Four Reasons Why Narrative Change Is a Tough Ask for Philanthropy

Narrative change is in vogue among philanthropic funders, and for good reason. Every day, nonprofit sector folks (and everyone else) get bombarded with a quantity of narrative unparalleled in human history. Much of it is unwanted, a lot of it is toxic, and a good chunk of it strays far from the truth. It’s no wonder funders interested in the public good feel impelled to delve into the narrative arena.

But even as narrative change gains popularity as a strategic buzzword, actually changing narratives among the wider public remains difficult to pull off. Definitions vary, but narrative change is a lot bigger than something like “communications” or even “storytelling,” which bear a family resemblance but are much easier for an individual organization to control and fine tune. Influencing what other people think en masse, and about broader topics than the funder itself or its grantees — that’s a much tougher ask.

That’s not to say funders should avoid narrative change work. Shifting the way people understand and engage with certain issues, whether that’s incarceration, immigration or the global economic regime, can influence wider currents of social change, far up the food chain from any individual policy or direct service. But you never really know which narratives are going to stick, or if they’ll create the desired impact. And there are more than a few structural challenges standing in the way, outside of any one grantmaker’s control. Here are four reasons why funders seeking to change narratives may not be getting much bang for their buck.

1. Narrative thrives on conflict, philanthropy avoids it

Go to any elementary school that still has a decent English or language arts curriculum, or drop into a creative writing class, and you’ll probably encounter a framework outlining the five (or six or seven) “elements” of narrative. One of those elements — often the central one — is conflict. Without conflict, some have argued, there can be no story.

Even if they’re wrong and a story can exist without meaningful conflict, it won’t grab much attention when there’s juicer fare to be had. Like it or not, people gravitate toward tales of opposition and struggle. A state of harmony, while pleasant, isn’t very interesting.

This is a problem for philanthropy’s narrative-changing ambitions because this sector tends to avoid conflict — institutional philanthropy in particular. Take, for example, the narratives preferred by funders in the climate space, which tend to focus on bipartisan overlap, win-win profitability and industry heroics. Meanwhile, the reality of the climate fight is one of corporate deception, right-wing roadblocks, painful inequality and unwavering resistance from the wealthy and powerful. There are exceptions, but most grantmakers don’t want to stoke disagreement, and find a quiet and polite profile far preferable to the provocation and theatrics common in entertainment and politics.

Like it or not, there’s a reason why those sectors draw in vastly greater attention than the conflict-averse nonprofit world, and possess much more narrative-driving horsepower. Philanthropy, meanwhile, gravitates toward narrative change efforts focused on empathy, bridge-building and the promotion of shared values — worthy endeavors, but ones that deemphasize conflict and thus, ironically, may limit their ability to catch on.

2. Ideological echo chambers limit reach

To be fair, over the past decade, we have seen an uptick in nonprofit narrative strategies that do incorporate conflict or depend on it on some level. While most philanthropically funded narrative work continues to emphasize things like bridge-building, pointedly ideological funders do promote stories of struggle — like, say, a narrative involving a young migrant’s fight to survive and thrive after being detained.

The problem, though, is that while those stories are more evocative, they’re unlikely to travel beyond the ideological echo chambers of those already on board with the funder or the organization’s worldview. The converted will applaud the subject’s resilience and resolve, while the unconverted (in the unlikely event they encounter the story at all) will see the story and its backers as pushing an agenda, and discount it.

Funders seeking narrative change thus find themselves in a Catch-22: Avoid conflict and risk being boring, or embrace conflict and risk preaching to the choir.

3. Overreliance on consultants and “experts” may not be cost-effective

The problem of ideological echo chambers isn’t unique to the nonprofit sector, nor is the ever-increasing media-savviness and cynicism of digital-age audiences. But nonprofit narrative change suffers from another potential problem that is more of a sector issue: too much reliance on a proliferation of consultants and self-proclaimed narrative experts.

Some time ago, I wrote about the Convergence Partnership’s report on funding narrative change, which remains one of the most comprehensive overviews of this philanthropic niche to date. One of its big takeaways was that as grantmaker interest in narrative change has grown, so has the market for professionals to guide and spearhead those initiatives.

While some narrative change consultants may well be achieving what their employers want them to achieve, this is not an area where return on investment is at all guaranteed. By Convergence Partnership’s reckoning, “narrative change” as a discrete philanthropic goal dates back only to around 2008. And over that span, media norms and the narrative ecosystem have undergone drastic shifts, as have the ways people take in narrative. With all that in mind, it’s worth asking whether nonprofit narrative change “expertise” can really exist in any meaningful way.

4. Narratives don’t often change from the top down

In a recent piece for IP, Wendy Paris outlined some of the many ways philanthropies are expanding on traditional communications and public relations, and amplifying their visions of social change, often by highlighting the work of grantees. In one sense, narrative change is a natural outgrowth of that, the next step for funders looking to broaden their communications horizons.

But unlike traditional comms and its cousins, organizational storytelling and social media, narrative change is less about what society thinks about a specific institution and more about what society thinks about itself. As such, it seems unlikely that philanthropic funders, with their limited resources and reach, will ever get much traction trying to determine what that looks like from the top down.

They can fund long-term storytelling and research that, with luck, might help certain narratives gain traction among certain people. And as both Paris and the Convergence Partnership’s report pointed out, philanthropy’s ability to invest in narrative change behind the scenes and over long timeframes gives it an advantage, especially when it empowers others to take center stage.

Nevertheless, given the fact that even the largest media companies, most-followed influencers and most powerful governments can often do very little to shift mass narratives from the top down, philanthropy should probably temper its own expectations. If this is a road funders do intend to go down, it won’t be a short trip. This isn’t the kind of thing that can turned around by the end of the fiscal year, and funders may never get a satisfying confirmation that their efforts had much of an impact at all.

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