We use narrative craft to help mission-driven orgs focus their strategy and communications.

Is your org story clear?

If your storytelling feels scattered or incohesive, is it due to mission creep (strategy), unaligned metrics (strategy), poor storytelling (comms) or all three?

People often equate storytelling with marketing and communications. But stories hold immense strategic power.

Does your org story stand out?

If it feels generic, is it because you’re working in an overcrowded space (strategy), you need to differentiate (strategy), or your storytelling doesn’t do justice to your work (comms)?

Who are your constituencies?

What do you need them to know, think, or believe in order to activate them toward your mission and goals? What stories can you tell to build those ideas and beliefs?

Use story to achieve your strategic goals.

Connect the dots between need and impact.

Make the case for why you, why now. Help people recognize who you are, what change you seek, what you do, how you do it, and what strides you’ve made.

Activate your audiencies to help you achieve your goals.

Create a sense of urgency and collectivism. What is the story you can authentically tell that resonates with the people you need to activate (to become funders, partners, users)? Counter the narratives that inhibit the action you want to see happen. Enlist other people to become story ambassadors of your work and the change you seek.

Use data to build credibility and bring your story to life.

Legitimize your story using numbers and testimonials. Humanize it using anecdotes, profiles, and case studies.

Your sector is crowded… stand out above the noise.

Don’t tell the same old story. Cut the jargon that a hundred other mission-driven orgs use, and avoid sounding generic. Say something fresh in a narrative voice that reflects who you are.

We help you reach your full storytelling potential.

Story SWOTs

We conduct a thorough review of your story and the stories other organizations are telling. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunties and threats of your story given the current landscape?

Audience mapping

We define which target audiences you need to reach to achieve your strategic goals, and through interviews and research, develop audience profiles for each.

Narrative strategy

We develop a narrative blueprint that will anchor and align all your communications going forward, and develop “pocket narratives” aligned to each target audience profile.

Audience testing

We develop narrative “test balloons” and get feedback and reactions from your target audiences, via interviews, focus groups, and/or surveys, or via AI avatars modeled after the audience profiles.

AI & comms capacity

First, we use the narrative blueprint to train AI in developing storytelling, communications, and collateral for your organization. We then train your team in using the blueprint and the AI.

Narrative data

We help you collect and analyze the data you need to illustrate and substantiate your storytelling, from developing digital data dashboards to coding beautiful data visualizations.

Execution

We refer you to trusted partners in visual brand strategy and design, and onboard them to the narrative blueprint.

  • When narratives become dangerous

    Our founder writes a first person essay about the dangerous impact of negative narratives.

    Read us in The Atlantic

  • Why does every org sound the same?

    Vague and generic narratives are holding back nonprofits. Here are a few strategies for cutting the jargon.

    Read us in The Chronicle of Philanthropy

  • Forgotten challenges of rural schools

    Mainstream narratives have contributed to the erasure of rural schools from the national dialogue.

    Read us in Education Week

  • "We've grown investment in our organization two-fold in one year and that is directly tied to our work with Little Tiger... We learned how to tell our story in clear, compelling and authentic ways. Little Tiger was the best organizational investment we made this year."

    Vero, Founder & CEO, Bilingual Generation

  • Wilmington College worked with Little Strategic Storiyteling to develop... the foundation of a major marketing initiative. April delved deeply into what makes Wilmington College tick while learning about the processes and experiences that make a WC education so distinct.... April discovered the College's special sauce and liberally spread that sauce into a storytelling narrative."

    —Randy Sarvis, Associate Vice President of Communication & Public Relations, Wilmington College

  • "The workshop brought to the surface things that some of us have thought about but didn't necessarily have the space to unpack."

    Angie, RCG Talent