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Michelle Riley on The Impact of Pictures | Nonprofit411 · Nonprofit411 Podcast

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Hello and welcome to nonprofit 4 1 1, where we dive into resources and strategies that help nonprofits not just survive, but truly thrive.
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I'm Sarah Barton, your host and fundraising advocate.
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Each episode we bring you inspiring conversations with experts in fundraising, sustainability, and best practices to equip you with the tools and confidence you need to make a real impact.
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Nonprofit 4 1 1.
I am so excited to be with you.
I'm Sarah Barton, and I'm with our guest today, Michelle Riley from Lens for Change.
She is the founder and she is going to share with us some about ethical photography.
Welcome.
Hi.
Thank you so much for having me, Sarah.
I'm excited to be here.
I'm excited to have you.
I, this is a, this topic is a little bit unique for my podcast, but when I met you and when I learned about ethical photography for nonprofits, it is something that I just really want to get out into the world because this is something that we might wanna have a conversation about.
So.
Awesome.
Thank you.
I appreciate, so glad to have you.
But I would love to have these conversations be more prevalent in the nonprofit community.
So thank you for giving me the opportunity to come on.
Before we dive into the, uh, into that, I'm gonna start with the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your favorite hobby? Yes, I knew this question was coming and I was thinking about it, and this is gonna sound super duper lame, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
My favorite hobby, and I'll explain why in a minute, but my favorite hobby right now is watching movies, specifically horror like thriller movies, not like horror blood and guts.
And Gore Gross movies, but like thriller movies.
And the reason for that is because my brain never shuts off.
It's always working.
It's always thinking.
And there, I can't tell you how many times my husband and I will watch tv and we're, I'm not on my phone or my iPad or anything.
But we'll be watching something and I'll start recording and he'll be like, what are you doing? And I'm like, sorry I zoned out for a second.
Like, I, I just, I lose my train of thought when I am so easily because my brain is always working.
It's always thinking.
And for some reason though, a ho, a good horror movie or a good thriller movie that like really pulls you in and you're waiting for those jump scares, like it is just magical at legitimately turning my brain off.
Like I never have to rewind a horror movie.
Oh, that's, no, that's interesting.
So I mean, it's kind of like.
It gets you to focus, right? It gets you to like be able to just lose yourself.
So I feel like hobbies are meant to have us lose ourselves in them.
So it's important.
Yes, yes.
So well, but I haven't had that one.
That is a new one.
I thought about going with the, like I was asking, I was chatting with my husband about it and he's like, what are you gonna say? Traveling? And I was like.
Well, traveling's not really a hobby anymore.
Like I, we've been, Italy is my favorite place on earth.
We've been to Italy six times.
And so if you asked me that question five years ago, I probably would've said, oh, my travel, my, my hobby is planning my next trip to Italy because I'm always planning my next trip to Italy.
But.
We haven't been in two years, and again, I've been, since I, since I left my previous job at the Humane Society of the United States and started Lens for Change, everything has been really focused on that.
And vacations are one of the things that as, as you know, when you start a new business, sacrifices have to be made from a financial standpoint.
And so traveling isn't exactly what I would say my hobby is anymore.
When my thirties, I, I could have said traveling to Italy was my hobby, but.
If I'm being honest right now, my hobby is watching movies.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and it, you know, seasons change and life kind of changes and you're right.
So I actually have that same experience regarding travel and kind of maybe for different reasons, but my parents live with us and so, you know, travel just has become more difficult.
I don't really look forward to it because it's too difficult to kind of like manage.
So.
Yeah.
But that's good for our listeners to know that your hobby doesn't have to stay stagnant.
You can have a new one.
That's right.
And it can, that's right.
It's good to change up your hobbies and when you get older and you get more boring, it's, you can get more boring hobbies.
It's fine.
It's part of getting older.
Or you can maybe pick up the old ones again.
Yeah.
Well, awesome.
Well, let's start with why.
