Ethical Storytelling in Nonprofit Communications with Caliopy Glaros

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?

Tough but important questions - and Caliopy Glaros has us covered.   

Caliopy (CAL EE OH PEE) is the Principal Consultant at Philanthropy without Borders, a firm which provides strategic guidance on donor travel, ethical storytelling, and virtual engagement. 

She 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. 

Here are some of the topics we discussed:

• When donor behavior doesn't line up with your organizational values 
• What it means to have an ethical storytelling strategy and process
• How nonprofits can share stories authentically and without tokenizing the subjects of the stories
• How nonprofit staff can get buy-in from their teams and co-workers when changing their strategy around storytelling 

A Caliopy Glaros quotable: "In our communications we actually have the potential for changing some of the beliefs and behaviors that have contributed to and held up these very inequitable systems... We have a chance to counter that in our narratives, and be influencing our donors, and be bringing them closer in to our organization as partners who embody these shared values - not just asking for cash."

Connect with Caliopy:
https://philanthropywithoutborders.com/
https://www.instagram.com/philanthropywithoutborders/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/caliopyglaros/ 

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. Julia’s online courses, webinars, and talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and raise more money online. 

Clients include Mastercard, GoFundMe, Facebook, Meals on Wheels America, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. 

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

Transcript

Julia Campbell: 0:02

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 than you're in the right place. Let's get started. Alright, friends, welcome to another episode of the nonprofit nation podcast. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. I'm really excited to be here today with kalliopi claros, the principal consultant at philanthropy without borders. Welcome kalliopi.

Caliopy Glaros: 1:08

Thank you so much, Julie, I'm so excited to be here.

Julia Campbell: 1:10

Yay. I'm so excited to see you again. This is why I love doing this podcast, I get to reconnect with people that I haven't seen that I haven't talked to in a while and just pick their brains about all sorts of amazing things. So thank you so much for being here. So the topic today is ethical storytelling as it relates to nonprofit communication. So I see that you are the go to person. Everywhere I look, you're doing so much work around ethical storytelling in fundraising communications, how did that come about?

Caliopy Glaros: 1:47

Yeah, well, I actually have a dual background in fundraising and also anthropology. So what's interesting is that I don't come to ethical storytelling from a background in marketing or communications. And I think that having a different background has helped me to have kind of a different lens on this. I used to work in major gifts. And so I understand the importance of getting stories and communicating them to donors. But in anthropology, my work is actually around intercultural communication, and specifically looking at what happens when different groups of people meet, and how are they changed by those encounters. And it makes so much sense for me to be involved in fundraising, because that's an area where different groups of people come together, and can be changed by those encounters, the way that ethical storytelling really played into it, and why I started thinking about it more and more as someone who who isn't a marketer, is because I used to work in actually facilitating some of the encounters between philanthropists and the people who are impacted by their philanthropy. And that could look like someone taking a tour of a food pantry, or it could look like someone flying across the world to visit a school, or a well or take a tour of a hospital that their support helped fund and seeing the kinds of interactions that donors would have with people in those places. Sometimes their behaviors didn't align with their values. And I really saw this as an example of the exposure that donors have had to all kinds of narratives and stories before they got to the place. Right. You know, they might ask, I'm sure you've you've had these experiences, Julie, you know, they might ask clients questions, your personal sensitive questions, they would never ask their own friends, you know, they might, they might, you know, go on, you know, tours of schools and hospitals and take pictures of people, you know, and they would never do that in the United States. And I know, because I've been on the receiving end of nonprofit services, I've had my life transform, nonprofit, I've had my story shared. And so in a way, I have my own experience to compare to that. And I really saw this as the result of the kinds of stories and narratives that they've been exposed to both the stories that the nonprofit has told, but also the larger narratives that they've been exposed to throughout their lives. And so I thought, if we really want to tackle this issue, if we really want to help donors embody their values in these encounters, and really help people be changed in positive ways. By these experiences, we have to step back and look at the stories that they're getting. So that's how I came to this work.

Julia Campbell: 4:15

That's really interesting. And I served in the Peace Corps in Senegal, in West Africa for two and a half years. And

Caliopy Glaros: 4:27

he, somebody knew about you.

