An Innovative Storytelling Platform Is Bridging Divides — and Landing Big Name Funders

Art Now/shutterstock

Launched in 2013, Narrative 4 is a global, storytelling-based education nonprofit nurturing compassion and empathy among Gen Z students. A bedrock of the nonprofit’s work is Story Exchange, a facilitation tool that aims to foster deep connections, break down barriers and teach empathy. Narrative 4 now reaches more than 530 school partners across 36 countries.

The nonprofit also rakes in quite a bit of support from funders. Last fall, it received a $25 million donation from the Bezos Family Foundation. And Jackie Bezos played a key role in helping move Narrative 4 from a modest, story-based effort in Colorado into the artist-driven, educator-shaped and student-led global network it is today. MacKenzie Scott and Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies has also been a significant backer of Narrative 4.

On the heels of the $25 million gift from the Bezos family, Narrative 4 is launching a new educational digital platform named Jackie Bezos Global Learning Lab, designed to provide an engaged digital network for students to connect, learn about and support one another amid the current era of rampant division.

Inside Philanthropy recently connected with Narrative 4 founder and CEO Lisa Consiglio to find out more about the nonprofit’s work, how it grew with the help of Bezos Family Foundation and other big name funders, and where she envisions her nonprofit heading next.

Story exchange

Lisa Consiglio has been working in the nonprofit space since her late teens. She joined Battle of Normandy Foundation in the early 1990s, starting a stint that included commemorating the 50th anniversary of D-Day. She then moved on to the Aspen Institute, eventually becoming executive director of Aspen Writers' Foundation, now Aspen Words. It was within this context that she started thinking more about the power of storytelling.

Consiglio says she was first introduced to the story exchange model by a former colleague in Colorado around 2007. “It’s an old theater connect… an exercise that actors use that essentially asks participants to step into one another’s shoes,” she begins. “So you would tell me your story, I would tell you mine. And then we would come back to the group… and I would make it my own and re-tell it in the first person as though I am you.”

She started running story exchange programs in art and English classes up and down the Roaring Fork Valley in western Colorado. Teachers, Consiglio says, responded extremely positively to the programming, and she found that a diverse cross-section of people — from the privileged in Aspen to a diverse array of people working in the service industry — were all falling in love with story exchange. There were deep divides between these communities, Consiglio says, but story exchange helped bridge the gap among young people.

A Bezos connection

Eventually, around 2010, this momentum caught the attention of Jackie Bezos and the Bezos Family Foundation, whose grantmaking focuses on early learning and adolescent learning. Jackie Bezos had been quietly watching the story-based work that she was doing, Consiglio says, and wanted to take it to the next level.

“She came to me one day and said, ‘Do you want to keep this is Roaring Fork Valley? Or do you want to take this abroad? How big do you want this to be?’” Consiglio recalls. Consiglio responded by telling Jackie Bezos that she wanted this method to be at every school around the world. Jackie responded with funding.

The first foray in this expanded model happened right after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where she connected kids in Port-au-Prince with youth in New Orleans who were still reeling from a natural disaster of their own. “She helped us envision a world where young people would lead with empathy, learn about the world from one another’s stories, and work together to create change,” Consiglio wrote of Jackie’s influence on her fast-expanding work. From there, the mission of what would become Narrative 4 was undeniable, and continued to spread by word of mouth. When the nonprofit formally launched in 2013, the Bezos Family Foundation cut the first big check of $385,000.

Today, Narrative 4’s Story Exchange involves four steps: Preparing, Sharing, Retelling and Reflecting. The key, Consiglio says, is that eventually, all of these stories become a shared experience, and one where people can engage in universal highs and lows without judgement. “We all have the same basic emotions and it really levels the playing field,” she says.

Through the years, Narrative 4 has worked with partner schools, including University Heights High School in South Bronx and Floyd Central High School in Kentucky. The dichotomy between a school in a huge urban environment and the rural South is profound, but is just the kind of uncanny pairing that Narrative 4 loves.

Ramping up and looking ahead

The Bezos Family Foundation has been a steady backer of Narrative 4, with six-figure gifts in 2017 and 2018. But this $25 million gift reflects a longstanding relationship between the funder and nonprofit. Consiglio clarifies that she’s known Jackie since 2004. The sum will be doled out over five years, restricted to the United States and targeted to its growth and innovation campaign. “It’s really designed to get the stories exchange into as many schools as we possibly can,” she says. “We’re constantly working with schools and districts — and afterschool programs, as well.”

Beyond this major gift, Narrative 4 has also raked in support from another big-time philanthropist — MacKenzie Scott. The billionaire philanthropist and novelist had also been aware of Narrative 4’s work for years. In 2020, Narrative 4 was one of Scott’s initial 116 batch of nonprofits. One day in 2020, Narrative 4 received a call from someone representing a philanthropist who was interested in supporting the nonprofit’s work. As it turns out, that anonymous philanthropist was MacKenzie Scott.

“I thought, what?! It’s one of those things that was like manna from heaven,” Consiglio says, adding that the grant allowed Narrative 4 to immediately greenlight a project in South Africa that otherwise would’ve taken years to fund.

Looking ahead, Consiglio wants Narrative 4 to be in every school in the world. High schoolers have mainly been the organization’s target audience. But more recently, the nonprofit has been working with college and university representatives. She also believes that corporations, which often operate in silos, could benefit from story exchanges. But really, it all comes back to youth, who can build networks together and advocate for change. “It really does go everywhere,” she adds.