C A S E S T U D Y
Creating a narrative framework
A national philanthropy organization, engaged Seesaw to help them create a clear point of view about what consitutes “Narrative work”.
Narrative work is about meaning-making: the strategies used to shift, introduce, or reinforce the stories, values, and mindsets that shape public opinion and policy. But as “narrative” became a buzzword in philanthropy and advocacy, it came to lose its own meaning.
Grantmakers and grantees use similar language with inconsistent definitions, apply different levels of accountability, and lack a shared way to evaluate success.
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As “narrative” became a buzzword in philanthropy and advocacy and came to lose its own meaning, our client, a national philanthropy, engaged Seesaw to help them make sense of the landscape:
To define a clear point of view about what constitutes narrative work
To develop a common vocabulary and metrics for narrative work
They recognized a need for tools to guide their own grantmaking and to better support grantees already doing this work in the field.
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Seesaw conducted in-depth interviews with several grantmakers, researchers, and narrative practitioners, paired with a review of funders' published approaches to narrative change and the broader literature on the topic. From that research, Seesaw delivered two actionable resources:
A recommendations brief that established a theory of change for narrative investment. It reframed "narrative change" as the broader "narrative work" (since not all of it is about changing an existing narrative), distinguished productive narratives from destructive ones, and laid out how narrative work ladders up to strategic impact. It also included practical guidance on landscape-mapping, distribution, reinforcement, measurement, and the roles funders and grantees each play.
A companion playbook that turned those recommendations into an operational, repeatable process, walking a funder from defining impact goals, through identifying partners and distribution networks, to deploying and measuring a narrative strategy. Both documents anchor on the same simple formula:
*If I shift [narrative condition] to [narrative condition] among [audience] through [deployment strategy] and see [intermediate outcome], I've made progress toward [impact].
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The client now has a shared language and a repeatable process for evaluating and structuring narrative investments — from initial landscape analysis through deployment, and long-term measurement. They're using it to sharpen their own grantmaking decisions and to give grantees doing narrative work a clearer, more consistent framework to anchor their work.