Julia Campbell: 4:30

So we came in as predominantly, you know, white, middle class, upper middle class, college students, or like right out of college. So we had a lot of narratives that we were thinking about what it was like to live in Africa, of course, people still think Africa is a country. It's a continent made up of so many countries. So I think that what happened there is very similar to what you're saying. We were thinking Oh, We've got this almost white savior complex a lot I think a lot of us had, because that was a narrative that we were taught in training. And that was what we saw on television. And that was what we were always indoctrinated with. But I think that is, I think it's really interesting that when you talk about ethical storytelling, you are challenging the nonprofits, to actually create a strategy and process that's going to educate the people that are providing the philanthropy. So there's education that needs to be done on the philanthropist part of the donors part. But there's also a lot of education and co sort of reprogramming our brains that needs to go on with the nonprofits. Absolutely. I

Caliopy Glaros: 5:45

think there's there's two things to that. So one is that, we have to see the kinds of messages that we're putting out as not just methods for asking for more cash, yes, that's how they've been used. But if that is all that they can do, we've lost sight of the bigger picture. In our communications, we actually have the potential for changing some of the beliefs and behaviors that have contributed to and held up these very inequitable systems. So like you mentioned, with the white savior complex, we have a chance to counter that in our narratives, and be influencing our donors, and be bringing them closer into our organizations as partners who embody these shared values, not just asking for cash. So that's one important distinction that I want people to kind of take away from this as our platforms, you know, can be used as as tools of change, and not just your tools for revenue. And the other that you touch on is that it's a process. It's not just about superficial tweaks to language, like, we're going to just, you know, change some words,

Julia Campbell: 6:45

stop saying vulnerable. Yeah,

Caliopy Glaros: 6:47

yeah, yes, there's a lot of good guides on the internet that do share, you know, words to use and words not to use, but that's your starting point, not your ending point. And it's not just about changing words, it's not just about, you know, use photos of people smiling and not have people you know, frowning, those kinds of superficial edits are not going to really be what gets us to a process of ethical storytelling. It's really about working with our story contributors, seeing them as partners, in telling the story the way they want them told. And that's, that's a process you have to first you have to get feedback. How do you know how someone wants to store story told if you've never asked them? So that's something else I wanted to bring up to Julia, which is that, you know, in our sector, we talk a lot about empathy. But I think that this word, this word gets a lot of buzz. But I think it's, it's misused. And I think it's misunderstood. And a lot of people think that empathy is about feeling exactly what another person is feeling. But actually, we often don't really know what someone else is feeling.

Julia Campbell: 7:48

And it's impossible to feel exactly what someone else says

Caliopy Glaros: 7:51

yes. Because because we're not living in their body, we're not experiencing the world in the way that they are. And so we don't really know what they're feeling. And often we're just projecting. And I, you know, I kind of use an example, when I try to explain this to people, I use sort of an interpersonal analogy of like, if you've ever had a time, you've been trying to explain something to another person and tell them about an experience you've had. And they've responded by comparing it to something completely different. If you tell them like, you know what, it's like getting divorced after 20 years, and they say like, Oh, yeah, you know, when I broke up with my partner for six months, I was devastated. I know just how you feel. And it totally minimizes your experience. And if they're projecting something onto you, that isn't true, or they blow it out of proportion, right. You might be telling them, you know, maybe about, like homeschooling kids in the pandemic, and they're going, ah, so it must be so hard. Oh, how are you hanging on? How are you functioning and you're going, like, we're doing it we're doing okay, okay. Okay. Those manifestations, people think they're using empathy. They think they're connecting to you with empathy, but actually, they're projecting their own experience onto you. And they're making assumptions. And that's what Milton Bennett would call sympathy. And so he's a sociologist whose work really forms the foundations of, of intercultural communication. And he says that sympathy is assuming similarity. And simile is what we utilize when we follow the golden rule. We treat others the way we want to be treated, because we assume they are similar to us. And empathy is what happens when we assume difference. We treat others the way they want to be treated. assume they're different from us. And so that's what he coined as the Platinum rule. And I want to like kind of get this out why I talked about this is to get this mindset shift in our sector, because, you know, we've been taught we've been following a lot of the golden rule, we've been using ourselves as kind of the benchmark or the barometer for for ethical behavior. And the fact is, is that, you know, what my experience is not is not someone else's experience. When we have such different lived experiences. The golden rule doesn't really hold up. So then it's important to really ask other people, what they want from our stories, how they want their stories to hold and to have them be directing that process. Because I don't represent necessarily the people I'm telling stories about. And even if I did even organizations who are founded and led by people who who do embody those identities, my worldview doesn't represent everyone with my, you know, similar identity or experience, right? It's important that we are assuming difference, and that our processes are contributor LED.

