The Evolution of Ethical Storytelling with Carly Euler
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In This Episode
Join Maria Bryan and Carly Euler, Marketing Director at MemoryFox, to explore the insights from the hot-off-the-press 2024 Ethical Storytelling Report.
As nonprofits navigate the delicate balance between sharing compelling stories and respecting the dignity of those they serve, this conversation takes a deep dive into the evolving landscape of ethical storytelling practices in the nonprofit sector.
Carly reveals the fascinating gap between what nonprofit professionals believe about ethical storytelling and what's actually happening in practice. You'll hear inspiring success stories—including an organization that exceeded fundraising goals by 75% through strength-based storytelling!
Storytelling ethics is a journey, not a destination. There aren’t always clear “right” or “wrong” answers. Listen in as Carly invites us to join the MemoryFox campfire to learn how to tell great stories ethically and authentically.
About Carly Euler
After nearly 10 years in the nonprofit world, Carly joined MemoryFox ready to elevate the hundreds of nonprofits in the community by telling stories ethically and authentically. Carly is the creator of the 2024 Ethical Storytelling Report, and has previously held positions at the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester, the Wily Network, and the Code of Support Foundation, where she has specialized in special events, communications, and fundraising. Storytelling has been an integral part of each role.
Connect with MemoryFox
Download the 2024 Ethical Storytelling Report | Learn more about MemoryFox
Connect with Maria
The When Bearing Witness Podcast is produced by Rustic Roots. They are video storytellers passionate about sharing the impact of nonprofits. From story ideation to beautiful and powerful videos on screen, they've got you covered. Learn more at Rusticroots.co.
Transcripts
Maria Bryan: Well, hello, everyone. We have Carly Euler with us today. Carly is the marketing director at MemoryFox, partners and really good friends of mine, and the number one ethical storytelling tool for nonprofits. Carly spent a decade working in-house in numerous nonprofits before joining the MemoryFox team. And today, we are going to talk about the hot-off-the-press 2024 ethical storytelling report. Welcome, Carly. I'm so, so happy to have you on the show.
Carly Euler: Thank you so much for having me. I can't think of a better topic to discuss and with a better person to discuss it.
Maria Bryan: Yes. This is the second year that you released this report. And you, you really have championed this, Carly. What inspired you to dig into ethical storytelling from a data perspective?
Carly Euler: Yes, I'm so glad you asked. We kind of came by this by happenstance. A couple of years ago, we were presenting at conferences. We were doing webinars. We were recording podcasts and people always asked us a version of this question, which was: What do I do if the people I serve must remain anonymous, or what do I do if the people I serve just simply aren't comfortable sharing their stories?
And we just didn't have an answer. We really didn't know, we would point them to people like you, we would point them to people like Michael Kass, other partners of ours that are working on stuff like this, but we felt, well, if people are going to keep asking us these questions, we better have some answers.
So we thought, let's just put together a panel. We'll get all of our great experts that are partners of ours to talk about this. We'll ask these questions, and then we'll know. And everybody who attended the panel will know. Right. And it'll be that simple.
Maria Bryan: One and done.
Carly Euler: Yeah. We just thought, let's do it. Right. So we did it, and we put together this panel in December of 2023. You were one of our panelists.
Maria Bryan: Yes.
Carly Euler: And it was phenomenal. We had over 400 people register. It was our first time doing something like this. So we didn't know what type of audience we might get, but that meant that along with 400 people registering, we had 150 questions come through, which I mean, if anybody's been on a panel before, you know, you get to maybe 10 in an hour.
Maria Bryan: Right.
Carly Euler: You don't, you definitely don't get to 20, or certainly not 150. So, one day, Chris, my boss, he was just like, "Wow, these questions are so good. I wish we could find a way to answer more of them and just find a way where we could get more of these answers in front of people." And he said it just kind of as, as an idea, you know, he's kind of just like the idea guy ,and I thought, well, we can totally do that.
