Next Generation Scholars is a non-profit organization serving first-generation, under-resourced students in California with academic and social support paired with socially conscious leadership development as they pursue higher education. To celebrate their 20 year anniversary, they wanted to commemorate their achievements with a more human-centered approach to an impact report. They wanted to create a physical magazine to showcase real-life stories from their participants that best represented the work that their organization does.
With a small staff, NGS lacked bandwidth on the team to manage this project, so they wanted to outsource it completely. We handled the project from start to finish: from sourcing a graphic designer, steering the creative & editorial direction, interviewing stakeholders to extract stories, writing and editing the content, and working with the graphic designer to publish the final product.
Editorial Project Management & Copywriting
Graphic Design
Creative Direction
Additionally, our founder currently serves as a Fractional Director of Communications for NGS
We worked closely with NGS Executive Director Nghiem Bui to identify the most impactful stories to tell. From there, we interviewed each stakeholder (the organization’s founders, students, alumni, staff, etc.) to best create feature stories that showcased their stories of success. We reviewed existing materials, transcribed soundbites from previous videos, and took time to understand the organization’s goals in order to deliver a final product that would represent their impact accomplishments. Our storytelling approach combined data and human-centered narratives to appeal to both the head and the heart.
Stories resonate louder than statistics. Data & numbers are important, but human-centered stories will be the reason why your mission will be remembered by others. Telling them in a way that honors the person being interviewed (their struggles, their cultural identity, their dreams) is key to creating an emotional connection. The stories featured in the magazine not only demonstrates their organization’s contributions, but also highlights the past, present, and future of NGS, told through the eyes of their most important stakeholders: their students.