ANNUAL REPORT 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS Letters from Leadership ....................................................3 Dave Isay & Robin Sparkman Gara LaMarche Our Work ................................................................................ 5 Our mission is to Stories to Remember preserve and share Measuring Our Impact humanity’s stories in StoryCorps by the Numbers order to build Where We’ve Been connections between Collecting & Preserving Diverse Voices people and create Sharing & Amplifying Powerful Stories Extending the StoryCorps Experience a more just and compassionate world. Supporters ...........................................................................23 Public Funders, Institutions, and Businesses National & Local Partners Honor Society Corps Members A Note on Experiencing This Report At the heart of StoryCorps’ mission is making our work as accessible as possible. Throughout this report, we invite you to further explore our content and programs by clicking on the links embedded within this document (that look like this), which will take you to our website and other online platforms. LETTER FROM LEADERSHIP Dear Friends, We hope this letter finds you and yours safe and well. While it may feel like a very long time ago, we also wanted to highlight some of our Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, we at StoryCorps have been working organizational accomplishments from 2019: around the clock to adapt our service to the realities of the new world we’re living in. • To mark the 50th anniversary of the Photo Harvey by Wang Up until a few short months ago, more than 600,000 Americans had participated in Stonewall Uprising, we launched recording StoryCorps interviews about their lives — passing stories from one generation Stonewall OutLoud, a project to preserve to the next and creating an archive of the wisdom of humanity at the Library of Congress. and share the stories of LGBTQ elders. Each one of these interviews had been recorded face to face. • We marked five years of The Great When the pandemic hit, we realized we needed to make a quick pivot to ensure that Thanksgiving Listen, inspiring educators people everywhere would have the opportunity to connect and honor each other’s lives nationwide to work with their students and stories during this singular moment in American history. on preserving their family histories. Dave Isay The StoryCorps team immediately set out to create, test, and launch a new service, StoryCorps • Through our Military Voices Initiative, Connect, that makes it possible for the first time to record StoryCorps interviews remotely. we preserved the stories of the military The service allows you to participate in a StoryCorps interview with a loved one through a community through a national tour, and special video chat technology. The audio and a photo from your conversation uploads to the shared them through a special series on Library of Congress for future generations. NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. Photo Harvey by Wang We released this free service in mid-April and have been moved and humbled by the • We continued to share poignant and response from across the country. We have seen StoryCorps Connect help elders feel powerful stories, podcasts, and animated less isolated, give teachers a meaningful remote learning activity for their students, shorts, reaching larger and more diverse help people experiencing loss memorialize loved ones lost in the pandemic, and much audiences than ever before. more. We’ve shared a number of stories recorded using StoryCorps Connect. One of these hits particularly close to home: Dave’s son Tobey, who was infected with the virus, We are excited to continue One Small Step in Robin Sparkman interviewing Dave’s mom Jane in an early StoryCorps Connect test interview. 2020, with a major national expansion of our effort to bring strangers across the political Other stories we’ve shared in the weeks after StoryCorps Connect’s release include a divides together for StoryCorps interviews. The conversation between two New York City bus operators about working on the front lines; pandemic has only deepened the culture of contempt and dehumanization in the United a doctor and his family on what it’s been like for him to self-isolate within their home to States, and the upcoming election promises to further fray the fabric of our nation. One avoid spreading potential infection; a California funeral director and his daughter on what Small Step has proven to be a powerful intervention that helps turn “thems” into “us-es.” called him to join the national mortuary response team in New York City; and a mother and her daughter about the loss of her father, a World War II veteran, who succumbed to We are all living in an extraordinary period of uncertainty, but StoryCorps has embarked the disease in his nursing home. on