Let's do that. Why aren't we doing that? So we decided to go through all those questions. We pulled out ones that we thought kind of represented the whole group. And then we went back to people like you and other people that are in our community kind of working on ethical storytelling, and we asked them, can you answer these questions for us? We're going to make a report. So that's kind of the big backstory.
And we really felt like, in addition to just getting the answers, we thought it was important to see kind of how everybody is feeling about ethical storytelling in the current state of the sector. So that's where the survey portion came in. We decided just to ask, right? Like, how important is ethical storytelling to you? We weren't sure what people were going to say. People could have said it wasn't that important or what the heck is ethical storytelling. But really, we found that a lot of people already thought it was very important back in 2023. And we're seeing the trends continue in 2024.
Maria Bryan: The results from that first report were so important to me because this is so niche in my field. And it was the first time that I was seeing data on this is what folks are struggling with. These are folks that are eager for training. It actually really helped inform consultancy, so I just want to thank you for pouring your sweat, bloo,d and heart into that report. And now again, the second one just rolled out really last week, this will come out in a couple of weeks, but I got, you know, just to see it. When did it come out just?
Carly Euler: Just one week ago.
Maria Bryan: So let's, let's take it to that a little bit. Give us an overview of the 2024 report, and then maybe we can touch on some of the biggest takeaways to focus on for 2025.
Carly Euler: Happy to. So the report really is two parts. Like I mentioned, it's a survey and then it is the written portion where we took questions from nonprofit professionals and put them in front of people that we thought had some answers. This year, we decided to kind of go and focus on themes. So the first theme is strategy and implementation. So real. What can we do next? What are things that people are doing right now? The second section was consent.
We really wanted to do a deep dive on everything about consent. Cause that is the number one topic that we get asked about here at MemoryFox. And then we had this third section that we wanted to kind of cover some special considerations or special story types. So special considerations for stories that involve youth, or maybe some questions about how ethical is it to use AI?
That's kind of an overview of what the... of how you can expect to go through the report. And if you only want to look at the AI part, that's fine too. Or if you only want to look at the youth stories part, I tried my best to make sure it was broken down in a way where people could kind of just flip to the pages that they felt either made the most sense to them or they were looking for a specific answer at the time. Then taking it one step further, a new addition this year, we actually added five ethical storytelling case studies.
I asked nonprofits, would you be willing to share a little bit about an improvement that you've made over the past year? And five nonprofits really stepped up and they gave me all the details and they were so kind to do that because that's their journey. They didn't need to share it with me, but I love that they were willing to share kind of exactly what they did and the outcome. Some positive, some not as positive, you know, some are still in action, still working on it.
But I think that that's so important. And then kind of the last thing about the report this year is I also included six summarized lists. So something like five keys to ethical story collection. What are kind of these answers in this whole section if we had to wrap them up into just five keys, what would that look like? So there's a few of those as well. Again, if people just want to take a sneak peek and take a look at those and then maybe go back and find a little more in depth answers.
Maria Bryan: Did anything surprise you from this report or kind of stand out differently from last year?
Carly Euler: Yes, when it came to the consent portion of the actual survey, we learned that the vast majority of people that were surveyed do believe that consent is important. Extremely important. So they were asked in a scale of one to five where to rate how important consent is. And 89 percent said that it's extremely important. So that was or 89 percent in the year 2023 said it was extremely important. And 81 percent in the year 2024 said it was extremely important. So, you know, for all intents and purposes, that's actually pretty much the same.
And then I wanted to understand how important consent was for your organization. So people were asked again, on a scale of one to five, is consent important at your organization? And honestly, only 24 percent said that they thought their organization currently has a solid system in place to collect consent.
So it's something that they find important, but only 24%. So when you're looking at 81 percent of people saying this is extremely important to me, but only 24 percent of them reporting that their organization sort of feels the same way or is actually doing something to collect consent. You know, that was just something I really wasn't expecting to see.
