Who is using Folktale and why?

Are you curious about using Folktale in your workplace, program, project or campaign? Want to know how others are already using it? Here are the 5 most common use cases for (although our creative and innovative partners come up with new applications often).

While story is the output, the input is structured qualitative data (in story format). This is captured is through the translation of your results framework, theory or change, question set, or campaign objectives into a Folktale story template.

All of these use cases generate insights and/or measure impact .

Monitoring and Evaluation MEL or MERL

Folktale has been designed with global development M&E teams as our target user. In support of this we built the process to include informed consent, privacy, and applied theory of change as standard. M&E teams use Folktale to replace some regular reporting, gather context-rich data, acquire insight at speed for adaptive management, and encourage shared understanding across programs, teams, and distance (such as field and HQ).

Research / Qualitative Data Capture

Structured interviews are a big part of qualitative research, recording these is pretty standard practice. Folktale is a powerful tool for collecting and collating interviews. Using Folktale can mitigate issues of language and distance, especially when travel is not only expensive, but too carbon intensive for many organisations. Transcripts and captions are AI generated and can be corrected, translated and downloaded from interviews collected globally. Participants are invited individually or using a generated community link you can share via WhatsApp, Messanger, text message, or your preferred communication.

Fundraising - Proof of Project Impact

Unsurprisingly funders like to understand what impact their investment is having. Philanthropic organisations need to communicate to funders, communities, and internally. Stories of change can be safely and ethically gathered using Folktale (with the ability to hide identity) and our platform has secure areas with hard wall separation as required.

Reporting - Internally and Externally

Internally we use Folktale for our board reporting, we have a simple 'three W's format" that looks like this:

1. What is the short-term goal for your team/department and why?

2. Where is your progress against that goal today?

3. What needs to happen next, by whom and by when?

Other companies use it for unit managers to report monthly on their departments, or for program managers to report to desk officers and leadership. These short (usually 3-minute) videos pack a lot of rich information into a short and easily understood format.

Externally Folktale is used to report progress to partners and stakeholders. Boards can report back to shareholders, and partners can communicate progress across different work streams.

It can be particularly useful when communicating lessons learned - sharing a successful approach or solution with other teams or managers. For instance, our Samoa team did XYZ, maybe a version of this can work with a similar group elsewhere?

Communications - Internal and External

It is often assumed that Folktale is a communications tool, and it can be, but it was primarily built to be used in a more technical capacity. Folktale has been successfully used as a tool for citizen journalism, change management, and inter-departmental communications. Perhaps, most obviously, Folktale is used to create engaging content for external audiences, underpinned by the structured approach to engagement and data collection.

Curious?