You founded Lens for Change and what got you into this work? Sure.
Well, I started my career as a newspaper photographer.
I wanted to be, I fell, I got my first camera when I was 12.
I fell in love with it right away.
By the time I was 15, I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to changing the world through photography and throughout all of my teenage and college years.
I thought that meant being a newspaper photographer.
So I started my career as a newspaper photographer, but within, uh, the first.
Couple of years of being out of college.
I started getting really passionate about nonprofit work, specifically animal welfare.
And so I got a job at the Humane Society of the United States, which I need to get used to their new name.
They recently rebranded a few months ago.
They're now Humane World for Animals.
But for the 16 years I was there, it was the Humane Society of the United States.
So I'm still getting used to the new name, but I got a job there.
And at the time they actually did not have a photo department, so I was the founding member.
I.
Created the organization's first, uh, photo library.
Its first photo ethics policy, which I know we'll get into talking about ethical photography during this conversation.
And created the first in-house photo team.
So initially it was just me, but eventually I was able to hire a small but mighty in-house team of photographers and editors.
And after 16 years of a really rewarding career there I was ready for a change and.
I thought about going to another nonprofit and doing the same thing, you know, start running their photo team or, or, or starting one if they, you know, if a particular nonprofit didn't have one.
In the case of Humane World but I kept coming back to this idea of wanting to have a bi, a bigger impact across the nonprofit sector.
You know, I spent 16 years at one organization working on one issue, and while that was very fulfilling and very rewarding, and it was a great organization.
By the time in my life that I was ready to move on to do something else, one organization and one issue wasn't enough for me.
I really wanted to figure out a way to be able to help nonprofits across all sectors, across all issues, learn how to use photography better, specifically ethical, authentic photography because it is an extremely powerful.
Medium in terms of fundraising and storytelling, and I think it is really underutilized in the nonprofit space.
And so that's what led me to start my own consulting agency lens for change.
The goal is to provide services and education and training on the use of authentic ethical photography to effectively increase your donations, expand your reach, and have a bigger impact with your audience and with your donors.
Yeah, I, you know, they always say that what a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Yes, of course.
But we, but it's really interesting to hear you talking about this.
I have never really thought through how much of the story is the pictures that we show.
And in our current climate of technology where we can use common good photography it's really easy to put in stock photos and not actually show the work that we are doing.
Right.
So, so tell me a little bit about ethical photography.
Sure.
What, what, how do you define it and, why is this so important for nonprofits? Sure.
So I abide by the same code of ethics that the news industry abides by.
That's what I learned in college.
That's what I practiced when I was at a newspaper.
And that is the, the code of ethics that I took with me into the nonprofit space.
I think a lot of nonprofits think that, you know, staging, so let me, let me back up for a second.
So, ethical photography is photography that is one, not staged.
So it's not using models, it's not asking somebody to reenact something for the camera.
It's real authentic moments as they happen in real time.
It also refers to what happens after the fact.
So it does not, ethical photography does not allow for major alterations like flipping images, adding or removing elements from images extreme cropping that changes the context of an image.
That's really the foundation of ethical photography.
There's also other.
Uh, principles in terms of ethics that I think are important to address and that is context and consent.
So in terms of context, it's really important when you're using.
Photos that, that you're using images that align with your text.
And so, you know, if you're telling, uh, a story about a, some, a beneficiary or somebody that has benefited from your work, you wanna use a photo that matches that text.
You know, you mentioned stock photos, throwing in a stock photo of a happy kid.
When you're telling a story about an impact that you made on a child's life, your audience is gonna naturally assume that that image matches that story, and that's where, uh, nonprofits can get into some hot water because it's misleading to your audience to use that kind of photography.
You wanna be using photos that show the impact that you're actually having on the ground.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
Yeah.
So how do you do that if your organization serves like a high risk population? Like, for example, I think of a women's shelter.
Sure.
Great question.
So, yeah, that I, I get that a lot.
And there's a couple ways there.
