Creating a Social Impact Narrative | MIND Research Institute

 At MIND Research Institute, our mission is to mathematically equip all students to solve the world's most challenging problems. That seems like something worth supporting, right? MIND created an amazing program called ST Math that teaches math the way the brain learns. It's equitable, effective, and can literally change the way math is taught and learned. 

But for many prospective donors and partners, funding math education is not an immediate choice when allocating their social impact dollars. Literacy, STEM, or education in general are more obvious choices for many donors. Because of society's relationship with math, we have to prove to most donors that math is worth focusing on. And even if we do that, we have to motivate donors to action, and give them confidence that we are the organization they should partner with. 

I created a 3-part narrative structure for our social impact messaging, that provided the framework for everything from collateral, to slide decks, to email campaigns. The framework answered the following three questions:

Why math?    Why now?    Why MIND?

 Each of these three questions had a short answer, and a more in-depth one. The short answer not only got to the point, but also provided fundraisers, presenters or anyone from the organization an easy way to remember our story, and a jumping off point they could adapt to any conversation. The longer answers unpacked the short ones, and could be used as the default narrative if there was no need to adapt it. 

The infographic below, which I created with our design team, provides an overview of our narrative, and supports each answer with data and research.

Another way of adapting that framework can be seen in our story books, which are essentially a flipbook form of presentation decks. In these books, the same 3-part narrative forms the backbone of the story, but we dive deeper into multiple aspects of that story, providing much more context, as well as an overview of our solutions, including our ST Math program. This format allows for even more narrative, but it can be used as a presentation tool in either book or deck form. As a presentation, I would only share the image pages, which each have a core thought on them, and I would talk through the information presented on the more copy heavy pages.  Then I would provide the book as a leave behind.

You can flip through the deck below.

 And here are the individual pages: