Hope, Humanity & Possibility: The Power of Stories for Nonprofits
How can nonprofits better utilize human-to-human storytelling to not just communicate to people, but move them?
Any nonprofit or advocacy organization that does issue advocacy or narrative change work understands the power of good storytelling. A well-crafted story can make a long-lasting impact on your target audience, informing and motivating them to take action, whether that’s volunteering, donating, or voting.
But how certain are you that the story you’re crafting or the one you’re already using is the most effective? Are you able to systematically measure persuasive lift or know whether you’re alienating portions of your target audience? As the current administration cuts funding across government programs and rolls back progress across the board, do you feel confident enough about your communication strategy and messaging to affect the outcome?
Given what’s at stake, we at Grow Progress are committed to helping nonprofits advocate across numerous vital issues. This is why we recently partnered with Refugees International and Wide Eye to run a Rapid Message Test to discover which messages were most effective at restoring support for the US Refugee Admissions and Resettlement programs and increasing opposition to the Trump Administration’s refugee policies.
More broadly, we partnered with Wide Eye to gain a fundamental understanding of the type of messaging that benefits nonprofits trying to enact change—meta-narratives that often focus on numbers and statistics, designed to elicit fear or pity, or stories about individuals that focus on hope and what’s possible.
Executive Summary
Here are the key takeaways from our research to identify messaging that helps Americans understand the value of these programs and talk about advocacy in a way that creates durable support in our current political environment.
Stories about individuals resonate
“The results are pretty stunning,” said Sarah Sheffer, Vice President for Strategic Outreach at Refugees International. “Across all of the narratives we tested, it’s the human, not the numbers, that moved people substantially.”
Of the five messages we tested, ranging from broad stories and statistics to narratives about specific individuals, a positive narrative highlighting the contributions a refugee named Fazal made to his community significantly outperformed the other messages in increasing support for the US Refugee Admissions Program.
Even more impressive is that when we compared this message to other messages aimed at shifting perceptions of immigrants and refugees in our Persuasion Library, we discovered it was more persuasive than 98% of content tested on our platform since the election.
Hope beats out despair
Fazal’s story of hope and positive outcomes raised persuasive lift by 17 points, outperforming the next best message by 10 points. The two messages we tested that had negative tones performed the worst. This positive slant stands out given the long legacy of international aid organizations using pity and depressing images and narratives to boost support for their causes.
“Our research found that the case for hope was a greater motivator for connection than fear,” said Elizabeth Bawol, Creative Director at Wide Eye. “It’s a good reminder that instead of telling our audience a story that gets a negative reaction, you want your audience to be motivated to ask, ‘What’s Possible? What’s possible if I join this cause? What’s possible if you achieve your vision for the world?’”
Anti-Trump messaging caused backlash
And not just with who you expect. While it caused backlash among moderates, dropping support by 13 percentage points, it also performed poorly among Democrats and Liberals.
“Our Shared Villains narrative, which was the only message to explicitly mention the president by name, performed the worst of the five messages we tested,” Sarah said. “It caused backlash with several key audiences we need to mobilize, especially moderates.”
Impact
On its first day in office, the Trump Administration indefinitely halted the resettlement program, creating chaos, separating families, and ending a 45-year program that enjoyed bipartisan support for decades. But at Refugees International, they knew a lot of latent support for refugees exists. Knowing how to tap into that support effectively makes a huge difference.
“I’ve shared the results of our test with partners, including elected officials, who are hungry for help on how to effectively communicate about refugee issues in this moment of intense polarization,” Sarah shared. “The results helped crystallize something they already know is true: that newcomers make transformational contributions to U.S. communities when given the chance. It’s a story that taps into our shared aspirational values as Americans, and more needs to be done to amplify this message.”
Elizabeth agrees, sharing that a study published in the Harvard Business Review found that brands with a strong emotional connection can outperform competitors by more than 2.5 times, and that ’emotional connection’ drives brand loyalty more effectively than rational factors. The test results here show further proof that stories about individuals create more empathy than statistics alone.
“Humans relate to humans, it’s that simple,” Elizabeth said. “It will always be more effective to focus on one person or one family, in content, photography, any kind of storytelling, than to lean into statistics and ‘the masses.’ While scale might be important to convey information, connections are made when you relate to someone, and shared humanity is evoked.”
How We Tested
We tested five different messages:
- “Economic Contributions (with audience concerns).” This message discussed the initial financial cost of resettling refugees but also showed how refugees contribute to the economy through taxes, Medicare, and Social Security, and help fill critical labor shortages.
