Ethical Storytelling in Nonprofits: Balancing Impact and Dignity with Diana Farias Heinrich

The truth is, I wanted to throw up before every donor meeting. Fundraising is high stakes and deeply human, vulnerable, and tender. What I needed more than anything was a place to practice. So I created one. Practivated is the first ever donor conversation simulator where you have a private and safe space to put in the reps, refine your messaging, and build your confidence. Learn more at Practivated.com. I'm also very process driven. I used to be a project manager for a software development company. So for me, like if there's not a process, then you're very likely going to keep repeating the same mistake. So once I left that organization, I realized that I wanted to teach those lessons to other nonprofits and I put all those lessons into a framework. It's called the Equa Story Framework and it's four pieces. And this is what I encourage people to take this framework and mold it, adjust it to how your organization does work with its community in the story gathering process. Hey, my name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. I thought the fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago, I was in your shoes, uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. Join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode. So let's dive in. Welcome everyone. I am so excited to be here today with Diana Farias Heinrich. Diana, welcome to What the Fundraising. Thank you so much for having me, Mallory. I'm very excited. Me too. Okay, let's dive in. Let's have you tell everyone a little bit about you and your work and then we'll just start chatting from there. Absolutely. So I am an ethical storytelling champion. I am the CEO of Abra Marketing and through my consulting business, I help nonprofits tell their stories ethically with integrity so that everyone in the storytelling process has a good experience and communities are strengthened and relationships with the community are strengthened. Okay, so I don't like to spend a lot of time on like kind of harping on bad behavior, but I do think it would be helpful to sort of give folks an idea of like what are some of the ways in which we see unethical storytelling sort of out in the ecosystem that your work sort of aims to address. So let me tell you my story, which is the whole reason that I got into this in the first place. So when I first started out in the nonprofit sector, it was my job as the communications and development coordinator to gather stories about 10 young women who had won college scholarships. So these were teens. They were in high school. They were getting these college scholarships. They were also moms. And it was one of my very first assignments out of the gate. And so I interviewed some of them, most of them. I took their photographs. I wrote up these short little paragraphs about them. I put them on the internet, the website, then the program materials and social media and did all of the things that I was supposed to do as a fundraiser, right? To promote these scholarships and drive people to the annual luncheon, which was our main fundraiser event of the year. And so I did all of that. And I felt real good about it. I used to be a project manager. And so for me, having this like purpose driven work just felt awesome. And so we have the luncheon and everything goes really well. I've moved on working on other projects. And then I'm just sitting there one day and I overhear my coworkers talking about one of the young women whose stories I had published. And something about the way that they were talking just kind of piqued my curiosity. So I said, hey, what happened with her? And they said, her ex is being let out of jail. What do you mean? She had been in a domestic violence situation. So I knew as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence, that any information that I had published about her from her first name, her last name, her kid's name, program location could lead the ex back to her. And in that moment, I had a knot in my stomach and I knew that I had screwed up. So I went back to my computer and I took down what I could. I took down her bio from the website. I took down the photo, which I had managed to find in a folder from like an event. It suddenly made sense to me why I could not get a hold of this one young woman to be able to interview her. It was because she was going through something, right? She had a lot on her mind, a lot of things were happening. No wonder I couldn't get a hold of her to do the interview. So I had pulled a photo from an archive, basically. And I took all the things down. And I remember thinking when I took the picture off of the website and I took the bio off of the website, what if people think that we didn't actually give out 10 scholarships? What if this makes it look like it's only nine? They're not going to believe us if the picture is not there, if the story is not there. And had the thought, bypassed it, took it down anyways, of course. And then I realized that I could not let this happen again and there had to be a better way to do it. So that was the catalyst. I didn't know about the term ethical storytelling at the time. I didn't know a damn thing. And I just knew that I needed to do something about it so that I didn't make the same mistake again and end up putting somebody in harm's way. Thank you for sharing that story. And also, I think one of the things learning about things like this, whether you've