Kate McDowell on Storytelling

For those not in the know, Advancement was formerly Development, and Development was formerly Fundraising. And so fundamentally, when we talk about storytelling in advancement, we're talking about activities that help support fundraising. But names are important, and these name changes are meaningful in terms of what fundraising has come to mean over time. In the long term, fundraising means creating strong relationships and networks of relationships between people with different kinds of resources (time, money, information). These relationships are based on shared values, and the way we know that we share values is to tell each other stories. In order to tell stories, you have to find stories. Over several years, I've come up with several kinds of stakeholders who may serve as sources of stories that advancement professionals and professionals in nonprofits more generally can try to find in, around, or about their organization. And to hear a great story, you have to as...

These links are here as viewing shortcuts for my storytelling courses, but let me say that if you are interested in telling stories well, then this 4-part 17-minute-total set of videos featuring Ira Glass of This American Life is well worth your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pFI9UuC_fc&index=1&list=PLE108783228F1E008

For the tenth year, nearly rounding out a decade, I am preparing to teach a graduate seminar in Storytelling. This course requires many kinds of skills, from public speaking to understanding audiences and much more, but the first skill that every student must acquire is the ability to find stories to tell. Specifically, for their first stories, each student must acquire the ability to find folktales. You could head to the local public library and browse the 398.2 section, or you could start online With the task of finding folktales at hand, my students find that there are fewer excellent online resources for finding folktales than you might think. Those linked here offer good starting points because they have reasonable information documenting origins either as source notes or as annotations or because they situate tales in relation to each other. Aaron Shepherd's Folktales  http://www.aaronshep.com/stories/folk.html D. L. Ashliman's Online Folktale Finder  http://www.p...

Everybody is talking about "storytelling" lately... When you hear the word "storytelling" so much, it seems like anything and everything can be storytelling. But it's important to define it so you know what I'm talking about. As written previously, I define storytelling as a dynamic exchange between the tale, the teller, and the audience. Understanding what is not storytelling--according to the definition I am developing based on the tradition of storytelling in librarianship--may help to further illuminate what storytelling is. But perhaps I should start with a quick definition of what storytelling is. Stories are fascinating; lots of  people are deeply interested in story structure, but I focus most on storytelling. To understand the "telling" part, I see benefits to focusing on the dynamic of storytelling as a three-part interchange. We learn about listening from this model in ways that other models miss by focusing solely on the story....

What happens when stories are doing translation work between organizations? What does it mean when a story has to travel between different groups? How is inter-organizational storytelling a tool for coordination, collaboration, and leveraging collective resources? To understand how storytelling might work in these contexts, we have to back up and think about what these contexts are. In my (frequently co-taught) course Youth Services Community Engagement , we talk extensively about how the purposes of various organizations serving youth in communities lead them to collaborate (or not). Examples of the kinds of organizations we discuss are: school and public libraries, homework help programs, Scouting and other clubs, LGBTQIA and allies organizations, religious youth groups, and crisis nurseries as well as organizations that serve youth by serving families such as food banks, shelters, etc. When considering how different organizations are structured and function, there are a few...

I've noticed that there are two common definitions of "storytelling" floating around. The most common one is "the way you tell a story." In other words, it's all about the teller and the tale. There are scads of books about plot construction, screenplay writing, and other ways of telling stories. They cover every possible medium. So when people come to my storytelling workshops, they often expect to learn about story and how to perform. And I do indeed teach some of that. But it's incidental to my main point, which is the second definition of storytelling. As I use it, storytelling means a complex interplay and dynamic exchange between three elements, each of them vibrant and changing moment by moment. the tale the teller the audience You can this of this as a triangle: The best way to visualize this is as a dynamic triangle(1). There are three interrelationships happening in any dynamic storytelling exchange: the teller and the aud...

The real work of storytelling is not just talking, telling, or even framing the tale. It's knowing what to ask and when to listen. I'm launching a new research project today, and I'm hoping to talk with many of you who are reading this in the course of this research. The project is called Storytelling at Work, and it's about understanding how storytelling matters in the workplace. I hope to address questions like:  In the everyday world of work, what stories do we tell and what stories do we hear? How does storytelling work for people in everyday life? When does a story make or break the success of a workday, a project, or even an organization? I plan to conduct as many interviews as possible, aiming for someplace between 50-100 over the next year or two (1-2 per week or more when time permits). Each interview will take about 30 minutes. In this way, I am optimistic that I'll be able to draw together an informed picture of storytelling at work while not over-r...