Maria Bryan: That is so telling, Carly. Like, my eyes got really, really big, but it's a pattern that is so clear to me within the Bearing Witness program, or folks go through this, you know, go through the study, they come to these calls. They're passionate, they feel urgent, right? And then they're like, I don't know where to go from here because my leadership is not there yet. So getting marketers and fundraisers excited about this and concerned about this is just the 1st step. And that is so indicative of folks wanting consent or feeling that consent is important, but then not getting buy in from the organization. And it's worrisome, but also I get it. Getting consent is hard. Really true.
And like, we're getting to the point where consent isn't just a long legalese form. And please do listen to Ali Levine's episode, which came out in January on consent. I mean, consent is an ongoing conversation, but also consent might mean that we're allowing people to retract their story.
Carly Euler: Yes.
Maria Bryan: Or we're only allowing them to have their story up for two years and I'll say this to people and they'll contact me and they'll be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, are you saying that we're putting out stories once a week or once a month? For years and years, and now I need to be tracking that and be taking stories down or going, but I get it.
I mean, this is consent is not just a consent form. If we're really, really doing it in a way that's trauma-informed and ethical, we are following up. We are very well organized in keeping track and that's a big ask for organizations to take on. So anyway, consent is tough. We want to do consent. It, that stat doesn't surprise me, but it does concern me. And again, why I so appreciate this report is I've had a feeling that this is the case quality, you know.
Carly Euler: Yes.
Maria Bryan: But to have data that there are folks that care about this, but their organizations quite aren't on board yet. It's just speaks volumes.
Carly Euler: Absolutely. So yes, that kind of those two charts, when you see them next to each other, it's very jarring to see how different they are. Because same as what you said, I think I kind of inherently knew that, but it's really a lot when you see the answers next to each other. I will say, we also, one thing we wanted to look further into this year was, why is this happening?
Why are organizations maybe not adopting ethical storytelling practices? This wasn't something we had asked about in the previous survey, so this is all brand new information. We actually found that when I asked an open ended fill in the blank question where I asked, what types of challenges are you facing to adopting or adhering to ethical storytelling standards. I think the top six were maybe not what I expected. Actually, let me ask you first. What do you think maybe the top one or two might be when it comes to a question like that?
Maria Bryan: This is such a good question. Would imagine resources because it does can take a long time to, to implement some of these things. I don't know. But tell me.
Carly Euler: Yes, I'd love to tell you. So basically, so here's what I did. I want to talk first for methodology just to be completely transparent. People filled in whatever they were wanted to write into the blank. I then read every single answer and I pulled out keywords that I felt kind of represented what they were trying to explain.
So some of this is nuanced, but the number one thing that people said was a challenge for them. I do think falls into leadership buy in, but what I deemed it as was lack of education. A lot of people said, we just don't have a staff that believes or knows about ethical storytelling right now. Maybe they do obviously they probably do if they're reading the report taking the survey, but number one was that they just thought it was a lack of education, maybe throughout the whole sector, but definitely at their organization.
Then number two was lack of training. So we're saying, these are now people who are saying, "Oh, I understand that I want to do ethical storytelling, but I don't know where to start. And I don't have proper training at this time." Then number three was no formal process, which is kind of similar, but that is kind of a way of saying, okay, we don't have a guide in place. We don't have any standards in place. We don't really know exactly what we're doing here.
And then this was what was surprising to me coming in at number four and five. I think these sort of go together, but the number four challenge that people said they face is they just want to avoid re-traumatizing their community and therefore, they're just not doing it. So they're just saying, "I'm not sure exactly how to do this in a way that would not re-traumatize my community. So I'm taking a step back and I'm not even giving this a try right now."
Maria Bryan: Oh, that breaks my heart.
Carly Euler: Right. I mean, that's right up your alley as exactly what you are working so hard to get people trained on and, and get people kind of up to date and, and really just thinking about.
So I thought for that to come in at number four was really interesting that people were so nervous about re-traumatization that they just were stepping back.
