What are the key takeaways from this The Pitch episode?

Key insights include: **Collaborative Writing Model:** COVID forced Young Storytellers to shift from one-to-one mentoring to small group "writer's room" sessions with 2-3 students and volunteers. This unintended model proved valuable for combating isolation, allowing kids to connect authentically with peers while maintaining individual character ownership in collaborative stories.; **Volunteer Retention Crisis:** Pre-COVID volunteer base dropped from 1,300 to 300-400 people post-pandemic, now recovering to 500. This reflects permanent workplace culture shifts. The organization pivoted strategy to create program toolkits for community organizations and PTAs, enabling grassroots replication while maintaining 25 years of proven curriculum and outcomes data.; **Personal Pitching Strategy:** Effective nonprofit pitching prioritizes authentic personal connection over jargon. Thompson leads with his own transformation story—from non-theater kid to arts advocate—demonstrating program impact through lived experience rather than tokenizing student stories. Research funders' values beforehand, position your organization as solving their specific problem, and maintain confidence in your mission's fit.

What did Bill Thompson discuss on The Pitch?

Bill Thompson, Executive Director of Young Storytellers, shares how the LA-based nonprofit empowers marginalized students to write original stories performed by professional actors, building empathy and voice through volunteer mentorship programs across elementary, middle, and high schools. Key topics include: **Collaborative Writing Model:** COVID forced Young Storytellers to shift from one-to-one mentoring to small group "writer's room" sessions with 2-3 students and volunteers. This unintended model proved valuable for combating isolation, allowing kids to connect authentically with peers while maintaining individual character ownership in collaborative stories.; **Volunteer Retention Crisis:** Pre-COVID volunteer base dropped from 1,300 to 300-400 people post-pandemic, now recovering to 500. This reflects permanent workplace culture shifts. The organization pivoted strategy to create program toolkits for community organizations and PTAs, enabling grassroots replication while maintaining 25 years of proven curriculum and outcomes data..

How long is this episode of The Pitch?

This episode is 69 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

The Pitch

#13 - A Chat with Bill Thompson, Executive Director of Young Storytellers

May 11, 2023

69 min episode · 2 min read

Bill Thompson

Episode

69 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Fundraising & VC, Leadership

AI-Generated Summary

Published Dec 25, 2025

Key Takeaways

✓Collaborative Writing Model: COVID forced Young Storytellers to shift from one-to-one mentoring to small group "writer's room" sessions with 2-3 students and volunteers. This unintended model proved valuable for combating isolation, allowing kids to connect authentically with peers while maintaining individual character ownership in collaborative stories.
✓Volunteer Retention Crisis: Pre-COVID volunteer base dropped from 1,300 to 300-400 people post-pandemic, now recovering to 500. This reflects permanent workplace culture shifts. The organization pivoted strategy to create program toolkits for community organizations and PTAs, enabling grassroots replication while maintaining 25 years of proven curriculum and outcomes data.
✓Personal Pitching Strategy: Effective nonprofit pitching prioritizes authentic personal connection over jargon. Thompson leads with his own transformation story—from non-theater kid to arts advocate—demonstrating program impact through lived experience rather than tokenizing student stories. Research funders' values beforehand, position your organization as solving their specific problem, and maintain confidence in your mission's fit.
✓Empathy Through Poetry: Research using fMRI scans shows poetry and creative writing activate brain regions associated with empathy. This functional shift occurs in the same frontal lobe area where empathy resides. Arts programs correlate with lower recidivism rates, suggesting storytelling literally grows empathy capacity in developing minds and adults alike.
✓Abundance Over Scarcity: The "limited favors" mentality in entertainment is self-perpetuating fiction. Thompson advocates genuine belief-based connections—introducing people or projects you authentically support creates trust in your judgment. When recommendations come from real conviction rather than transactional thinking, people respond with unlimited reciprocity. Help others solve problems without expecting direct returns.