Julia Campbell: 10:21

I absolutely love that. That is blowing my mind empathy versus sympathy, projecting our lived experience on someone else. And assuming that we're being empathetic, when we're actually either blowing it out of proportion, or minimalizing. It I think that's incredibly important. Also making assumptions about what people understand or know, or making assumptions that there aren't any differences there. I think that is a really important and the golden rule, not holding up. I love it. It was called the Platinum rule. platinum, look it up. Okay, platinum roll. So a question that I get a lot because I do a lot of training around storytelling in the digital age. So how to collect and craft and share stories on digital platforms. Certainly with an ethical lens, I don't focus as much as I probably should on ethical storytelling. But the question that always comes up, is how do we share stories authentically? Without tokenizing? The subjects of the stories? Do you have tips for us?

Caliopy Glaros: 11:31

Yeah, absolutely. So one is that as I said earlier, you have to be getting feedback. That means going back literally, to the people who've shared their stories, if you're still in touch with them, and asking, how was this process for you? How did the story look? How did this feel, that also means going back to people that you who are a part of your programs, but their stories haven't been shared. It also means getting feedback from people who might have some overlapping identities or experiences to people in your programs, but they're not affiliated with your organization. Think of it like a control and test group, because power dynamics are in place. And so sometimes when we're asking for feedback, people will tell us what they think we want to hear. Yeah. And so getting some information from other members of the community, or other people who, as I said, Have some things in common with the folks in your program, but they haven't directly worked with your organization. We want to ask people for feedback on what has been done. But we also want to ask questions around what they would like to see, you know, what would you like people to know about you? Or about your circumstance? You know, what behaviors Would you like to change? How would you like people to think differently? Right? Those kinds of questions surface a lot of interesting things. And so the first thing is that we have to get feedback, because we don't know what's authentic. We don't know what's authentic, necessarily.

Julia Campbell: 12:46

That's a loaded word.

Caliopy Glaros: 12:47

Well, yeah, yeah. I think that authenticity means being true to the storyteller, that they will read this and say and say yes, like, this is how I want my story told. But also, it means being authentic to our own organizations. And so we have to have some principles, you know, and so once we get this feedback, how does that inform what our ethical storytelling principles are and principles, our beliefs, this is basically why we do what we do. If someone if you just hired you know, someone new in your marketing or communications department, and they said, you know, why do we use these particular words? Or why do we only share stories this way? Or why do we have this process in place? The principles answer that question of why. That's how they're framed, the principles also follow with practices and the challenges. Usually people start with the practices, they start with use these words, and not these words, you know, and the practices come later. And they're reinforced by the principles. So you have to start with getting feedback, you have to have principles, you have to have actionable practices, that are looking at the entire storytelling process, you know, all the way from acquisition through interpretation, and then releasing our stories out into the world. And so for instance, for just for one really concrete example, I talk a lot about consent. And I tell people to view consent as a process, and not just a form, because everyone has everyone has a media consent form.

Julia Campbell: 14:07

Everybody's got that media consent does

Caliopy Glaros: 14:10

and they think that that's where consent starts and stops. And as long as you get that form signed, you can do whatever you want. How does consent look, in the story acquisition process? Are we giving people a chance? Or are we able to give them a chance to opt in to share their stories, as opposed to being directly invited? It might not work for every organization, it depends on how you're structured and what you're doing. But could that be a possibility where people can self select and kind of raise their proverbial hands and say, I'd like to share my story. When we have people sign the form, you know, are we giving them a chance to look at the story that we've written about them or see some of the images and provide feedback on it? Again, it can be really difficult. So the way that this gets operationalized is so specific for each organization, but do they have a chance to see and hear what you've written and make change Just after you've released it, do they have a chance to say, could you take my photo off your website if they change their mind? I mean, it's just it's a total shift like there's some media consent forms I read that said your your consent is irrevocable. Why on earth would it be irrevocable like it? No, no other context ever and any other power is consent irrevocable? You know, so so we have to be honest, that we can't recall a piece of direct mail once it's sent, you know, once we post something on social media, you know, we can take it down, but someone could have screen grabbed it, I mean, that we do have some limitations in terms of control. But how are we looking at something like consent through our whole process, that's what we really need to be focused on. If if we're going to tell stories in an authentic way and create an environment where the contributors don't feel that they're being tokenized.