There are, first of all, and, and this goes back to the principle of consent, when it comes to, ethical photography, you wanna make sure, 'cause pretty much every nonprofit is gonna be using the photo in some kind of commercial way, whether that's for fundraising or marketing advertising.
And legally speaking, you need consent in order to do that.
And ethically speaking, you need consent for that too.
But there are certain situations where it is.
Not appropriate, not ethical, and sometimes not safe to get to ask for that consent.
So for as an example, and I'll, I'll work my way back to your question in a second, but as an example when I was at Humane World for Animals back in 2022.
The, we were responding to the fir, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and we had our animal rescue team were stationed at border points and we were helping people that were coming across the border with their pets.
We were giving them supply bags and providing them with food in some cases, as providing shelter in order to use photos of our work there.
On the ground helping those refugees.
We would've needed consent from those, from those people that we were helping.
But in that situation, it was totally unethical and inappropriate for us to do that.
These are people that are, were literally fleeing for their, for their lives.
They had just left a war zone.
There was a language barrier in place.
They were skeptical of everyone and our interactions with them were short.
And so asking someone like that, that's in a, in a traumatic situation.
To sign a legal document to allow us to use their photos for fundraising was just out of the question.
So we got creative with how we photograph those situations.
And this can, this is true in, in every type of, of sensitive population, whether it's, you know, a conflict zone like, like a war zone like I just described, or, you know, responding to, uh, a, like a hurricane or a natural disaster where people are literally standing on the side of the road and their house was just leveled behind them, asking for consent and taking identifiable photos of them, or just, it's just inappropriate.
So we got creative with the way that we photographed those situations.
So in a lot of cases, that means shooting from behind.
The person that you're helping.
So focusing your, your shots on the faces of your your, your staff and your volunteers that are helping those people.
It also can be done so you're shooting like from behind or over their shoulder.
You can also do that in, in closeup, like detail, shots of hands, working on something or, you know, things like that.
So you can still represent those sensitive populations, but in an unidentifiable way, it's still authentic.
You're still showing your work in action, but you're not showing, excuse me, you're not showing people in an, in a identifiable way.
Whether for ethical reasons where it's just inappropriate, like I said, with, with war zones or disasters or for safety reasons.
So you mentioned that nonprofits, you know, sometimes when they use stock photos they get themselves in trouble.
Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah.
So this is an example that I, that I used quite a bit when I had these conversations so many years ago.
There was.
Excuse me.
Many years ago there was a organization in New York City who ran an ad campaign against, uh, diabetes or about diabetes prevention, and they used a photo of a man sitting on a stool who was missing a leg.
There were crutches in the background and the text.
That was paired with, it was about, the implication was that this was a, a real patient that had diabetes who lost his leg because of diabetes.
And it was a, it was an a diabetes awareness campaign.
The photos ran across the entire New York City metro system or subway system across ads all over the city and on the surface, it was a great campaign, right.
But the problem was, and this was discovered very quickly, the problem was that it was a stock photo.
And so not only was this man, not a real patient that had diabetes, he also didn't have a leg amputated.
So in the real stock photo, he had both legs and there were no crutches in the background.
So that's.
That's a real scandal.
Right? And it was a scandal.
It became a scandal.
The public figured it out real quick that this was, that this ad campaign was misleading and, and this was an ad campaign.
This was not a storytelling campaign.
This was an ad campaign.
And with ad campaigns, you have more leeway in what you're able to do with images.
So from a legal perspective, the organization didn't actually do anything wrong.
They obtained a, a legal stock image that was approved for alterations.
The model signed a model release allowing alterations.
So legally they were in the clear, but ethically they were not.
And the public figured it out real quick and they felt misled.
They felt lied to.
And the campaign tanked.
All of the ads had to be taken down, and there were stories written about the scandal in the New York Times.
So as a, as a nonprofit, you want media coverage, right? You want the media to report on the good work that you're doing.