Maria Bryan: This has always been one of my fears in teaching. This is that I go so in depth on the harms of trauma. And then, of course, people are then fearful of telling stories. So, like, you know what, let's just go back to just sharing data and impact and let's just be safe. It's just easier. We're not gonna do any harm that way. And so for those of you listening, who feel that know that it's worth taking risks. And I think that if... Yeah. And I don't want to dwell on this cause this could be a whole nother episode. Actually, there are a few episodes on this because it's so close to my heart. But just know that we are human and there's grace in the mistakes that we make, and I just hope that we are open to taking risks. We can both do due diligence and just do one thing every month to improve our ethical and trauma informed storytelling. I would love to hear one of those case studies.
Carly Euler: Okay.
Maria Bryan: Can you share a little bit about organizations that are doing it right?
Carly Euler: So I will shout out all five and then I'll kind of get in on one specific case study, but I'd love to thank my friends at the Seattle Clemency Project, Chive Charities, Artist Year, Cameras for Girls, and I Would Rather Be Reading. They are our five ethical storytelling case studies. They're... I should say that, you know, these aren't even MemoryFox customers. Most of them. There was no expectation that they use MemoryFox or that their case study be about MemoryFox or anything like that. These were just people who said, "Hey, I think I'm doing this pretty good. And I just started implementing this and I want to share it with others." So I love that.
I think I'm looking forward to even more next year. So if you want to submit your own nonprofit for an ethical storytelling case study next year, please hit me up. I'd love that, but let's talk about, I Would Rather Be Reading. So I Would Rather Be Reading, they provide afterschool programs and summer camps free of charge to families that live in Louisville, Kentucky and full disclosure, they are a MemoryFox customer.
So they do use MemoryFox. When the pandemic hit, they were like many nonprofits trying to find a way to kind of diversify their funding sources, and they were actually brand new to storytelling. They had not formally used storytelling for fundraising at all. So they were actually starting from the ground up with a brand new process of how they were going to collect stories and share stories and what they were going to do with them to try to raise more funds. Right from the get go, they always believed that they wanted to find a way to share the stories of their families without them feeling shame or without them feeling embarrassed. And then they were trying to figure out, how do we do that?
So right from the get go, they decided as an organization, they were not going to ask questions that would have their students talk about things that they need or their past trauma. They were just going to say, let's talk about this milestone that you hit, or let's talk about this accolade that you just achieved. And honestly, if anybody here wants to follow them on Instagram, they have so many great examples that they share right from their students' mouths, direct quotes, these really adorable videos of their students that are making strides in their reading or making strides and just working with others and teamwork.
It's really fun to watch. So definitely go follow them. Overall, they found that this was the easiest way they could consistently collect stories. And these were real life success stories that now their donors have come to expect to hear. One unexpected outcome when they decided to only share stories of successes, they... The parents actually have gotten super involved. So that means that we were just talking about how consent can be challenging or how organizing and collecting consent can be something that nonprofits struggle with.
Well, they found that actually telling stories in this way made it so the parents wanted to be more involved with sharing their successes and really kind of the biggest thing, which I think every nonprofit would love to have is the stories raised more money for them. They actually at one fundraising event that they held last year, they showed a compilation of stories of their students talking about how much fun they were having learning through their programs.
They actually raised 75 percent more than their original goal. And I mean, I've worked at nonprofits before I have been in the room at events like this. It's pretty unheard of to raise, you know, you might raise maybe 10 percent more than your goal or 15 percent more than your goal, but 75 percent more than your goal is actually pretty unheard of.
So it's really inspiring to see that simply asking kids that they work with what successes they are seeing and feeling. I mean. What could be more easy than that? And it's so cute. And then just being able to show people what their money is really going to support. It's. It's just a great success story.
Maria Bryan: That makes my heart sing. I love that parents wanted to get more involved. They're raising more funds. See if y'all we can, we can do this. We can do this. Cheers to strength based storytelling and questions. I love that. So one more question I have on the report. Where do you see the future of ethical storytelling going? What are your maybe hopes and dreams, or what are the trends that you're seeing?
Carly Euler: Sure. So I know we have talked about this before just me and you personally, if you think back to even five years ago, definitely 10 years ago, the only types of stories you really saw coming out of nonprofits, especially big nonprofits were poverty porn style stories. And I love that we're already seeing this shift in really, really such a short time frame.