had your own experience that sort of like shook you out of like, wait, this shouldn't be this way, or you're hearing this podcast and thinking about this for the first time is just giving people permission to like do things differently once they realize things should be done differently. And so I appreciate you vulnerably sharing your own sort of learning journey around that with folks. I feel like when we talk about ethical storytelling, there are some scenarios which maybe feel more glaring in terms of the risk that they pose to either the primarily the people in the stories. And I remember seeing recently, I think it was either CNN or NPR, like I was very surprised like on Instagram, did an article on families who are worried about deportation. And there were full photos of the people and their full names. And I was like, what are we doing? And so those things feel more like glaring, perhaps. But I think in your work, you also address and support organizations to see the nuance of ethical storytelling that maybe people have like aren't as obvious. And I like what you said when you were giving your introduction around like, how does collecting stories in this way change your relationship with your community? How does it become a relationship building and experience and a process that feels really good to everybody? So can you talk us through kind of more of that? Like what happens behind the scenes to really start from step one of building your story in an ethical way? Yeah. So as the years went on in that position, I had the chance to interview a dozen of young people. And through that process, I learned some tricks. And I learned about something called informed consent. And I mean, I'm a marketer, that's my skill set. So I was the one always hitting that publish button. So I'm also very process driven. I used to be a project manager for software development companies. So for me, like if there's not a process, then you're very likely going to keep repeating the same mistake. So once I left that organization, I realized that I wanted to teach those lessons to other nonprofit and I put all those lessons into a framework. It's called the Equa Story Framework, and it's four pieces. And this is what I encourage people to take this framework and mold it, adjust it to how your organization does work with its community in the story gathering process. So the four steps are first, to get all of your background information. So as a marketer, I always knew exactly where I was going to be publishing stories. If I was going to be putting them on the website, if I was going to pitch them to Good Morning America, if I was going to any number of things, putting them on social media, it was learning about the background of my client and who they were, what their situation was, if they were in crisis, how did I learn that? I had conversations with the direct service staff, right? The people who knew them best. And so knowing this background information, I could now approach the person to ask them to share their story, knowing that they were not in a crisis mode, knowing that their direct service person had advised me as to who they were, what some of the best parts about them were. I can approach them and say, hey, we're doing stories. We're going to publish them on the website for our annual luncheon, for example. Going to live here, here and here. Would you like to participate? Sort of a thing. So let me get into the second part of the EquaStory framework, which is Q for questions. So one part of questions is the questions that you're asking during the interview. Are they open ended? Are they strengths based questions that are not going to draw out this person's like worst lived experiences, but that are going to essentially let them shine, let them tell the story the way that they feel good about it. And sometimes we would get into things that had been difficult, the reasons why they had come to the program in the first place. And I mean, I've done interviews with with young people, like I mentioned before, but I've also interviewed folks for Make-A-Wish, families that have gone through a cancer journey or were currently going through cancer journeys. And no matter what, it's the same. Like if you have experienced trauma or are currently experiencing trauma, an interview process where you're telling your story can trigger those things again. So the second part of a question is making sure that you know how to hold a base for people when they inevitably will bring up things that they maybe haven't totally processed yet. Right. We try to mitigate that in the first part through the preparation, which is we're exploring, that's the E for explore. And once we're getting into the questions, like things happen, things come up. So I want to be able to make space. I want to get people an out to say, hey, if I'm noticing in their body, like I'm looking at their body language, I definitely advocate for having at least video interviews, if not in-person interviews so that you can keep an eye on how they're responding. Right. Are they kind of looking away? Are they kind of shrinking? Are they overly enthusiastic? Well, what's happening? Yeah. Right. I want to pick up on those nuances as an interviewer and hold space and just say, hey, I have a box of tissues for you if they have, because folks have cried before. And I'm like, we can stop right here. Let's give you a minute. Do you want to walk away from this interview? It's totally fine if you do. And people walk away and