Julia Campbell: 15:49

Oh, my gosh, there's so much impact there. I love that consent is a process. It's not a form. It's something that we have to continually be iterating adapting talking about, someone could come to us 20 years later, and say, please take my blog post down, please take my video down on my social media post down. So another question that I always get is to say I'm on board. I'm a development director. I'm a fundraising manager and I want to institute ethical storytelling practices, process and strategy into the organization. How do you recommend that nonprofits kind of get buy in from maybe board members or executive directors that are that are thinking No, we just need to fundraise fundraise fundraise, right? So I get this question all the time to Julia. And it comes in really different forms. Sometimes,

Caliopy Glaros: 16:46

it's someone saying, you know, I am so on board with these principles, but my boss isn't my leadership isn't, you know, how can I sort of coach up who so to speak, and I also get this from, you know, VPS, and executive directors who say, I really care about this. But you know, I can't convince our staff or our team. And what do I do? And so, you know, what I kind of kind of recommend, I mean, if there's a particular person that's being resistant, you can offer to share some materials and resources with them that can help aid them in their learning. But I really recommend that you find those people in the organization that are aligned, like like, Who are your allies who can kind of rally around you with this issue, it's so important to begin building momentum and kind of creating your group or your champions. Maybe it means you host like a staff lunch, like we used to have those brown bag lunches, I go, they're all virtual now. But maybe you host like an all staff lunch around this topic where you have people read an article, or watch you know, a short webinar, listen to this podcast, and then come ready to discuss how does this look at our organization? What can we do? Maybe it's that you create a Slack channel to share these resources. But you immediately start finding your allies and making this a group initiative. One is that it will help you gauge the readiness of the organization, if literally, no one is on board, except you, it's going to be very hard to implement change

Julia Campbell: 18:03

made me the other looking for a new job

Caliopy Glaros: 18:05

well, right. The other is that we only know from our own perspectives. And so as soon as we begin to involve our other colleagues, we can see how these principles or a lack of these principles show up in their own work. So you start to get more data and you start to see the issue in a more holistic way. And then three, it's going to help you move things forward. And so I think of this, this quote from john C, Maxwell that says, you know, a vision that can only be implemented by one person isn't much of a vision at all. So, so you need to begin building your team, if you're going to implement this vision and start with the people who are already on board because they will help you sway those resistant folks.

Julia Campbell: 18:44

Hey, there, I'm interrupting this episode to share an absolutely free training that I created that's getting nonprofits of all sizes, big results. Sure, you've been spending hours on social media, but what can you actually show for it? With all this posting and instagramming and tick talking? Does it really translate into action? In my free training, I'll show you exactly how to take people from passive fans to passionate supporters. And I'll give you specific steps to create social media content that actually converts head on over to nonprofits, that convert.com. Again, that's nonprofits that convert calm and start building a thriving social media community, for your nonprofit right now, without a big team, lots of tech overwhelm or getting stuck on the question. What do I do next? Let me show you how it's done. I can't wait to see what you create. So another question that I feel that is appropriate to ask is how do we get buy in from program staff? So I know an example that I want to share is when I was a development director, And I was sort of put in the silo and in my office and told, okay, go raise money and don't speak to anyone or talk to anyone. I had issues really building trust with program officers that had been either burned by former development directors, or were really protective of the people that they served, you know, whether it was foster care, people in foster care whether it was domestic violence survivors. So how can we bridge that gap and really show that we have good intentions, or really demonstrate that there is this ethical storytelling strategy in place?

