Storytelling in Evaluation: Flipping the Narrative for Deeper Impact

Storytelling in evaluation adds depth, builds trust, and enhances impact insights.

When a program or initiative ends and it’s time to evaluate how it went, success is often quantified in numbers. However, storytelling in evaluation offers a powerful way to go beyond metrics. While tallies of how many and how often are necessary for tracking activities, reach and frequency don’t inherently translate to impact, and measuring impact solely by the numbers doesn’t always tell the full story. 

Sure, you hosted monthly events that were well-attended, but what did attendees gain from those events? Knowledge? Skills? Relationships? Confidence? Evaluation should be more than an inventory of what you did, it should also be about how your efforts created change — whether you’re measuring that change in thoughts and behaviors or resources and opportunities. Without gathering feedback on how your efforts supported or benefited your target audiences, you only capture part of the picture. 

That’s where storytelling comes in.

No Data Without Stories, No Stories Without Data

Flipping the narrative in evaluations requires understanding that data and stories go hand in hand. 

For example, America’s 4.1% unemployment rate represents seven million people. On paper, they all have the same thing in common. But if you sat down with each of them, you’d uncover a wide range of differences in why they are unemployed, how their lives are affected, and what support they need. Some might say they were formerly incarcerated and face discrimination in the job search, while others might be limited by a disability and need more expansive accessibility accommodations. The outcome is the same, but the story of how they ended up there is unique. 

When you recognize that behind every number is a story, integrating storytelling in evaluation isn’t as intimidating as it may seem. Rather than upending your evaluation framework, storytelling enhances it by providing depth and nuance that numbers alone can’t provide. 

The Benefits of Integrating Storytelling

Incorporating storytelling into your evaluation framework creates space for reflections that can inform and improve how you advance and evolve your work. Some of the benefits of storytelling for evaluation include:

• Continuous quality improvement. Storytelling adds rich context to evaluations, empowering you to assess the efficacy of your work through the perspective of the communities you’re working to serve as well as the stakeholders you’re working alongside. These insights can highlight what worked well and where there are opportunities to adapt and improve future initiatives. 
• Increased trust and relationship building. Too often, organizations and agencies fail to follow up with the community members on the receiving end of programs, services, or interventions, or the partners and collaborators involved in facilitating their delivery. Inviting those stakeholders into the evaluation process allows them to have their voices meaningfully heard, which can increase trust and strengthen relationships for the future. 
• Expanded methods for reporting and promoting findings. When evaluations rely solely or primarily on quantitative data, there’s only so much you can do to communicate the results of your work. Dashboards and infographics are as exciting as it gets. A storytelling framework gathers qualitative data — which can be presented through written, audio, or video platforms — that allows you to communicate about your work more expansively to funders, partners, and the public.

To begin exploring how to use storytelling in evaluation, check out this toolkit from The Narrative Assessment. The guidance focuses on evaluating the work and experiences of advocates but is translatable to other contexts.