We're seeing a lot of people are wanting more training being willing to learn trying to figure out new ways to do things. So I definitely see that more people are already adopting ethical storytelling because we're seeing more and more people do it. We can attribute that to a few things, but I think one thing we can really attribute it to is nonprofits taking storytelling more seriously as building a culture within their nonprofit.
So really becoming a community with the people that you serve as well as your donors and your board members and your supporters instead of kind of putting people in separate buckets. When you focus on building a culture of storytelling and then therefore kind of a culture of ethical storytelling beneath that, people are willing to share more stories because it's, it's, you know, the culture.
So when you are writing an email and you tell a story and then you ask people to reply. Or when you are collecting donations and afterwards you ask donors, why did you donate today? Or when people are volunteering and later you say, "Hey, can you submit those photos that you took? I saw you take some selfies. I'd love to have access to those if you don't mind." That's what's going to get people to start thinking more often, "Hey, I am going to share my story. I am going to tell more people about this nonprofit." I just think storytelling is going to continue to become more popular and ethical storytelling kind of naturally falls into that because we're taking it more seriously.
Maria Bryan: Oh, I'm so here for that future. I love this idea that you're just joyfully expected to share your story, no matter what your role is with a nonprofit. Let's talk a little bit more about MemoryFox as a tool, both for story collecting and being the number one ethical tool. I have always felt that this is just such a wonderful tool to give agency to story owners and to build that process.
Carly Euler: MemoryFox at its core is a technology platform built specifically for nonprofits to collect, organize, and share stories that come directly from your community. So that can be videos that can be photos that can be written testimonials. That's what we do. And we have always served mission driven organizations.
There's five parts of MemoryFox that I like to deem the ethical storytelling parts. And we're hoping to build more every day. Number one, we've always collected consent. And the consent in MemoryFox is a big... Is a built in form that is fully editable by the nonprofit. It's a fully editable consent form. So the nonprofit's able to write exactly what they are looking for exactly what their process is going to be for the story as well as a consent removal option. So that's something actually that was a brand new concept to me after I created last year's report. I realized that this was something I hadn't even considered that people might want to retract their stories. It seems so obvious now, but truly, it was a new concept for me.
So that is something that we have since implemented. Number two, privacy. And what I mean by that is the nonprofits that use MemoryFox. The stories, the videos, the written testimonials that they collect. We don't own those. We don't take ownership of them. Those are the nonprofit's content. We honestly, we don't even look at them. They're not our stories. So unless a nonprofit wants to share something with us, or if we see something what we call in the wild, maybe out on Facebook or on Instagram. That's not something that we are privy to. Those are private stories that belong to the nonprofit.
We also take great care to have the platform be accessible. So by that, I mean, you can collect stories through your mobile device, through your tablet, through your desktop. So kind of this idea of being able to collect videos, photos, written testimonials, where the storyteller is most comfortable, that's super important to us. Trying to make sure that that is super accessible to people is very important to us as well. I already mentioned this a little bit, but everything about MemoryFox is customizable. You actually can implement your own community's language, your strength based language that your community prefers.
You can put that in all parts of your campaigns to collect stories. And that's super important because you are the one that's going to know the best way to refer to your community or the way that they prefer to be referred to. So that is something that we can certainly help you form the language for that, but that ultimately is something that you have full control over.
And then, we get asked about this all the time, but when it comes to pricing I would love to just say a price right now of what MemoryFox costs, but you know what? We do equitable pricing, and that really is because we believe that nonprofits... That really every nonprofit has stories to tell and has great stories at their fingertips.
Maria Bryan: And we really work with nonprofits to try to make sure we can find a way that makes sense for them to be able to put it in their budget or be able to go ask their CEO or their board of directors and say, "Hey, this is important for us." So equitable pricing is kind of maybe the fifth thing that we do in terms of ethical storytelling. I find that one of the most sensitive and vulnerable parts of story gathering is the interview, the actual point of asking and receiving answers to these questions and not even that long ago. This seemed to be something that you could do on the phone, mostly in person.