it's not, I'm not the only one that that's happened to. Like the more I talk to other nonprofits, the more that I learned that it's very common for people throughout the storytelling process to back out and we have to be prepared for that, right? Like we have certain pressures and fundraisers and communications people to produce, to produce, produce, produce, produce. We can't do that with the storytelling process. We can't force people to share a story that they're not ready to share. And if we do, then we're doing a huge disservice to them and to the community, right? We're just perpetuating those, that harm. Ooh, okay. I mean, I really appreciate everything that you've been talking about. And so much of what you're talking about requires like a level of personal regulation. I mean, right. To like be able to really witness somebody's experience, to even really be able to see. I just had a conversation with somebody recently who was being interviewed and started to get really emotional and re-traumatized. Like it actually was the camera person who finally stepped in. Like all the people around them were allowing it to keep going and being like, this is such great content. And finally, the camera person stepped in and was like, what are we doing? Like this isn't okay. What's happening right now? And I think about, and that wasn't actually in a nonprofit context with people who feel like they have a donor with their head over their shoulder being like, when are you going to get me these things? Or when do I get to see the impact of my gift or all of those things? And so what are some of your like recommendations for folks? Like it sounds like such an important part of this is like how people are sort of preparing to manage themselves to be able to hold the space that you're talking about. So I caught on to two words you said, personal regulation, and yes, there is some of that, but if you are not in a position of power at your organization, how much personal regulation can you have? How much control over the process can you have if the pressure is on you to meet deadlines? So it can't just be personal regulation. It has to be an organizational culture change where everyone at the organization, from the board of directors, to the direct service staff, to the client, understand what is at stake, understand that everybody is on the same page, that the client's dignity and agency are first and foremost. And when you focus in on the client, which is I think in the storytelling process, right, we think, oh, what's going to resonate with the donors? What's going to have the most impact? Oh, tears. Tears are good. No, tears are not good. Right? That signals that something is happening. And are there cases of happy tears? Sure. But I haven't yet heard of anyone who's cried the happy tears. Find me on LinkedIn and you can tell me if that's the case in this kind of situation. And that's the third part of the EQUA Story Framework is you first understand. Does the client understand what they're getting themselves into when they decide to help you and go public with their story? And then if we take a broader look, does the board of directors understand why you give people an out, why tears are not what demonstrates impact? Because it's not just the client that is experiencing re-traumatization, but there's also secondary trauma. So my mom had my older sisters as a teen. And that's why for me, the first job that I had working with young mothers was so significant to me. Because I was proud of my mom and the family that she raised and all that sort of thing. So, and that's the case for so many nonprofit professionals where we come to work in a nonprofit because we have some sort of lived experience connection to the mission. So it's not just that client that's re-experiencing that trauma, but somebody is going to feel that too. And even if you don't have that same like lived experience, I mean, if you think about like the last movie that you watched that brought you to tears, why? It's because something triggered you, right? Something. And so we have to be really mindful that the stories that we're telling, they have an impact that's more than just how much money we raised. They have an impact in either like uplifting a community or perpetuating stereotypes or re-traumatizing people. And that's why I think that let's take a step back from the personal regulation. Let's give the interviewers, let's give the publishers of the nonprofit world, the development and communications and fundraising, the support that they need so that when they are faced with those tough decisions, they can make the right choice. Okay. So I agree with everything that you're saying. Can we dig in here for one second? Yeah. Because part of what, when I was thinking about personal regulation, it was less about regulation of the process and more about like nervous system regulation around what happened in your body when you're in an experience like this. And so like I was thinking, I a hundred percent agree with you that the frontline fundraiser cannot be responsible for regulating the storytelling of an organization that absolutely has to be like a cultural piece, like 100%. So nothing I'm about to say in any way is like in conflict with what you're saying around the power dynamics at play that make it so ethical storytelling don't happen and who needs to be involved and a part of this conversation culturally. I was thinking about like a few years ago, I got invited. So I'm a survivor of