So imagine having a story written about your organization in the New York Times, but instead of it being about the good work that you're doing, it's about your misuse, your misuse of an image.
You're misleading your audience.
With an image that that's a PR nightmare.
So that's what I mean by nonprofits getting into hot water with unethical use of, of photography.
Yeah.
So that's not the example that, that's just one of many that, that I can give you.
Yeah.
So then what about the stage photos? Why tell, tell me a little bit more about the stage photos, just because I feel like these are both things that nonprofits.
Do, do.
And you know, it's very easy to do that.
So I wanna make sure that we're covering like, why that might be important.
Sure.
Yeah.
So staged photos are, it's the same thing as, it's, it really is the same thing as altering a photo after the fact.
The, the, what it really comes down to is that it's a lie, it's fake.
And, and it is easily recognizable.
So, you know, when you capture a genuine moment.
It looks genuine.
People can tell when an image looks too perfect, when the facial expressions are just right.
The background is just right.
The lighting is just right.
It looks too polished, it looks too perfect, and people can tell that it's either a stock photo or that it's staged.
And what happens is, is it puts your integrity and credibility as an organization.
At risk because when people figure out that you're lying with your images that you're using, stake fake photos, whether they're stock, they're altered or they're staged, their first question is gonna be, if you're lying about your photos, what else are you lying about? Are you altering your quotes? Are you exaggerating your impact? Are you.
Altering your data.
What about your use of funds? So that's really what it comes down to.
A lot of people think like, oh, it's just a photo.
Who cares if we told this person to stand over here? You know, it's not really a big deal, but it is a big deal because it, it opens up a huge can of worms that can be really detrimental to your organization from a credibility and integrity standpoint.
So that's why it's important.
Yeah.
Super interesting.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Sure.
So, so then lens for change through lens for change, you help.
Let's talk about the ethical policy.
Well, the policies, it seems like, you know, you'll be documenting all of these things.
Mm-hmm.
And identifying how you use photos for your organization.
And then.
What, what is involved in creating a photo campaign for an organization or, you know, if you're, I, I don't know if I'm asking the question well, but like, how does an organization go about really building their photo library? Maybe that's what I'm asking.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, there's, well, there's two things there.
I mean, one is you, you do need to be clear.
I encourage all nonprofits to take ethics seriously and to.
Put together a framework for what their ethics policy at their organization looks like.
And I do have training on this.
And I also have a template ethics policy that, that organizations can use to create their own.
It's important to get those things in line before you start planning for a photo shoot with the things that you're gonna allow, the things that you're not gonna allow.
And they're specific to every type of organization.
So.
Aside from the, the basic stuff of not staging, not altering, not using AI images sometimes there's also like specific things that you wanna add in that are specific to your organization.
So like at Humane World for animals, they, are they, they fight for, uh, humane treatment of animals across, across the board, across every type of animal, right? And so that means that, that, that the organization was not, when we had a, let me rephrase this.
We had a policy, we had a, a bullet in our policy, and this was specific to us.
It obviously wouldn't be specific to a humanitarian organization or an education organization, but it, it applies because there, there may be these types of specific nuances at other organizations, but we had a policy that when we were buying a, so there are always cases where you're gonna need to buy a stock image.
Like if you're using a photo of, you know, wildlife, it's not always possible.
You could send a photographer out for five days to, to try to find a photo of a zebra and you wouldn't find one.
So there are times when you have to buy a stock photo, right? It's important to be transparent.
When you do that, though, I'll just put that little caveat in place, that there, when, when the time comes, that you do have to buy a stock photo.
So if you're an animal organization and you need a wild stock photo of a zebra, you just wanna make sure that you're crediting it as that, that it is a stock photo.
We had a policy in place that when we purchased stock photos, we verified with the stock agency that the image was actually shot in the wild and not at a zoo or a captive situation.
Because, you know, there are a lot of inhumane treatments of animals that go on in like roadside zoos and, and even big zoos or other captive situations.