At least now we can do this through Zoom. When someone has experienced trauma, they lose safety and control. And so that's what we're constantly trying to give back during the storytelling process. I love these strengths based stories that are just free of trauma. But if you happen to be asking someone to relive something difficult and sensitive through storytelling, being able to email them or text them a link and to say, listen, you feel good and...
Carly Euler: Yeah.
Maria Bryan: And this can be in your closet, this can be up in the mountains, it can be wherever you feel safe, you can share a video or you can just send a picture or and you can write something. You are giving so much safety and agency to folks. I've always been such a big believer in this tool to, to equip storytellers to do that. And like we said, when folks are feeling like we can't tell stories without doing harm. Well, we can't promise not to do harm, but there are things like using MemoryFox's tools that really give back that, that safety and...
Carly Euler: Yeah, I agree. And I think that when somebody can maybe record a video on their own, they get to recheck it and see, you know, this is exactly what I wanted to say, or this is exactly how I want to be represented. Giving people the option to share when and where they're comfortable, again, sort of a new concept for me when I was learning about this from all the answers that we got from our written contributors.
It just makes sense. It's so, it's, again, one of those things that kind of seems obvious after you start talking about it, but it's not something that comes naturally to everybody. So I'm, I'm glad that we're talking about it.
Maria Bryan: You know, from a marketer and fundraiser perspective, you're kind of, or at least how I felt is that you're always feeling like, you know, you're in the way like, excuse me, excuse me, program staff. Can you give me a few folks or excuse me, program participant? Can you just, can I take your picture? And you're always feeling like, how can I make this as easy as possible for folks? And maybe intuitively it was for me: give me 20 minutes of your time so I can record this and I'll take it from there. And it came from a place of how can I just get in and out of your way and do this as easy as possible, better for worse.
That's how we felt as marketers or communicators in the nonprofit space, like you just in and out, like, and then let everyone else do the hard field work, you know, the work that's making the world a better place. And the honest truth is, and something I'm learning through MemoryFox is like, actually let's give story owners a little bit more credit. If we give them the space, like I can't imagine when I was in house 10 years ago, giving a link to someone and feeling like they would actually take the time to record. I mean, it's just a different culture now. And I think my boss's head would spin at like, no, like make this easier, but really it is easy. And it's giving so much autonomy to the story owner.
So something else that I've just been feeling as we're talking is yeah, let's give our story owners more credit and more space to get involved. And I love the case study that you shared because it showed that there were those first few parents that were excited about sharing their children's progress and they got other parents excited and wanting to share their stories. What a perfect example. If you give a platform for folks, they're going to take the time to do it, especially if it's a way that's strength based. Thank you so much.
Carly Euler: Of course. And I, I completely agree with what you're saying. I think that sometimes people might not know that they're ready to share their story. They might just need a passive ask, or they might just need to know that it's there for when they're ready. We never want people to feel like they must share their story because they received a service or because they worked with a nonprofit. While a fundraiser doesn't, you know, usually come in with the intention of making somebody feel that way. Sometimes we do that and we don't mean to when we do ask many times for stories. And I think sometimes when you use something like MemoryFox, again, maybe even just to get the story going, you kind of are putting that power back with the storyteller. So yeah, I completely agree.
Maria Bryan: Carly, where can listeners, and we're gonna put this in the show notes for sure. Learn more about MemoryFox, and download this report. And this is a free report for...
Carly Euler: Yes, it's completely free, so you can find it at memoryfox.io/ethical-storytelling. If you just go to the memoryfox.io website, though, you will find it. It's right at the top bar, so it's really easy to find. But you also can learn more about MemoryFox again at our website, or we're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. We're kind of across all platforms, but those are kind of the four that I mostly post on. You'll probably see my face on there a lot.
Maria Bryan: Carly is such a treasure trove of resources on storytelling. She hosts quite a few panels specifically on ethical storytelling. So do get in touch, get connected, get on the email list. What a great resource. Carly, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Carly Euler: Thank you so much for having me and for being a contributor to both reports. It's really such a pleasure working with you