sexual assault. And a few years ago was asked to lead this sort of big initiative where I would have been exposed to a lot of stories like mine. And I've gone through EMDR therapy. I've like done so much work over the years to process my trauma around my experience. But as I started to move down the process of thinking about taking on this project, I really did not trust to your point before about like it can be triggering to other people. And I'm like, I did not trust that I would be able to keep myself regulated in my body enough to even be able to kind of do what I knew I wanted to do or what I wanted this project to be or what everybody else wanted this project to be. Even though I think how they were going about it was incredibly ethical. It was all of the things that you're talking about. But because of my connection to that, to those experiences, I thought that no matter what, even if I knew I could stop it at any point, even if I had support, they offered to pay for additional therapy to help me. And I was like, I don't think I'll be able to hold that space like this in that way. And so I think that's one of the things that I'm thinking about is like, to your point, that there does seem to be and by personal regulation, I also don't mean that it's like I'm not trying to like make it like that it's that person's problem to solve. Like I think this organization was like, OK, this is going to be really hard. How do we build things around you to support you to be able to handle that? But at the end of the day, it's me and my body in that moment. Right. And so that's sort of the like the piece I'm curious about from your perspective, even for folks who maybe feel like they are in a position where, OK, I think my organization sort of is in line with everything you're saying here, but I'm still really struggling to do this. Like, do you have any recommendations on that side of things? Yes. I was just coaching a client this week who does all of the things is working with clients directly, is producing stories. And I picked up on this person has a lot of things on their shoulders. And so I asked, what's your self-care plan? And I don't mean like bubble baths, this and that, but like, what do you do in the moment? And for me, I always come back to this one practice and this practice I've used it during interviews. I've used it before I go speak on stage. I use it when somebody comes to me and they say I recently had someone say to me, I have so far left to go. I had just done a session on assets-based language. They said, I have so much left to go. I have so much left to learn. And they were having a really emotional experience. So I'm thinking something got triggered in them where they are feeling a level of guilt, maybe something. But I said, OK, look, everybody has to start somewhere. And this practice for me has is always a game changer in the moment. And that is taking three big belly balloon breaths. And I learned this years ago from a public speaking trainer. And basically it just you put your hand on your belly and you take a deep breath in through your nose and you make your belly as big as you can, like a balloon, like you're blowing up a balloon. And your hand is over like your your belly button, right? Like. You want to expand that as big as you can. And then you let it out through your mouth and you do that three times. And by the end of that third breath, your nervous system is calmer every time. And I know that if by the end of the third breath, that if my nervous system doesn't feel calmer, it's because I was holding it or trying to like breathe in and out through my nose. Oh, I didn't get enough oxygen. Like we need the oxygen. And so that's one of my favorite things for personal regulation. When you're in an interview with someone and you can't help what's happening, because if you're not in a calm state, how are you going to be able to help that person calm their of mind? Right. It's like, I just, I've heard this in another interview, like just I was listening to it today, but there's an author, an expert on anxiety said to think about like, if you are, you find a stray dog, how are you going to approach that dog? Right. Like, how are you going to get them to like get out of the middle of the street? You're not going to run at them. They're going to cower. They're going to either stay in place or they're going to run, but you can't control it. So you get down and you speak to them softly. But how do you do that? First, you have to be in a calm state of mind. You can't be freaking out over the traffic coming at you. And so that's why it is really important to your point that there is self-regulation in the moment of our physical reactions to these things coming up, because they will come up and then once you get through it, what do you do after, right? How much time do you give yourself before and after interviews to process what you're hearing? Do you, does your organization provide you with counseling? I know a lot of direct service staff gets provided with counseling. I've heard of it in many different nonprofit organizations, but is it also available to fundraisers and, and, and communications experts, right? Like that's something that I know that I had to advocate for myself to say, I'm also working directly with people, maybe not in the same capacity, right? It's not the same outcomes, but all of these things, they surface. There are certain tools that I need for my organization to provide for me so that I can be well enough