And so we were, we would verify with the stockhouse, like, was this zebra shot in the wild or was it shot at a zoo? If it was shot at a zoo.
We wouldn't purchase the image.
And that was an ethical stance that we took as an organization because we didn't want to contribute to the captive the, you know, the, the field of, of captive wildlife.
Does that make sense? Yes.
Yes, that does make sense.
So, so yeah, so getting an ethics policy in place is important.
Figuring out what those little things are that are specific to your organization, you know, if you need to add those in, like that one, you know, specific thing that I just mentioned about wild animals.
But when it comes to planning a shoot, you want to plan your shoots around.
Actual things that are actually happening.
So what does, so when I'm, when I'm working with a, an organization and we're trying to figure out what's the best way to capture their work, my first question is, what is the day in the life of your organization look like? What does, what does? That's, that's what you wanna shoot.
You won't wanna manufacture that you don't wanna put together, you know.
Something that isn't actually happening in reality.
So if your, you know, if your organization is providing food for, you know, like Meals on Wheels, you wanna actually shoot that in reality.
And so, you know, that that's the first thing that, that I always start with is, you know, what does a day in the life look like? Whether you're building homes or serving meals, or helping children, or, you know, whatever it is, that's how, that's what you wanna plan your shoot around and you wanna plan it around.
The what really happens throughout the day.
And so, like I did a shoot for.
An organization in San Francisco last year that, that provided meals to people to recovering from medical situations and also the elderly.
And they had a very specific schedule of like from 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM we have volunteers in the kitchen that are doing batch cooking, and then from 9:00 AM to, you know, 11:00 AM.
We're packaging those meals and then, you know, we do live meal service at lunchtime, and then after that, you know, we do meal delivery service.
And so the photographer was scheduled to hit all of those things as they were actually happening.
Does that make sense? We weren't, we weren't like staging, you know, this is what it looks like when food prep happens.
Like, no, you go, when food prep is actually happening, whether it's at six in the morning or five at night, that's when you go and that's when you shoot it.
The other thing I would say is that you want to plan your shot list in advance.
This is, this happens a lot with nonprofits.
And I think this is because, you know, the first thing I would say.
Also is that using a professional photographer is really important.
And I really encourage nonprofits to look at professional photography as an investment into their brand, into their mission, not an expense.
And you know, if you do it right, you can get a.
Years worth of images out of one professional shoot.
So at Lens for Change, one of my services is end-to-end comprehensive professional photography services where I work with the nonprofit to identify what the most important thing is to shoot.
I find the, a local photographer to their area, work with them on the shot list and the creative brief and the goals.
And then also can help with strategic utilization after the shoot takes place to help them figure out where to use those photos.
But when I, when I do that, the photographers that I hire.
They all agree to my ethics policy for starters.
And second, I require a minimum of a hundred photos out of a full day shoot.
So out of just one day's worth of shooting, you can get up to or at, at a minimum, a hundred images.
And a lot of times photographers will submit more than that.
So that will provide you with a year's worth of photos.
And so that's why I say looking at it as an investment, not an expense.
Is, you know, is, is relevant here because it really provides you with a bank of images that are unique to your mission, that are unique to your brand.
It shows your people in action.
It shows your, your logo on their, on the shirts of your staff and your volunteers.
And so when we're planning those shoots, and I think this is, this is where I think some nonprofits have struggled with professional photography before.
Is they'll hire a professional photographer, but they don't really think through like how they're going to use the photos afterwards or what exactly they're looking to capture.
And so they kind of just like hire a photographer to go out and shoot something, and then they get images that aren't exactly what they wanted and they, they think that it ends up being a waste of money.
And, and it, the reason that that happens is because there isn't enough thought and planning that goes into the shoot beforehand.
And so like, you need to be thinking down the road.
When you're planning to do a shoot, how are we going to use these photos? Because that impacts how the photographer shoots it.
