to do with each other, that are coming together, these different departments are working together, to come up with these really, really, really cool, interesting questions that they're answering through studies. And I've also actually seen more of a looking at the behavior of nonprofits from an even more scientific angle. So for instance, there's studies now that have incorporated things like functional MRIs, you know, to study what happens in the brain when you ask a donor for a donation, like what areas of the brain are getting activated? And so what implications will that have for us in the future? So it's really exciting.

Julia Campbell:

That is really exciting. It's just so interesting to see how the sector is changing and shifting. And I'm just really excited to see what's what's to come. So if people are interested in working with you learning more about you, where can they find you? I know you have a free ebook as well.

Sheela Mahajan:

Yes. So all the way information is on our website. It's at www dot nonprofit dash science.com. If you go there, there's a link to your Facebook and Instagram. There's a link to our nonprofit science podcast page, and the player and on social media. We are at nonprofits Science Institute.

Julia Campbell:

Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate you being here. With me today, I'm going to take these principles I'm very inspired to now go out and find some research and think through what it means. But I encourage everyone listen to the nonprofit Science Podcast. Go download the ebook, and follow Sheila on all the socials. So thanks, Sheila for being here. Now, thank

Sheela Mahajan:

you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure.

Julia Campbell:

Well, hey there, I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show, and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app, and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven, seven. Keep changing the world your nonprofit unicorn