Giving Compass' Take:

• Nonprofits utilize storytelling to make their work compelling enough to gain funding. However, the ethics of nonprofit storytelling come into play when organizations tend to leverage survivors' trauma to garner emotional support. 

• What are some ways that organizations practice ethical storytelling? Who is doing this successfully? 

• Read about how data can enhance nonprofit storytelling. 

Over the last few years, nonprofits have been urged to tell stories to ensure their work is both memorable and fundable. This propensity for storytelling in the sector has created concerns about what many call “poverty porn”—the portrayal of people as helpless victims, such as the classic shot of a small child whose eyes are brimming with tears.

But there is another version that you might call “survivor porn.” This can happen when survivors of trauma are asked by a nonprofit to provide the emotional hook for their cause. But what is less understood are the ways in which these survivors may experience a number of unexpected personal and emotional challenges in the aftermath of sharing their stories.

In this podcast, we look at the ethics of this kind of storytelling and ask some hard questions about the power dynamics between survivors and the nonprofits that have helped them.

Read the full article about the ethics of nonprofit storytelling by Amy Costello at Nonprofit Quarterly.