to continue to do this work. Every year, fundraisers raise billions of dollars, but too often they feel stuck, stressed, or unsupported. My book, What the Fundraising, Embracing and Enabling the People Behind the Purpose is here to help you shift that narrative. With tools for alignment and practical frameworks, it's your guide to fundraising that feels better and delivers greater impact. And don't forget our free discussion guide to take the learning further with your team or community. Visit Mallory.com to learn more about how you can be a better fundraiser. Visit MalloryErickson.com backslash book to start your journey today. I had another podcast interview yesterday where I found myself thinking like some of the same thing as what I'm about to say, and I'm feeling I am feeling my like own tenderness around this so much. It's like I know that there's so many things inside of our sector that we say like we say are working right or not working. We're like so and so works. Right. And we just hear that phrase storytelling works. Like I just feel like I'm hearing that phrase everywhere right now. And I'm listening to everything that you're saying and the intention and the purpose and the safety and thinking about the transactional ways that we so often operate in this sector and the like pressure and system that grinds out things, everything. Right. And I worry so often one of the reasons I really want to have this conversation is because I feel like I worry so often that we use stories that are unethical or we collect them unethically because they quote unquote work or some other goal that we have, some other pressure that we feel. And to your point at the beginning, what that ends up doing is sure. Maybe that fundraising email worked. Right. Like however you measured that moment in time, that click rate or that open rate or whatever, it worked. But in doing it that way, you perpetuated the whole problem that your organization is aiming to solve or resolve or address or work in in some way. And what I really appreciate about what you're saying and about how you addressed the personal regulation piece after I first said it is like this like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like step back, like step way back. And I think in there is this call to action around like purpose. Like why are we telling these stories in the first place? And how do we want to measure whether or not telling these stories worked? And likely we want to, we need to measure them differently downstream as well in order to ensure that we retain the ethical guidelines and process that we're putting in place at the start of it. Does that feel like true to you? So one of my pet peeves is hearing the phrase, but that's the way we've always done it. And that is a lot of the current perception around storytelling in the nonprofit sector that we need to, at any cost, tell the story that's going to make the donor give. And there's a lot of evidence that has been gathered for, okay, if we tell this sad story and we let someone cry on video, it's going to touch people's hearts, right? That's how we connect emotionally with the donor so that the donor feels almost shamed, guilted into giving. That's what we're doing when we're perpetuating really sad stories, right? Is we're guilt shaming our donors into giving. This is something that I've been exploring. How do we bridge between where we are now as a nonprofit industry, where that has been the practice for so long, to a more community-centric fundraising model, like the community-centric fundraising movement, right? Where we are protecting all aspects of the community, including the donors. And so where I have been looking is in what works in marketing for for-profit. And one of the things that works is showing stories of transformation, positive transformation, things that people want, things that people aspire to. That works. And there's evidence for that. So I encourage nonprofits to test. How is this story performing versus how did that story performed, right? And to your point about what are the different measurements, right? Score, score it. Have your clients score it. How do you feel about your story? Do you feel positively about it? Would you share this story in five years, right? Like to your, to the interviewer, to the person that's working on your staff, how do you feel coming out of this interview? Score it. Like, I mean, there's lots of different ways, questions that you can ask, but it's time to start keeping track of those things. And that's part of, we can put that into the approval process, which is the fourth part of the EquaStory framework is A for approval. And what does approval mean that the client had their input as to whether they want to add, edit, or delete anything from the story that they know full well, where it's going to go and they have given their consent again, that they've been given the option to change their mind. Is that a measure of success? I would say so. For me, here's an example though, because I got to work with young women a lot and I got to work with them for many years. Some of them, like I still talk to, to this day and with one young woman in particular, I had written at different times in her life, her story had talked with her many times. So she got to the point where she graduated with two AAs. And so we kind of wrote this really awesome, this wrap up piece with this really cute photo of her and her kid. And so I think I maybe got overconfident about it. So we write it