See a photo of Thaler, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2 and Part 3.

Q: What future aspirations do you personally have for your own story work? What would you like to do in the story world that you haven’t yet done?

A: I am working on joint programs that encourage the elicitation, development, and sustained sharing of stories among charitable foundations and the recipients of their funding. When non-profit organizations discover how to find, refine, and share the stories about their success and impact, clients, donors, staff, and entire communities benefit. When philanthropists discover the same skill set, along with developing a solid story of their vision for a better future, they are able to more efficiently and effectively solicit and fund appropriate programs.

In the philanthropic world, I often hear from foundation program officers that they have trouble obtaining stories about the work of their grantees and the impact of their investments. Likewise, the grantees often say that funders seek only quantitative data, or, when they do come to them for stories about their work, the funders seek highly specific stories about impact (and most often under tight deadlines). In the quest to gather data in an increasingly competitive marketplace, the qualitative stories that enable understanding of, and engagement with, the data are often being quashed.

I also hear from many organizational leaders that they have stories — they can simply never access them when they need them. To that end, I am developing a set of best practices for banking and accessing stories, using existing technologies. This would enable organizations to add written, verbal, and recorded stories to a story bank. It will not be heavily dependent on the quality of the input information, but it will be accessible by subject, character, value, and potential application, among other things. I’ll be previewing this program for sustainable story sharing at Fundraising Day New York this June [2009].