Since this week’s Q&A with Stewart Marshall focuses on “financial storytelling” and the stories behind numbers and data, I thought I’d look at another view on this topic.

Storytelling is receiving lots of much-needed attention these days in nonprofits. I’m constantly seeing blog entries and webinars on storytelling for nonprofits. One of my heroes, Andy Goodman, is a major evangelist on this topic. The bottom line is that data don’t do much toward getting people to support causes; stories do.

But as a couple of other recent writings point out, numbers still have a place, and they can even be woven into stories. An entry on Impactmax titled “Social math: Yes…data can tell stories too” talks about “social math” as “a way of presenting numbers in a real-life, familiar context that helps people see the story behind them.”

The “social math” concept comes from Sightline Institute (which, in turn, got the notion from pioneers Advocacy Institute and the Berkeley Media Studies Group) and this piece titled Flashcard No. 5 — Making Numbers Count, which makes these points:

Without a story, your data can be misinterpreted in a way that counters the message you’re trying to get across.

Once a certain perspective is established in our minds, it will trump the data — even making us deaf and blind to new numbers. In other words, unless we tell a “sticky” story with our numbers, some other default story that might not fit our message will kick in.

Sightline institute then offers these three tips for making your numbers count:

1. Hitch numbers to a story — paint a vivid picture, then back it up
2. Illustrate solutions rather than focusing only on the size of a problem
3. Become a “social math” whiz — relate to what’s familiar and concrete

Here’s the example given for the first point:

On average, our food is traveling over 1500 miles before it gets to our plates - the distance from Seattle to Chicago. Long distance travel decreases food’s nutritional value, wastes valuable energy in shipping and storage, and undermines the economic strength of our local family farms.

Now, some might argue with Sightline’s contention that “there’s a complete story here.” Here’s how the institute supports that argument: “Our food is the main character, making a long journey across the country. The nutritional and environmental costs inherent in the food system are underlined while at the same time the importance of our community’s connection (or lack thereof) to local farms is reinforced.”

On the second piece, Sightline offers an example it describes as “not so good” and then gives a better version of the example. I agree, but I disagree with the rationale for why the better reason is better.

The not-so-good version: “Replace 3 frequently used light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. Save 300 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $60 per year.”

The better version:

Lots of energy goes to waste in office buildings each night with computers and lights left on while the city sleeps. Lights Out San Francisco — an event organized to illustrate an easy cost-cutting climate solution — estimated that turning lights out in San Francisco for even one hour could save as much as 15 percent of the energy consumed on an average Saturday night. During a similar event in Sydney, Australia, 2.2 million people participated. One hour of lights out meant that the atmosphere was spared 24.86 tons of carbon dioxide — three times the amount an average American produces in an entire year (or 48,613 cars driving for one hour). Think of how much we could save if we turned out the lights more often — or better yet, if systems were in place to automatically shut off unnecessary lights in entire cities.

To me, the better version is better because it’s a story, while the not-so-good version really isn’t.

The “social math” piece “unifies the narrative and the numbers — bringing them down to earth … by blending them with compelling stories and by providing comparisons with familiar things. It works by analogy.”

Sightline gives several examples, of which my favorite is this one:

If every person in the U.S. were to change their page margins from 1.25 to .75, we would save a forest around the size of Rhode Island each year.

It drives me nuts that the Microsoft Word default margin is set at 1.25” and most people don’t think to reset it! (However, I’m not sure any of Sightline’s social-math examples are actually stories.)

Here’s another article on social math from the Frameworks Institute

Footnote: Sightline Institute is of particular interest to me because it focuses on the Pacific Northwest, my current place of residence. And I learned something new: “Cascadia” is a term for the Pacific Northwest.