Case Study: Creating a Shared Narrative Across 100+ Organizations

Some challenges are too big for any one organization to take on alone.

Protecting and restoring the San Francisco Bay’s habitats is one of them.

That’s why the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture (SFBJV) brings together more than 100 nonprofits, public agencies, restoration practitioners, and community members around a shared mission. But when that many organizations are working toward the same goal, you can imagine how tricky the communications can get.

How do you create a shared narrative that unites organizations while giving every partner room to tell their own story?

That question became the foundation for LightBox’s year-long partnership with SFBJV. Together, we developed a long-term communications strategy designed to strengthen alignment across the partnership and amplify its collective impact

A shared narrative doesn’t mean a shared script

SFBJV’s partners already believed in the work. They each brought deep expertise, strong relationships, and their own ways of talking about what was happening in their corner of the Bay.

The opportunity was to connect those dots.

We knew we weren’t looking to hand 100-plus organizations a script. What we wanted was to give them each a trail map: a shared direction, some common signposts, and room to find their own way there.

Every good communications strategy starts with listening

Before making recommendations, we wanted to understand what was already working across the coalition, where communications were getting stuck, and what partners needed to pull in the same direction.

We started with a comprehensive assessment of how SFBJV communicated and how information and ideas moved across its network.

What we found helped sharpen the objective. Partners already supported SFBJV and generally agreed with its strategic priorities. But they weren’t necessarily connecting their own organizational goals to SFBJV’s region-wide goals—or seeing how their individual efforts added up to collective progress

That gave us a much clearer job for communications: move from broad support to deeper alignment.

A long-term vision needs a long-term communications strategy

Since SFBJV was working toward ambitious conservation goals for 2035, its communications strategy needed to look well beyond the next campaign or content calendar. We worked with the team to develop a 10-year strategy tied directly to where SFBJV wanted to go.

The north star was ambitious: help make SFBJV’s priorities regional benchmarks for restoration, with partners championing those priorities and increasingly using them to shape their own organizational strategies.

That meant getting really clear about audiences. Who did SFBJV most need to move? What did they need those people to do? What would motivate them—or get in the way? And who were the messengers they were most likely to listen to?

Those insights informed a coalition-wide messaging platform, along with tailored messaging for four priority areas. The messaging made a stronger case for why  SFBJV exists and helped connect the dots between individual projects and the bigger picture of what it will take to protect the Bay.

The messaging gave partners a common starting point they could adapt for their own audiences and use in their own voices.

Stories make complex work easier to connect with

One recommendation rose quickly to the top: tell more stories.

Conservation work can get technical fast. Habitat goals, adaptation planning, permitting, funding. All of these things matter greatly, but they don’t always give people an easy way into the story.

So we looked for one.

Enter the birds.

We worked with SFBJV to develop a storytelling postcard series featuring Bay Area birds, using individual species as relatable protagonists in a much bigger story about habitat restoration and the health of the Bay.

The postcards were also a test case for a larger storytelling approach: building a bank of stories that could make the impact of SFBJV’s work easier to see and share: first, through its own channels and partner networks, and eventually through media and other influential messengers.

Over time, the idea is for partners to do more than receive these stories. They can contribute them, share them, and help them travel.

A strategy only works if people can use it

Of course, a 10-year strategy isn’t much good if no one knows what to do with it. So we made implementation part of the work from the start.

We developed a coalition-wide messaging platform and tailored messaging for four of SFBJV’s priority areas. We turned their 100-plus-page environmental implementation plan into an accessible summary that staff and partners could actually pick up and use. And we supported rollout through training, strategic counsel, and communications collateral.

Those summaries are already helping SFBJV’s leadership tell a clearer, more cohesive story about what the partnership is working toward:

The goal was to leave the coalition better equipped to communicate together—and with a strategy flexible enough to grow and change along with the work.

A shared narrative can build deeper alignment

SFBJV now has a clearer path for using communications to do more than explain its work. It has a strategy for using communications to help build the alignment the work itself requires.

The strategy gives partners shared language they can make their own, a storytelling approach that makes complex conservation work easier to connect with, and a roadmap for building greater alignment over time.

It also gives SFBJV something important to measure against. Are more partners incorporating SFBJV priorities into their own plans? Are they sharing stories and content without being asked? Are SFBJV’s priorities showing up more often in regional conversations? Are decision-makers paying attention?

Those are the signs that a shared narrative is becoming shared momentum

Here’s what others can learn from this case study

Getting everyone on the same page doesn’t mean giving everyone the same words.

A strong coalition narrative creates a common direction while leaving room for each partner’s expertise, audiences, and voice. The goal isn’t for everyone to tell exactly the same story. It’s for everyone to help move the bigger story forward.

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Senior Partner Amanda Cooper and Senior Collaborator Eliza Sherpa led this work, combining their expertise to help the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture connect the dots across a complex conservation landscape. That’s the LightBox model: bringing together the right people for the challenge. Since 2009, we’ve partnered with more than 500 organizations to do just that.

Facing your own communications challenge? We’d love to help. Get in touch at info@lightboxcollaborative.com