So for example, if you're doing a photo shoot and you would like to use a photo from that shoot on the cover of your annual report, that needs to be relayed to your photographer because those photos need to be shot vertically.
They also need to be shot with dead space for the masthead and cover blurbs.
If you wanna use your photos.
For a social media post or an infographic or something that you wanna put text over again, that needs to be relayed to the photographer.
Like, Hey, we wanna use a photo from this and be able to overlay text over it.
Then the photographer knows to shoot cer to shoot things, you know, in a variety of different ways so that the images can be used in, in across multiple platforms for multiple uses, and that there's, there's real versatility into the images.
So a lot of planning has to take place when you're, when you're doing a photo shoot to really get the most out of it.
Planning has to take place.
You really, you need to think about exactly what's happening, exactly how you wanna use the images, and then put together a really comprehensive shot list of like, these are the things that we're looking for.
And you, you also have to know that you may not get everything on your shot list.
Like I did a shoot at for Habitat for Humanity out in the San Francisco Bay Area last year.
And one of the things that we were hoping for was like, you know, that I put into the shot list was if there's any like, comradery amongst the volunteers.
If there's like a high five, you know, that would be great to show.
Well, a high five didn't happen that day, so we didn't get it and we're not gonna stage it.
So it's nice to have your, to put on paper the things that you would like to see.
But also you have to know that.
In order to abide by your ethics and to stay true to your, to your mission and to, to keep your integrity intact, that you're not gonna stage things that don't happen.
So if your volunteers don't high five that day, you have to be okay with not getting that image, you know what I mean? Focus on other things that show comradery.
Focus on, you know, them smiling and working together and, and, you know, even simple things, just, just facial expressions, right? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
That's super.
This is super great information.
I really think from a fundraising perspective, I just think it's a unique space that we don't often talk about, and so for you to provide all of this amazing information about how to make our photos be part of the storytelling that we're doing.
I think it's phenomenal.
It really is something that I had not really considered before we had talked and it's made me thoughtful.
I, I have, for my business, like I've done a photo shoot and I did it at an event.
So like by chance I have some of those candid, I, I guess that candid is the right word.
Yeah, that's the right word.
Yeah.
You know, but, uh.
But I al I also have some stage ones, you know, so I have a little bit of both because I needed them for different things, but, uh, it wasn't a super.
Expensive investment either.
And I, I have definitely seen in my own business like how beneficial it's been, but I didn't think about all of these components about it when we think about, you know, our marketing and our fundraising for our nonprofits.
So super grateful for that.
I cannot let you get off the podcast without talking a little bit about all of the activity that's been surrounding you for the last.
Three months.
Can you give my listeners just a very quick overview of Vision For Change? Yes.
Vision for Change, right.
Visual truth matters.
Yes.
So, for the last three months I have been this fell into my lap as I've been Lens for Change is a new venture.
And I've been, you know, over the past year I've been posting on LinkedIn.
I've been trying to grow my audience and have been, you know, posting about photography and nonprofits and, and all the things.
And so I've been trying to be more active on LinkedIn and.
In early March, the Department of Defense deleted tens of thousands of historic military photos from its public database and which is, uh, a terrible thing for multiple reasons.
You know, rewriting history is, is definitely not something, that we should be doing as a country.
And so I posted about that on LinkedIn and my goal was to just raise awareness that it was, that it was happening.
Much to my surprise, the post went completely viral.
People did not know that it was happening.
They were outraged by it.
I got like over 700 shares, thousands of reactions, hundreds of comments.
I was getting dms you know, there was all of this disbelief and shock and, and outrage over the whole thing.
And, you know, everyone was asking where did these photos go? Can we get them back? You know, how do we fight back against this? What can we do? This is terrible.
We can't be rewriting history.
And so I ended up deciding to.
Take all of that momentum and, and energy and see if I could turn it into an actual campaign to fight back.
And so about a week after my post went viral on LinkedIn in March, I launched the Visual Truth Matters campaign.