this new decade with a renewed sense of purpose. We hope StoryCorps Connect helps cut through the dark clouds of the moment we’re living Thank you for believing in the power of listening, and thank you for supporting our work. through. We hope you and yours find this public service of use in the months ahead. Warmly, Dave Isay, Robin Sparkman, CEO Founder & President 3 STORYCORPS ANNUAL REPORT 2019 LETTER FROM THE BOARD CHAIR Board of Directors* Dear Friends, Gara LaMarche, Chair As I write, the nation — and the world — is in the grip of a pandemic that in Dane E. Holmes, Vice Chair one sense strikes at the heart of what StoryCorps is about and at the same Michael Shuman, Vice Chair time underscores why what we do is so urgently needed. Jim Moore, Treasurer “Social distancing” is the exact opposite of the StoryCorps ethos, which Adelaide K. Jones, Secretary strives to bring people together — across generations, miles, and even political divides — to acknowledge and celebrate our common humanity. Dave Isay, Founder & President But at a time of physical separation, the platform we have built over fifteen Robin Sparkman, years is a more essential tool than ever before for bringing us together. Chief Executive Officer Listening again recently to some of the stories we featured in the past Directors year — on our Morning Edition segment and on our podcast and website — I was struck by how many of them are already about separation under dire Audrey Choi circumstances. It helped me remember that what the planet is now going Sarah Elizabeth Feinberg through has too often been a fact of life for marginalized communities: Vanita Gupta Gara LaMarche Anne Herbert Mai • For Pedro Lopez, whose mother was taken away by ICE agents; Elizabeth J. McCormack • For Elizabeth Coffey-Williams, estranged from her family by her gender identity; Scott Mitic Marta Elisa Moret • For Muhammad Faridi, whose embarrassment about his immigrant father, a taxi driver, caused them to grow apart. Blythe Haaga Parker We learn from these stories and so many more from the tens of thousands shared with StoryCorps. We are Vic Parker angered and saddened by the barriers imposed by hard-heartedness and bigotry and understand that they can be Kim Rubey steeper in a time of great social strain. We are lifted and impelled to action by the lessons of human resilience and Jill Schlesinger, CFP about the power of love, which our world desperately needs right now. Murray Sinclaire, Jr. Your support for StoryCorps, an essential national institution, has helped us bridge many divides as those who Vanessa Toussaint share their stories and those who listen to the stories of their fellow humans come away changed for the better. I David Wadhwani don’t need to tell you that we are needed now more than ever, and that we need to grow so that these experiences are a universal part of our social fabric with world-changing impact. Emeritus Members Thanks for your support, and the huge difference it makes in the lives of so many, from all of us here at StoryCorps. Former Senator Bill Bradley Jane Phillips Donaldson Kevin Klose Deborah Leff Thomas A. Moore Gara LaMarche, Board Chair *Board as of February 2020 4 STORYCORPS ANNUAL REPORT 2019 STORIES TO REMEMBER A Mother’s Promise A Lifelong Love of Books The Leesburg Stockade Girls “I’m terrified of missing you growing up.” “When I buy a new book, I don’t start reading “Being in a place like that, I didn’t feel like we Maria Rivas and her teenage daughter, Emily, the first page. I smell it.” was human.” prepare for the possibility of Maria returning to El At StoryCorps in Chicago, Alagappa Rammohan Carol Barner-Seay, Shirley Reese, Diane Bowens, Salvador if she is forced to leave the U.S. shares with his daughter, Paru Venkat, a love letter and Verna Hollis, who spent two months locked Watch the animation. to the written word. inside a stockade, shine a light on an overlooked moment in civil rights history. Listen to the story. Listen to the podcast. The Door She Opened Love Lost, and Found Remembering Dr. Tiller “I knew I was a girl. And so that weekend, I got “I had to be who I wasn’t so that I could “We felt a sense of gratitude that we could allow to be me.” survive.” Elijah to rest in peace and not have to struggle.” Dee Westenhauser remembers her Aunt Yaya, who Sue McConnell and Kristyn Weed, best friends and Natalie and David Young remember Dr. George gave her an opportunity that no one else would: a Vietnam-era veterans, share a story of courage — Tiller, who was killed three years after they sought safe, loving space to be herself. on and off the battlefield. his help for an abortion in Wichita, Kansas. Watch the animation. Watch the animation. Listen to the story. 5 STORYCORPS ANNUAL REPORT 2019 STORIES TO REMEMBER Explore more stories, podcasts, and animations at storycorps.org, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Apple News.