For 75 years, CARE has worked around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty, achieve social justice and fight for women and girls. In 2020, CARE worked in over 100 countries, reaching more than 90 million people through 1,300 projects.
Through this Purpose and CARE collaboration, we were able to co-build a framework, unique to the organization, that set the groundwork for a more ethical and dignified storytelling practice, in order to continue generating powerful impact for the causes CARE works towards everyday.
Challenge
Like many legacy organizations today, CARE found itself facing a constructive, but significant, communications challenge: as the extended CARE audience shifts to favor more inclusive and equitable storytelling standards, the strong expectation is that actors like CARE will follow suit, and even lead, in this work.
It was time for CARE to put a stake in the ground about what values it stands for and against, where it can strengthen its credibility in understanding diverse perspectives, and how it all should come to life in a way that’s authentic to its identity.
Approach
To give CARE an ethical storytelling approach that they could embrace quickly, reference often, and evolve with time, Purpose supported CARE in developing an ethical storytelling toolkit that blended its brand voice and values.
To foster commitment and ownership, we held a co-creation workshop that brought together multifunctional teams from both organizations. In our sessions, we openly discussed the priorities, challenges, experiences, and aspirations for the future of ethical storytelling at the organization. Teams were facilitated through exercises to align on programmatic victories, brand voice opportunities, best practice decisions, and unique comms needs for CARE that served as pilot spaces for a new, values-driven way of framing their work.
Theory of Change
Purpose partnered with CARE to create an Ethical Storytelling Toolkit, to support the CARE team in their ethical storytelling journey by providing:
– A uniquely CARE storytelling strategy and vision
– Agreed-upon guidelines for telling stories ethically throughout CARE’s work
– Tools that make these principles accessible and actionable to the global CARE storytelling community
In order to align with CARE on how to support them in telling stories more ethically, Purpose facilitated a sprint workshop that gathered team members from communications to fundraising and more to lay the foundation of an ethical storytelling framework for the global organization.
Together, we were able to align on answering- what does it take to meaningfully infuse a value in an organizational voice and approach?
The toolkit was created to support anyone who tells stories on behalf of CARE.
Whether creating a social post, sourcing content from CARE’s diverse global programs, preparing messaging on behalf of the organization to dozens of regional offices and teams, or speaking on behalf of the organization to its members or the press, this toolkit was meant to support in telling ethical stories about CARE’s programs and communities around the world.
Our work kickstarted a reinvigoration around what’s possible for CARE when it comes to evolving its voice to be inclusive of a growing set of values. From inspiring creative storytelling possibilities, to opportunities to connect to more values-aligned audiences, CARE is embracing these new principles and potential today.
for Equity & Evidence