Caliopy Glaros: 20:41

I think your experience is very representative of a lot of things that are happening in organizations, I see that there's this idea of this false dichotomy between the fundraising office which wants to do anything they can to raise money, you know, according the perception of the program team, and the program team that's very protective of their clients. They know they know the clients personally, they're more in tuned with the experiences that their clients are going through day to day, and they don't want to give anything to the fundraising department because fundraising is evil. And the way I see it is it's not about the dichotomy between fundraising staff and program staff, it's about what is going to compel our donors to take action, and how our program participants, our clients want their stories told, and there's always an overlap, there's going to be things on the both ends of the extreme, you know, that, that we don't tell, but there's always an overlap between, you know, if you think of it like a Venn diagram, so, so one is that the way of building trust is to bring people in on the process as early as possible, because if you've created this process, without their input, they're going to be very skeptical about it, you're not going to get buy in. And so I mentioned, find your allies and find people who can rally around this, those people should be your colleagues in programs. And in fact, when I work with organizations directly on facilitating workshops that help organizations define their principles and their practices, I've always asked for someone from the program department to be there. And at least two people, at least two people, you know, because they're going to be able to say, you know, when I make a suggestion, like, Can we have people opt in to share their stories, the program staff are going to be one of the ones who can say, Yes, we can operationalize that, or No, we can't. And here's why you really need their input, because you don't necessarily know what's going on day to day, just by bringing them in one, you're going to have a better process, because it's informed by their direct work with the clients. But two, we know that involving people in a process early on, and getting their feedback and insight makes them feel more committed to the outcomes of that process, even if you don't use all of their feedback and insight. So it's going to help them trust you more, because they went through this with you. And they had their concerns heard. And I think with program staff, it's two issues. One, it's trust, like, I don't want to give you the story, because I don't know what you're going to do with it. And you might harm my client. And so going through the process of creating the principles and making sure that they're shared amongst the team solves that issue. The second is, what I found at least is it can be burdensome for program staff to get these stories, because there are there are, it's not like often it's not in their job suite. Yes. So it just it takes some time, they have to think about it, they don't really have a protocol, it feels like you're just adding more work to their plate. And so when we talk about a process, that's where those things surface, and you know, when I say like, you know, okay, we need to get consent, can we have the person, you know, edit their story, and the program staff is going, Oh, gosh, you know, I have to go find them. And I have to schedule a meeting and I, you know, it's going to be really burdensome. Well, how can we lessen the burden on you then, right? So we can tackle that in real time, without coming up with a process that they're not going to want to implement, because it's too time consuming, and that they're going to be skeptical, because they don't trust us. So that's what we have to do together.

Julia Campbell: 23:50

I absolutely love that I teach my clients exactly similar strategies where you have to be partners, they have to be invested. And you we have to be breaking down the silos, but also giving them examples. What I find a lot of times is like you said, program officers, if they are thinking, oh, I've got to interview, I've got to come up with the questions or I have to filter out, you know, all of the different topics that we could talk about, if you give them more direction, if you're very specific. Or if you give them some examples of what you're looking for, like this organization did a really great job on this blog post or this email. I would love to replicate that at our organization. I think that's that's always helpful. I love that idea about creating a process. I have another question for you. In the digital age, in the age of social media, in the age, in this all these ethical considerations around using social media using digital tools. How can organizations really identify the best methods for communicating these stories?

Caliopy Glaros: 24:58

I think you know, it's Depends on the organization. Right. And it very much depends also on the clients that you're working with. And so you want to think about, you know, and I think after you get feedback, you know, the other good start good starting place is thinking about what are the beliefs and behaviors we want to change? What is our audience still need to know? And so I recommend in the feedback gathering process, you know, you're talking to your clients, but you're also talking to donors, and you're not asking them necessarily what's motivating them to give, because I'm sure you're already asking that and you have a lot of data, but you're asking them, you know, why do you think this issue exists? And what do you think the solution is? And there's no right or wrong answer, but it's helping you gauge where the gaps are and where more education is needed. And so I'll give you a really specific example, which is one organization that's providing legal support to asylum seekers who are on the US Mexico border. And their communications officer reached out and asked me, if she wanted to do an Instagram Live with several asylum seekers who could just just kind of take the mic and share their story and say it tell whatever they want, and wanted to leave it in their hands. But then as she did some interviews with donors saying, you know, what, what do you want to know about? They all wanted to know, you know, why did you leave your home country, right. And often it's, it's, it can be a very traumatic story, and might be something that they don't want to share, it might be something they don't want to share on an Instagram Live. Also with asylum seekers, if their application is still pending. And they're telling a story online, and any discrepancies between the story they're telling online and the story they told the asylum officer could lead to a rejection and application, right. And so so what i what i said, and how we kind of worked together on a process is that, you know, if these folks were invited, they were invited to share and they've consented to it. And they're looking forward to sharing on Instagram Live, but let them let them say whatever they want. But clearly, your audience wants to know a little bit more about what compels someone to leave their home country because, you know, for people who are living in the United States and who grown up here, they cannot imagine someone having to leave their country to find safety and survival, they just can't imagine it. And so that is a gap you need to fill. But you don't need to put the burden of education on to the asylum seeker, you can do other kinds of research, provide other data and other evidence and tell other stories through different channels that provide that back end context so that the donor has a more holistic picture of this person's experience. And then when you give them the phone to go on Instagram Live, they can share whatever they want. And so thinking more holistically about that,

