Stories as Evidence: Rethinking How We Measure Change
by David Lloyd-Lewis, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer
Folktale Co-Founder and CEO Sarah Mak on how stories help connect the dots between data, learning, and lasting change.
Across the global development and social impact sectors, one question continues to surface: how do we measure what truly matters?
For decades, the answer has been numbers: outputs, reach, and scale. Those are important but they don’t always tell us why change happens, how people experience it, or what shifts in thinking, trust, and relationships make that change stick.
At Folktale, we’ve seen how stories can act as evidence. They bring nuance and texture to data, helping organizations move from counting activities to understanding impact. Stories make visible the beliefs, relationships, and systems that underpin meaningful transformation.
That’s why the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s article “How to Measure Narrative Change”, published in May 2025, feels especially relevant. It offers a practical lens for understanding how stories influence culture, inform systems, and reshape collective understanding in order to measure those shifts in ways that honor both data and humanity.
The Framework in Brief
The framework proposes four interconnected dimensions:
Message & Messenger: What story is being told, and by whom? Are new voices being centred? Are those who are most affected shaping the narrative?
Reach (Activities): How far and wide has the story travelled, and through which channels? Who is listening, sharing, or responding?
People (Outcomes): How are stories influencing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours? What emotions or conversations are emerging as a result?
Culture & Structures (Impact): How are stories contributing to shifts in norms, power, and systems over time? What does sustained narrative change look like?
It’s a way of asking not just “Did the story reach people?” but “Did it move them?” and “What changed as a result?”
What This Looks Like in Practice
This framework resonates with what we’ve learned through experience.
Over the years, Folktale has worked with communities, NGOs, and funders to gather and analyze community-led stories from across the globe. Each story shared on our platform is both personal and collective; a reflection of local realities, hopes, and learnings.
Message & Messenger: Folktale is designed for people to tell their own stories, in their own words. There are no film crews or intermediaries deciding what matters. Communities become the messengers of their own experience.
Reach: Our platform makes storytelling accessible, even in low-connectivity contexts, ensuring stories travel from the grassroots to decision-making tables
People: The qualitative data from stories allows organizations to move beyond “how many” to “what changed.” Stories reveal shifts in trust, inclusion, and agency, revealing the intangible factors that drive long-term success.
Culture & Structures: Over time, we see how listening becomes a habit. Organizations start embedding storytelling into their learning systems, influencing funding models and policy conversations in ways that centre lived experience.
When these dimensions come together, they help connect the dots between voices, evidence, and action.
Building Narrative Capacity
The SSIR framework also highlights a critical but often overlooked ingredient: narrative capacity. It’s not enough to capture stories; communities must be equipped to tell them.
That’s where our work at Folktale is focused. By giving communities easy, accessible tools to share their stories in their own languages, on their own devices, in their own words, we help build lasting capacity.
This shifts storytelling from being an extractive process to a collaborative one, where local voices drive learning and accountability. When organisations invest in narrative capacity, they don’t just gather better stories; they strengthen trust, agency, and long-term impact.
Learning, Not Just Reporting
What stands out most in the SSIR framework is its emphasis on learning.
Measurement is not only about proving impact, it’s about improving practice.
We’ve seen how a single story can spark reflection and adaptation. A story from a youth facilitator in Fiji can inspire program design in the Philippines. A local health worker’s reflection can help shape national strategy. A story shared between partners can build empathy that no metric alone could achieve.
When stories are systematically gathered, they form a network of signals - a feedback loop that connects the dots between stories, audiences, and systems. This continuous process keeps communities, implementers, and funders aligned and accountable.
Why It Matters Now
In a world that prizes scale and speed, we risk equating growth with progress. But as the framework reminds us, true narrative change isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing deeper listening better, learning faster, and building systems that evolve with the people they serve.
If we don’t measure the narratives that drive our work, we risk reinforcing old ones. The single stories that reduce complexity, flatten difference, and silence local agency.
Narrative change asks us to slow down, to listen, and to ask better questions. What are people really saying? What are we missing? And how do we make sure those insights actually shape what happens next?
The Takeaway
If you’re working in storytelling, development, monitoring, evaluation, or community engagement, this framework offers a practical guide:
Define the story you’re telling and whose voice leads it.
Clarify who you’re reaching.
Ask what changed for the people involved.
Track how norms, power, and systems are shifting.
At Folktale, our mission is to support this kind of grounded, inclusive, story-centered practice. We believe that when communities share real stories, those stories become evidence.
And when evidence includes lived experience, decisions become richer, program designs become wiser, and impact becomes more legitimate.
Stories aren’t an afterthought; they’re essential to how we learn, adapt, and connect the dots toward lasting change.