and then I send it to her. And then she says, Diana, this sentence makes it sound like my parents don't support me when they are in fact, my biggest supporters. And I wouldn't want to show this to them. She said, at first they were shocked when I told them that I was pregnant, but now she's like, I couldn't have done any of this without them. So we changed the sentence. And for me, that was the biggest measure of success that I had built up enough rapport with her, enough of a relationship with her that she could tell me that. Right. That I had along the way of that time of with us, like working together, given her like the out and I, what I love about that story is also that she was thinking about that story as like something she wants to show her parents and it's like, I love that. I love that. And that's a measure of success too. Like does the first sentence story it's about want to show their people? Well, they want to show this story on, let's say it's five years later and you're on LinkedIn and yeah, you're looking for a new job. What happens if your prospective employer finds a story about you? Because literally everything is searchable. We were talking earlier about the showing undocumented folks, like with their full names and their images and all of that, literally everything is searchable. It doesn't even have to be words anymore. Now we can search by image. I know, I know. Right? Like there's privacy. This came up recently with someone else that I was talking to. They also wanted to write a piece about, they had a client who was undocumented and had the desire to inspire other people because they had attained some, like a level of success and they wanted to show other undocumented people that they could also attain that level of success. So they wanted to share their story. But given the incoming administration and the immigration things that are bound to change, I'm like, has that person thought about the impact that it could have? And it's like, as a nonprofit, like it's our job to help our community think about those things. I know we're so over time. So I so appreciate it though. And I'll have you tell everyone where to find you and learn more from you. But I just sort of want to leave with this piece that you've been saying, which is the metrics that we measure and the way we think about all of these things, thinking of projecting them into the future, right? So often with fundraising, we're like, how does this perform in this email? And like, my question always to fundraisers is like, okay, so you tell that story and you get a 2% better conversion rate, but how does the donor giving because of that story impact them actually wanting to continue to work with the organization? Like, yeah, anyone can raise money with guilt and favors and like shame and all of those things, that type of fundraising is maybe you get a little bit more money in the moment, but what are you sacrificing in addition to the people in the community? And so I love this orientation around what we look at, what we measure, the questions we ask ourselves about projecting this story into the future and saying, how would you feel about it then? And I just love it. Okay. Tell everyone where they can find you, follow along, work with you, all the things. Okay. So I know that we need a forum for this. So one of the things that I created is called the ethical nonprofit summit. I bring together experts that take on ethical storytelling and fundraising from a lot of different perspectives, from trauma-informed storytelling to using assets-based language to community-centric fundraising, all of these different things, because we need as an industry, the space to talk about these things. So you can learn more about ethical nonprofit summit.com. And then you can find me on LinkedIn at Diana Farias Heinrich. I post there all of the time. So come and DM me, say hi, ask a question. I like to have these conversations because what I always think is what may be ethical to me may not be ethical to you. And we all have to work around constraints. So let's unpack them and try to figure out a better way forward. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you, Mallory. Thank you for having me. I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently for additional takeaways, tips, show notes, and more about our amazing guests and sponsors head on over to MalloryErickson.com backslash podcast. And if you didn't know, hosting this podcast, isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach guide and help fundraisers and leaders just like you inside of my program, the power partners formula collective inside the program. I share my methods, tools, and experiences that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process to learn more about how I can help you visit MalloryErickson.com backslash power partners. Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend, you know, would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode. Fundraising doesn't have to feel like a solo battle. My book, what the fundraising embracing and enabling the people behind the purpose offers practical strategies and frameworks to help you navigate the challenges of fundraising with ease and impact. And with our free discussion guide, you can deepen learning and collaboration with your team or book club. Ready to transform the way you fundraise head to MalloryErickson.com backslash book to order your copy today, anywhere books are sold, and you can grab the guide there too.