Understanding the Power of Stories as Data
by David Lloyd-Lewis, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer
Numbers alone can’t always tell the full story. Sure, you can count how many people attended a training or how many malaria nets were handed out, but without hearing from the people themselves, you won’t know the real impact those actions had on their lives. This is where stories—or qualitative data—come in. Stories provide the context and insights that help everyone truly understand what’s happening.
How Folktale Helps You Collect Stories
Folktale is a tool that makes it easy for organizations to gather and understand stories from the people they work with. Here’s how Folktale helps:
1. Collecting Stories Quickly: Folktale makes it simple to gather stories in a consistent and reliable way, saving time for everyone involved.
2. Analyzing the Stories: Once the stories are collected, Folktale helps break them down and understand them, even providing translations and transcripts when needed.
3. Sharing Powerful Stories: Folktale lets you create short videos that summarize the stories, making it easier to share and understand the impact.
Folktale can produce various types of outputs, like individual stories, written transcripts, or summary videos, which can be used for communication, reporting, and sharing ideas.
Four Ways to Use Folktale
1. Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E): Folktale helps track and evaluate programs by collecting stories that show real-life impact.
2. Fundraising: By sharing powerful stories, organizations can better show their impact to donors and funders.
3. Communications: Folktale helps create stories that are easy to share and understand, both inside the organization and with the public.
4. Reporting: Organizations use Folktale to create more engaging and detailed reports that include personal stories, not just numbers.
Folktale in Action: Reporting for a Global Program
Imagine an international organization running programs in eight different countries. They need to report back to their headquarters about what’s happening in each country. Normally, they would write reports, but it’s hard for the people at headquarters to really understand what’s going on just by reading words on a page.
With Folktale, the program managers in each country can use a simple template to create short video stories. These videos show the real-life impact of the program, helping headquarters get a better understanding of what’s happening. Plus, Folktale can combine all the individual stories into one big video that shows the overall progress of the entire program. This is great for sharing with donors, funders, and other important people.
Why Folktale is Different
Folktale isn’t just another tool for making videos—it’s a platform designed to ensure that every story shared is truly heard and understood. What makes Folktale unique is its ability to turn individual stories into powerful tools for real change. By using Folktale, organizations can collect authentic voices, connect with their audiences on a deeper level, and ignite meaningful action.
With Folktale, stories aren’t just stories—they’re a way to create real understanding and connection.
Folktale is a user-friendly platform for organizations to gather qualitative data through video storytelling.
Our secure platform enables the collection of authentic voices and lived experiences, helping organizations understand communities better and make informed decisions.
Incorporate Folktale into your monitoring, evaluation, and reporting processes and streamline how you to engage with participant-led stories.
