Make sure the right people understand what you do - and why it matters.
Your work is exceptional. Your story isn't telling people that yet.
When the people who fund you, partner with you, and work alongside you can't fully articulate what makes your organization different, it costs you — in grants, in trust, and in momentum.
There's a difference between explaining your work and making someone care about it. Many organizations are doing the first and calling it the second.
When proposals don't get funded, teams are busy but no longer sure what they're working toward, or leaders know exactly what they're building but can't make others see it — the story isn't working hard enough.
What becomes possible when your story is working
Funders don't just say yes — they bring others. Your story becomes something they repeat in rooms you'll never be in, and the next conversation starts warmer than the last.
Your team stops needing to be briefed before every stakeholder meeting. The mission lives in them — and it shows, whether they're talking to a board, a community, or a corporate partner.
You stop being one of many organizations doing good work and become the reference point. Other leaders in your space start citing you, quoting you, and asking what you're doing differently.
For nonprofits, foundations, and mission-driven companies ready to stop being the best-kept secret in their field.
For Nonprofits
You've submitted the proposal, made the case, followed up — and still heard "not the right fit," with no explanation that helps you do better next time. When your narrative is working, funders don't just fund you. They renew without prompting, advocate internally on your behalf, and bring others along before you even ask.
For Foundations
You're funding innovative work across a portfolio of grantees, but the collective story of what you're building together keeps getting lost. When your narrative is clear, you stop being a passive funder and become the convening force your field is looking for — the organization other leaders turn to when they're trying to understand where things are headed.
For Mission-Driven Companies
You're building something that has to make sense to a philanthropist, a corporate partner, and an impact investor — sometimes in the same week. The story that moves one leaves the other cold, and you're constantly translating. When your narrative strategy is working, you have a core that holds across all of those conversations, and each audience feels like you built it specifically for them.
"Noella quickly understood what we were trying to achieve in our strategic positioning and helped us think through the story we needed to tell. She developed a research approach that would build credibility with our target audience, and executed with both speed and rigor.
What impressed me was her ability to see the strategic angle while managing the execution details. She understood how to frame the evidence for government stakeholders, showing not just what works, but why it matters. Noella is someone you can trust to deliver work that positions you well for high-stakes conversations."
Carolyn Kandusi - Founder
Policy Innovation Lab - Africa
Why Noella?
I have spent over a decade supporting organizations that were doing extraordinary work and struggling to prove it.
The problem, in each case, was the distance between what the organization knew and what it could make others feel.
That gap became my obsession. I'm a published writer and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing. I have studied how stories work, why some move people and others don't, and what it takes to close that gap.
I bring that into my advisory work as a discipline. When I partner with an organization, I'm looking for the story that's already there, and shaping it into a narrative strategy that will make the right people stop and pay attention.