What It Covers

Bill Thompson, Executive Director of Young Storytellers, shares how the LA-based nonprofit empowers marginalized students to write original stories performed by professional actors, building empathy and voice through volunteer mentorship programs across elementary, middle, and high schools.

Key Questions Answered

•Collaborative Writing Model: COVID forced Young Storytellers to shift from one-to-one mentoring to small group "writer's room" sessions with 2-3 students and volunteers. This unintended model proved valuable for combating isolation, allowing kids to connect authentically with peers while maintaining individual character ownership in collaborative stories.
•Volunteer Retention Crisis: Pre-COVID volunteer base dropped from 1,300 to 300-400 people post-pandemic, now recovering to 500. This reflects permanent workplace culture shifts. The organization pivoted strategy to create program toolkits for community organizations and PTAs, enabling grassroots replication while maintaining 25 years of proven curriculum and outcomes data.
•Personal Pitching Strategy: Effective nonprofit pitching prioritizes authentic personal connection over jargon. Thompson leads with his own transformation story—from non-theater kid to arts advocate—demonstrating program impact through lived experience rather than tokenizing student stories. Research funders' values beforehand, position your organization as solving their specific problem, and maintain confidence in your mission's fit.
•Empathy Through Poetry: Research using fMRI scans shows poetry and creative writing activate brain regions associated with empathy. This functional shift occurs in the same frontal lobe area where empathy resides. Arts programs correlate with lower recidivism rates, suggesting storytelling literally grows empathy capacity in developing minds and adults alike.
•Abundance Over Scarcity: The "limited favors" mentality in entertainment is self-perpetuating fiction. Thompson advocates genuine belief-based connections—introducing people or projects you authentically support creates trust in your judgment. When recommendations come from real conviction rather than transactional thinking, people respond with unlimited reciprocity. Help others solve problems without expecting direct returns.

Notable Moment

Thompson traces his entire career to one high school theater teacher who saw potential in a new student with zero arts exposure. That single adult recognition sparked a path leading to his family, career, and life's purpose—demonstrating how extended mentorship interventions create transformative impact impossible through one-time interactions.

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Episode Transcript

The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com/podcast. Terms apply. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Pitch. I'm Leah Saint Marie. And I'm Angel. And today, we have a special guest with us, Bill Thompson, who is the executive director of Young Storytellers, an arts education nonprofit based here in LA. Welcome, Bill. Yeah. Welcome. Thanks for coming. Of course. Happy to be here. So I've volunteered with Young Storytellers for many years. I did the the biggest show, which I think is when we physically met in 2018 at the Ace Hotel. I was asking you about parking passes. You were kind enough to direct me to where to get my my parking validated. But why don't you tell us a little bit about Young Storytellers because it's something I'm passionate about and it's a nonprofit that part of our premium podcast proceeds go towards. Yeah. I mean, I think the the heart of Young Storytellers, as you know, is about creating a space for young people, to be the driving force of their own narratives. Really giving them an opportunity to see the impact that their thoughts, feelings, and words can have on the world around them. We work in public schools who have been historically marginalized and oppressed. Here in Los Angeles, volunteer mentors go into the schools, and they work directly with, young people who then write their own original stories that are performed by professional actors at, sort of community school celebration. And we work with elementary school students, middle school students, and high school students, here in Los Angeles. And we've just been very fortunate, especially as we, you know, emerge, from COVID to have a dedicated, you know, base of volunteers who come in and work with the students, and help them, craft their stories and then, the actress perform them. So Yeah. It was it was interesting during COVID to continue the work and the kids would show up on Zooms. Yeah. Well and and it was it was interesting for us because we developed a whole new program model during COVID. So, you know, historically, our elementary school program is one to one. You know? So each fifth grade student is working with their own mentor to write their story. But we had complications with Zoom where we weren't able to have breakout rooms with one adult and one student. So we ended up building this collaborative stories model, which is a little bit more like a writer's room. So there are a couple of students and …

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