Julia Campbell: 27:22

wow, that really, I hope that any nonprofit listening, any fundraising, or marketing person really heard that I think that is so important that you are able, as the representative of the organization, to put the problem in context, and not re traumatize the people that are telling the stories. Another great example is a Myra Incorporated, I always talk about this organization, they actually go and save people from sex trafficking situations. And they try to do their best to prevent these kinds of situations from occurring. But they don't go to the survivor and say, how did you get in this situation? or What happened to you? You know, they tell it from the perspective of the executive director and the development director. And they answer these questions, and they do Facebook Lives and videos where they say, you know, what is sex trafficking? How does it happen? How do people get in these situations? You know, is this something that happens in our backyard? Like, what should we looking for? So they, as the representatives of the organization, take it upon themselves, to share anecdotes, maybe, you know, anonymously, but they do the like you just said they lift the burden of collecting the data, doing the research and educating and informing the donors, which I think that is such an important shift. Not all of the people that we serve need to bear the burden of educating the donors on the problem and the cause and the issue.

Caliopy Glaros: 28:55

That's right. That's right. And yes, and their story doesn't have to necessarily encompass all of those Exactly. A representative

Julia Campbell: 29:04

of everyone's story.

Caliopy Glaros: 29:06

Yeah, it's not. And so that's why it's so important to be to, you know, to think have have values, have your principles, know the specific outcomes you want your messages to have beyond raising money. What are those assumptions, we want to push back against? What are those narratives that we want to counter knowing that will help you pull together a lot of impactful information, and resources that don't burden the storyteller with having to make these shifts? These are hard things, changing beliefs and behavior is hard even for people that study this work that you have been doing so for years, we want the story contributor to tell their story the way they want it told and I think that your example with Myra organization and having the executive director development directors speak from their own experience as people who work with that population is very valuable and it's also a strategy that I recommend when It doesn't make sense. And it's not in the best interest to have the client be the one sharing things directly, exactly. There's

Julia Campbell: 30:06

ways to talk to your donors, inform them, engage them, educate them, without having it come from a specific person that you're serving. So there are multiple ways to get to change the narrative to get the story out there. Well, this has been so educational, I took actually an entire page of notes, and I'm gonna listen to it. I've changed my mindset about quite a few things. I want to ask you about your ethical storytelling audit. So tell me more about it. How can people get in touch to schedule one? I think it's something that's very necessary.

Caliopy Glaros: 30:41

Yeah. So I work with a number of organizations, I mean, small volunteer run organizations, you know, all to like large, you know, multinational charities. And one thing that I love doing is actually going in house to an organization and really looking through some of the materials, interviewing their staff, getting feedback from people in the process, and helping them to develop a process that can embody their values. Because often people have those values. They know what they want to do, but they're not sure how to get where they want. And they're not sure what exactly needs to change about their work. And so helping to illuminate some of those gaps, and bring teams together who may have had some sort of divergent divergent ideas about things is something that I really love doing. And I also do a lot of workshops and talks on this. And so I'm very happy to answer any questions or talk to anyone who has questions or would like to know more, the best way of keeping in touch, of course, you can send me an email kalliopi at philanthropy without borders, calm, but I post a lot on LinkedIn. So I'm the only kalliopi glaros on LinkedIn. So it's easy to find me, you can add me there. And also, I release a monthly newsletter, which has two, usually two articles or resources a month, related to this topic. And you can subscribe on philanthropy without borders comm slash newsletter.

Julia Campbell: 31:57

Fantastic. Thank you. Oh, my gosh, Thanks, kalliopi. This was really informative and amazing. And I love that I can always learn more about better ways to do storytelling and better ways to you know, help fundraisers do their job, and in a way that's authentic, but still incredibly ethical. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Caliopy Glaros: 32:17

Thank you, Julia.

Julia Campbell: 32:25

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