It's Time to Re-Evaluate Our Storytelling Frames

Two weeks ago, I had two subject-matter expert interviews on my schedule. The assignments were for a longtime client in the public health and technology space. After I clicked to enter one call, my contact appeared, telling me the SME had canceled at the last minute. Unusual, I thought.

Things got weirder in my second call. I could see the SME’s eyes darting between the Zoom window and something else on her computer. I asked my first question, but she danced around it. What she thought she understood about her team’s strategy just before the call was no longer applicable, thanks to the rapid-fire changes of the new presidential administration.

We stopped the call about five minutes in. We haven’t rescheduled yet.

We knew things would change in this administration. But never in even my worst-case-scenario catastrophizing did I fathom so much would happen in two weeks. The Silicon Valley approach, “move fast and break stuff,” is afoot in Washington.

This isn’t going to be a post decrying the actions happening the highest levels of the federal government. (I’ll go there in a separate post, at another time.) Instead, this post will talk about how, as nonprofit, higher ed, and even corporate communicators, we must adjust to the new world we live in.

You and me, we know the immense value that our organizations can bring to our country and the world. But what’s abundantly clear over the past two weeks is that a sizeable chunk of our fellow Americans, including the current president, don't know (or don't care).

Just look at how the administration axed USAID. Sure, USAID is one of the world’s most important public health and development organizations. But did you know it was also an important tool for diplomacy and national security? Probably not.

This administration and those who voted for it didn't know, either (or, perhaps, just didn't care). To them, USAID is a bunch of bleeding-heart hippies spending taxpayers’ hard-earned money in far-flung places that had no impact on America’s present or future. As the de facto American president Elon Musk put it, “It became apparent that [USAID]’s not an apple with a worm in it. What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing.”

The lesson of this is simple: If we can't make people outside our own walls—especially those in power— understand what we do, we don't have a chance of surviving, much less thriving, in this environment.

This, obviously, isn't news. It's a basic tenet of marketing and communications that you must invest in high-quality messaging and storytelling to reach your target audiences. But the stakes are now existential. If the people who hold decision making power in our national leadership don't see how your company/organization/institution is advancing the wealth and power of the United States, you can kiss any kind of federal funding goodbye.

Do I like that this is the scenario? No.

Do I know we have to live in this scenario? Yes.

Like my client in the introduction, we need to pause. We need to evaluate the frames we use in our storytelling. And we need to change them. Fast.

Here are a few ideas that might help us get started:

• Think about the things your company/organization/institution does that dovetail in even the most tangential way to the stated goals of the administration. List them.

• Think about the people in your company/organization/institution who are working on those items you just listed. Add those to each entry on your list.

• Think about the beneficiaries of the work these people are doing. Add those details to each entry on your list.

• Brainstorm the different ways you a tell stories about these people. (I shared some story ideas and structures here and here. They are presented through an advancement/fundraising lens, but they can easily be adapted for other purposes, like admissions, content marketing, and PR.)

• Start constructing these stories.

• Re-think your distribution strategy to include the platforms that may best get the attention of the administration or those who support it. (And note: They may be very different from the pools you've been comfortable in to date.)

• Keep this list running through constant updates

This approach isn’t about abandoning our core missions and becoming lock-stock-and-barrel MAGAs. It’s not about abandoning diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, officially or unofficially. It’s about understanding the current reality and finding a way to do the most good for the people we serve—and for the people we employ—within that reality.

A few months ago, Mandy Matney, the investigative journalist who blew the lid off the Alex Murdaugh murder case in South Carolina, had Amanda Knox on her podcast. Mandy asked Amanda how she survived the time she spent in jail, knowing that she was innocent. Amanda’s response has stayed with me.

I feel like once you acknowledge reality as it is, you can be a more effective agent of change. Because if you are living in this mental state where you are just looking at how the world is different than the way it should be and you are focused on that, you are not actually engaging with the world as it is. And it causes you a lot of unnecessary suffering…

And I think the difference is acknowledging what it is allows you to find opportunities within those limitations that you wouldn’t otherwise see if you were so focused on what should be.

There’s wisdom in Amanda’s words. To move forward, we need to start finding opportunities within the limitations, even as we work to dismantle the latter.