The Rockefeller Foundation Storytelling Challenge

The Rockefeller Foundation is proud to announce the winners of The Rockefeller Foundation Storytelling Challenge - herox.com/RFSC.

After 4 weeks of judging, it was decided that, due to the quality of the highest scored submissions to the Projected Impact category (Grant #2), an additional $50,000 grant would be awarded. As a result, there are three recipients in the Rockefeller Foundation Storytelling Challenge.

The first grant of $50,000 for stories with measurable impact went to Global Minimum Inc. for their video “15-Yr-Old Kelvin Doe Wows M.I.T.”, distributed through the THNKR YouTube channel. The video capture Kelvin’s transformation from a self-­taught engineer in Sierra Leone to becoming the youngest visiting practitioner at MIT. The video currently has 8.8 million views and enabled GMI to crowdfund $140,000.

Global Minimum Inc. is a 501(c)(3) charitable international organization that encourages young innovators and leaders in Africa to engage with critical thinking skills and hands-on learning programs to tackle challenges affecting their communities.

The second grant category, also for $50,000, features stories with projected impact. The judges were so impressed with the top 2 submissions that The Rockefeller Foundation decided to award a second $50,000 grant in that category.

Ashoka’s submission, “Everyone a Changemaker: The Story of Pinelands North”, tells the story of a changemaker school in South Africa. Ashoka is a citizen sector organization that supports over 3,000 leading social entrepreneurs across 70 countries. 

Through the Changemaker Schools initiative, Ashoka will identify, celebrate and link schools that are redefining success beyond getting good grades. This video will be instrumental in that effort. 

“We Have a Life in Kibera”, a film by Kounkuey Design Initiative and LightBox, seeks to undermine the stigma still given to a large slum in Kenya, which is starting to transform itself through citizen engagement and multiple initiatives, including the Kibera Public Space Project.

KDI is a design and community development organization that partners with communities living in extreme poverty to physically transform degraded environments, grow economic resilience, and build social cohesion. This video is the first in a series of content being developed to bring light to Kibera’s transformation.

By the close of the challenge, the RFSC had received 200 entries from 168 innovators. Submissions spanned a wide variety of formats from news and magazine articles to documentaries and video blogs to web applications and pamphlets. 

The Rockefeller Foundation was delighted to see a high volume of challenge participants utilizing its Hatch For Good platform. Hatch is an online suite of toolkits where storytellers can find what they need to develop their stories and ensure that they have a significant reach and impact.

The Rockefeller Foundation would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the innovators who entered the challenge. While only three innovators were awarded the prizes in this challenge, there were so many other insightful solutions that we are confident that many of the innovators in this challenge will do great things in the future. Thank you for helping make this challenge a success.

Here are two TEDtalks in which documentary filmmakers demonstrate the role of crowdsourcing in the storytelling process.

Filmmaker Deborah Scranton directed the documentary The War Tapes, which puts cameras in the hands of soldiers fighting in Iraq.

And Jehane Noujaim unveils her 2006 TED Prize wish: to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film.

The deadline for the Rockefeller Foundation Storytelling Challenge has been extended to Wednesday, May 27th, 2015, at 5pm PDT.

You have until that time to register and submit your entry.

To register for the challenge, you must first have created a HeroX account. If you have not already done so, click JOIN US in the top right corner of any page of this website.

Once you've completed the account creation process and activated your account, go to our challenge page - http://herox.com/RFSC - and click REGISTER NOW in the right-hand column.

This How-To video will show you how to submit an entry to a challenge. The RFSC includes 2 additional steps - the pass code entry and the selection of the grant to which you are submitting.

In the fifth and final module, Evaluation, users are asked to consider the metrics they use to measure the success of their storytelling campaigns. Broken down into two sections, the module leads users through the process of setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for their stories, shows them how to track metrics over time, and offers tools for measuring the reach and engagement rate of their stories on social media.

In Section One: Setting KPIs for Social Impact, the purpose and benefits of metrics are spelled out, as are their relation to the goals of the campaign. Users are then asked to consider what goal they hope to achieve with their story (i.e. change attitudes, attract funders, motivate people to action, etc.) From this, they are tasked with creating a KPI statement and given multiple exemplars of what such a statement should look like, depending on their goal.  

With that task complete, Section Two: How to Generate an Analytics Report moves on to how users intend to track and measure these actions across their selected platforms. This is especially important seeing as how different forms of social media present different means of measuring audience engagement rates.

To address this, users are asked to list which social media tools their organization uses, and offers a series of platform guides to help them understand how they might track audience involvement and responses on each. Beyond that, they are also asked to select which metrics they hope to rely on, and set finite goals for the performance of their strategic story.

From all this, those who use the Hatch For Good suite are given recommendations based on their replies, and will be well on their way to drafting an effective and engaging strategic story.

The fourth toolkit, known as the Platform module, addresses the task of creating and growing a community with which to share story ideas. Such a community is of course one that shares the interest of the storyteller, and is genuinely committed to being involved. Knowing how to harness it and nurture it are therefore intrinsic to any successful strategic storytelling campaign.

Broken down into two sections, the module first addresses finding the right places and platforms to establish a connection with audiences, and how stories can help audiences connect with the user’s organization and others who care about the particular mission.

Section One: Selecting Your Platforms, users are asked to consider which platforms they intend to use based on which ones are likely to make the biggest impact. For this, a number of things need to be considered, such as the objective the user is hoping to achieve, the age of the audience, where they live, and what tools will be employed to reach them (i.e. video, photography, copy, etc.)

In Section Two: Engaging Your Community, the focus shifts to social networks and the role they play in modern storytelling. It also acknowledges that though an organization may be using multiple social platforms, their audience may prefer communicating and sharing on one in particular. Such a process is organic and natural, and knowing which is preferred is key.

As such, users are asked to take a look at the way they communicate via social media, what tone they set in their communications, what tone they hope to adopt for the sake of their story (urgent, compassionate, uplifting, dour, etc.) and how they will go about dealing with responses – be they positive or negative.

All of this sets the user up to enter into the fifth and final step in the storytelling suite - Evaluation.