- “Economic Contributions (without audience concerns).” This is the same message as above, but it does not address the upfront costs of resettling.
- “Shared Villain Story.” This message calls out Trump by name and addresses how the cuts being made to Government programs negatively impact refugees and Americans.
- “Individual Story (Contributions).” This message is about a refugee named Fazal who positively impacted his community as a small business owner, volunteer, and soccer coach.
- “Individual Story (Harms Caused).” This message tells the story of a refugee named Nur Ahmed, whose 70-year-old mother wasn’t able to leave Somalia before the refugee ban went into effect and is now stuck in political limbo, unable to reunite with her family.
The messages were tested using the Grow Progress Rapid Message Test tool, which uses randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—the premier standard in message testing modeled on medical trials.
First, an audience of 2,500 US adults was recruited. They were randomly split into one of six groups. Each group viewed one message (one of the five mentioned above or a placebo message) and answered the same follow-up questions. In less than 24 hours, we had the following results.
The Topline Results
When we look at the overall message results, the two that stand out as the least effective are “Shared Villain Story” and “Individual Story (Harms Caused).” It’s worth noting that both of these messages are framing the issues in a negative light.
While they and the other messages were able to cause some directional or measurable persuasion to oppose Trump’s refugee policies, these two messages weren’t effective at our primary goal of increasing support for refugees.
Topline results of how the messages affected support for refugee policies and donating.
“Economic Contributions (without audience concerns),” whose content was overall positive but mainly focused on numbers and statistics instead of individuals, was only directionally persuasive at garnering support for the US Refugee Admissions and Resettlement programs.
Its counterpart, “Economic Contributions (with audience concerns),” was generally persuasive across all our measures of success. This message was also mostly framed in a positive light while still addressing concerns about the cost of resettlement head-on.
Lastly, “Individual Story (Contributions),” which told a story of hope and success, was the most successful at persuading people to support the US Refugee Admissions and Resettlement programs.
Subgroup Breakdown: Political Party and Ideology
However, it’s important to remember that the topline results are the aggregate findings. Digging deeper into the different subgroups can yield valuable insights that can make a massive impact on your communication strategies.
Suppose you were looking at these results from a traditional message or A/B test. In that case, you might be tempted to choose “Economic Contributions (with audience concerns)” as your top choice for messaging, not knowing you were missing out on crucial information that could result in ineffective messages and even backlash in certain groups.
The Grow Progress approach detects which narratives delivered the most persuasive lift and which created backlash among critical audiences. For Refugees International, this involved measuring message performance by partisanship, ideology, media consumption habits, and whether or not audience members personally knew a refugee or not.
Breakdown of how each message performed when filtered by political ideology and party.
When we look at the messages’ results regarding our main goal of enhancing support for refugee policies filtered by political party and ideology, we see a clearer picture of how to communicate to those with different political leanings.
“Economic Contributions (with audience concerns)” performed the best among Republicans, Conservatives, and Independents. It had little impact among Refugees International’s main audience of Liberals, Moderates, or Democrats. Had this message been selected without understanding where the majority of the lift was coming from, it could have been a waste of time, money, and effort to develop this narrative for those groups.
“Individual Story (Contributions),” on the other hand, had a tremendous impact across party lines and ideology. While it doesn’t make as big an impact on Liberals or Democrats, where the baseline support is already fairly high, it has a demonstrable impact on Moderates and Independents. As a bonus, it even performs well for Conservatives and Republicans, threading the needle across the aisle.
Conclusion
The data clearly shows us that storytelling that highlights hope, humanity, and possibility, especially through the lens of individual experiences, outperforms messages rooted in fear, pity, or political blame.
Grow Progress’ research with Refugees International shows that emotionally resonant, values-based narratives, like Fazal’s story of community contribution, don’t just inform. They persuade. And importantly, they do so across ideological lines, helping to expand your audience rather than narrowing it.
“Get to know your audience,” Sarah suggests. “Understand where they’re coming from. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned about communicating more effectively as a refugee advocate when I stepped outside of my bubble and got to know my audience. What you find might surprise you. The Grow Progress tool is great for giving you real-time insights on what your audience is thinking and feeling.”
If your organization wants to build durable support, shift attitudes, and drive action, start by putting people, not numbers, at the center of your story. Test your messaging, refine it based on what truly resonates, and focus on the future your audience wants to believe in.
Ready to find the messaging that resonates with your audiences? Learn more about Grow Progress’ Rapid Message Testing, and be sure to sign up for our newsletter and never miss a beat.
