Greetings! I’m Bernadette Wright, AEA365 Coordinator for the Nonprofits and Foundations Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG). Welcome to Nonprofits and Foundations TIG Week on AEA365! This week’s posts focus on the theme, storytelling in/with nonprofit organizations or foundations. This theme is inspired by the Evaluation203 theme, “The Power of Story.” The next six posts share ideas, experiences, resources and tips on storytelling in evaluation, from a variety of perspectives.
As an introduction, I’d like to share a few examples of some of the many ways that we can use storytelling in evaluation, based on several previous AEA365 posts on the topic.
Previous AEA365 posts describe how we can use storytelling throughout the process of conducting and using evaluations, including:
- To develop logic models
- In data collection, reflection and reporting
- In data visualization
- In conference presentations of evaluation results
- For learning
- For telling the story of a translational research project
We can also tell stories of our evaluation journeys, such as the origin story of an independent evaluation consulting business.
All evaluations tell a story, whether intentionally or not. We want to be aware of the stories our evaluations are telling. Previous posts provide ideas for making sure that the stories that our evaluations tell are useful and beneficial for people, such as:
- “Counter-storytelling” for challenging stories of racial privilege
- Capturing “counter-life herstories/histories” of the lives of underrepresented groups
- Shaping stories that promote equity
- Telling the story of how the problem came to be
- Including stories of resilience
- Avoiding stories based on deficit perspectives and including stories of resistance and healing
Rad Resource:
Previous AEA365 posts are a great resource for exploring any evaluation topic. My search for posts on “storytelling” and a search for post on “stories” led to many posts on the topic that I organized into themes to write this post.
Tell us a story. What’s a story of how you have used stories in your evaluations?
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Nonprofits and Foundations Topical Interest Group (NPFTIG) Week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our NPFTIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.