And about a week or two after that, there was a new executive order that came out that was targeting museums.
Specifically the Smithsonian accusing the Smithsonian of promoting divisive race centered ideology and directing all federally funded museums to revise or remove exhibits confronting racism and justice oppression.
Again, another attempt at rewriting history.
And so at that point, originally the campaign just started to fight back.
Was, was what was launched initially to fight back against the DOD photo purge.
But when that executive order came out, I expanded the campaign to a.
To fight back against all government led attacks on our visual history.
And so yeah, for the last three months I have been leading that campaign, building it from the ground up.
It's a grassroots campaign.
I had no idea that my post would spark that.
I did not wake up one day and say, I think I'll start a movement today.
But here we are.
My website actually, the visual truth matters.
Website just went live a couple weeks ago.
I have partnered with Memory Fox.
Which I think you are aware of, right? Yeah.
Chris has been on your show before.
Yes.
So I am very proud to say that I have partnered with Memory Fox to create a story gathering platform to preserve the history that's being erased.
So the website is visual truth matters.com.
It explains the campaign.
Explains the, the threat and the timeline of the things that have happened explains what the campaign is doing to fight back.
There's a preservation arm of the campaign, which is where memory fox falls into play.
So that's about creating a space for.
People to upload stories, videos, photos that are, you know, at, uh, have been erased or are at risk of being erased to try to preserve the, the history that the government is trying to take away.
And then there's also an action arm of the campaign that's focused on fighting back and, and ask, and, you know, demanding accountability and transparency against this erasure of our visual history.
So yes, that's what the last three months of my life have been.
Well, thank you for doing that.
As you've explained, ethical photography and the importance of making sure that it represents, you know, what actually is happening and what has actually happened in this.
Particular case.
I think it's so important that we consider that I have been a scrapbooker for many years.
And one of the things that we began speaking about when I started scrapbooking, which was in 2008 wow, 2007 2008, was the fact that as technology has advanced.
We print less and less of our pictures.
Yeah.
And so as a result of that, we have less visual history.
Right.
And so I think that many of us don't realize that unless someone.
Relays it to us that, you know, how important digital photography and the digital files of pictures are at this point.
Because in many cases, they may be the only evidence we have of something that has occurred because, you know, we haven't taken time to print off photos.
Right on that, I'll, I'll share that.
You know, it did teach me the value of having some printed photos, so.
If for those of our listeners who are listening, you might take that into consideration.
Uh, and little kids love seeing real photos of the people that they love.
So I've learned to do that over the years.
But thank you for your work on that.
Sure.
Before we end, uh, is there something that you would like all nonprofits to know before we exit? I would like all nonprofits to think about the importance of using authentic.
Visual storytelling as a central.
Cornerstone part of your, of your fundraising and your messaging, and I, and I will leave you with, with two data points.
The research shows that your brain processes images a lot faster than it, than it does with text, and it also shows that your brain remembers.
More of what you see than what you read.
And so I think that it's important for nonprofits to remember that, that when you're sending your communications out into the world, it's just as important for you to put emphasis on the visuals that you choose as you do with the words that you write, the images that go out in your emails and your social media posts are often the first thing that people are gonna see.
It's gonna, it's gonna either pull people right in and wanna learn more about your work and read about your stories.
Or it could have people scroll right past and so.
I would love to see the nonprofit sector fully embrace the, the power of authentic ethical photography and use that as a cornerstone in their communications because it, I really do believe that it can significantly impact, increase your impact as an organization, bring in more donors, and expand your audience, and create that trust and emotional connection that you need to keep going and keep, keep changing the world.
Thank you for sharing that.
I'm gonna think about that whenever I see photos.
Now I'm going to think about their use of photography.
So thank you for sharing that with us.
And to my listeners, I wanna thank you for listening.
Uh, please tune in next time.
Bye.
Thank you, Sarah.
Yes.
Thank you so much for being on.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Nonprofit 4 1 1.
I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.
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