Strategic Narrative Development for Both ENDS: Aligning a Global Environmental Justice Story

When an organization works across climate justice, sustainable finance, biodiversity and human rights, its biggest communications challenge is often not a lack of compelling work. It is helping partners, funders, policymakers and colleagues see how the pieces connect. Yulu worked with Both ENDS to turn decades of environmental justice expertise into a shared strategic narrative that could guide communications across audiences and channels.

About Both ENDS

Both ENDS is a Netherlands-based environmental justice organization working alongside more than 500 partners worldwide to advance locally led solutions that protect ecosystems, strengthen communities and reshape the systems driving climate and environmental injustice.

The Challenge

As Both ENDS prepared to enter its next strategic chapter, the organization needed a clearer way to communicate the breadth of its work and its distinctive role in advancing environmental justice.

Its work spans climate justice, sustainable finance, biodiversity, trade and human rights. Those issues are deeply interconnected, but difficult to explain through isolated messages. Different audiences needed to understand not only what Both ENDS works on, but how locally led action connects to broader systems change and why the organization is uniquely positioned to bridge the two.

Both ENDS needed more than campaign messaging. It engaged Yulu to articulate and codify an enduring strategic narrative that could align communications across the organization and create a stronger foundation for its next phase of impact.

Our Approach

Yulu partnered closely with the Both ENDS team to synthesize decades of organizational expertise into a clear, cohesive communications framework that teams could apply across audiences, channels and future initiatives. The work combined organizational discovery, communications research, benchmarking, audience analysis and collaborative narrative development. Rather than creating a one-off campaign, Yulu developed reusable strategic communications infrastructure that could support the organization over time.

The engagement resulted in:

An organization-wide strategic narrative
Core messaging pillars
Audience-specific messaging

Storytelling guidance
Strategic communications recommendations to support implementation

A Strategic Narrative Designed to Travel Across the Organization

The value of the engagement was not a single headline or campaign launch. It was a reusable foundation: core positioning, messaging pillars, audience-specific language and storytelling guidance that Both ENDS could draw on for website development, fundraising communications, strategic planning and public engagement. By starting with the organization’s existing expertise and approach to locally led change, the framework was designed to improve consistency without flattening the complexity of environmental justice.

Throughout the process, the focus remained on strengthening how Both ENDS communicates its existing expertise, systems-based approach and commitment to environmental justice without oversimplifying the communities, rights and power dynamics at the centre of the work.

Results & Impact

Yulu delivered a shared narrative architecture, including an organization-wide story, core messages, audience-specific messaging and practical guidance for future use. The framework also informed Both ENDS’ website refresh and communications planning. These are documented strategic deliverables; wider changes in fundraising, audience understanding or policy outcomes were not measured as part of this engagement.

Outcomes included:

→ A shared organizational narrative grounded in Both ENDS’ mission, values and decades of advancing environmentally just processes and practices.

→ Clearer messaging that articulates the organization’s distinctive role in connecting locally led action with global systems change.

→ Audience-specific messaging that gives teams a more consistent foundation for communicating with partners, funders, policymakers and public audiences.

→ Strategic messaging that informed the organization’s ongoing website refresh and future communications planning.

Why It Matters

Environmental justice organizations often operate across interconnected systems – climate, finance, policy, biodiversity and human rights – that are difficult to communicate through isolated messages.

A strong strategic narrative helps organizations explain how those issues connect, clarify the role they are uniquely positioned to play and give teams a common foundation for fundraising, websites, reports, thought leadership, stakeholder engagement and public communications.

For organizations coordinating work across multiple issues, regions and audiences, clarity is a strategic asset. This project shows how Yulu helps mission-led teams communicate a complex role without reducing their work to a list of disconnected programs. The result is a narrative foundation designed to support more consistent decisions about what to say, to whom and why it matters.

Services Provided

Strategic Communications
Strategic Narrative Development
Organizational Positioning
Messaging Framework Development
Audience Research
Environmental Communications
Nonprofit Communications Strategy
Impact Consulting

This type of work is especially relevant for organizations navigating a strategic plan, repositioning, website refresh, fundraising evolution, leadership transition or expansion into new audiences.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is strategic narrative development for an environmental justice organization?

Strategic narrative development creates a clear framework for explaining what an organization does, why its work matters, how change happens and what makes its approach distinct. For environmental justice organizations, that often means connecting issues such as climate, finance, policy, human rights and locally led action without losing the people and communities at the centre of the work.

How can communications support environmental justice fundraising?

Strong communications can help funders understand not only what an environmental justice organization does, but how funding contributes to systemic change. Clear positioning connects locally led work with broader policy, financial and institutional outcomes, helping organizations demonstrate their distinctive role, credibility and theory of change without reducing justice-led work to transactional fundraising language.

What is the difference between messaging and a strategic narrative?

Messaging provides specific language for communicating individual ideas. A strategic narrative establishes the larger architecture connecting those messages. It explains the problem, the organization’s role, its approach, its differentiators and the change it seeks. That foundation helps teams communicate consistently across fundraising, websites, reports, thought leadership, stakeholder engagement and public relations.

How does Yulu apply an equity lens to environmental communications?

Yulu examines who holds power in the story, whose expertise is credited and whether communications accurately represent the people most affected by environmental and climate issues. In practice, that means centring community agency, respecting local and Indigenous knowledge where relevant, testing terminology for cultural context and avoiding language that turns communities into passive beneficiaries of externally imposed solutions.

Can Yulu support both strategic narrative development and implementation?

Yes. Yulu’s strategic communications work can extend from discovery and narrative development into media relations, thought leadership, stakeholder and rightsholder communications, digital strategy, campaigns and other implementation channels. The right mix depends on the organization’s objectives, audiences, evidence base and communications capacity.

When does a nonprofit need a strategic narrative rather than a messaging refresh?

A messaging refresh may improve language for a particular campaign or audience. Strategic narrative development is more useful when an organization needs to connect its mission, programs, impact model and role across teams and channels, especially during strategic planning, organizational growth, leadership changes or a website redevelopment.

What deliverables does Yulu provide during a strategic narrative engagement?

For Both ENDS, Yulu combined organizational discovery, communications research, benchmarking, audience analysis and collaborative development to deliver an organization-wide narrative, core messaging pillars, audience-specific messages, storytelling guidance and recommendations for implementation. The exact scope is tailored to each organization’s goals.

Let's Work Together

Is your organization entering a new strategic chapter, preparing for a website relaunch or struggling to explain a complex mission to funders, partners and the public? Yulu helps nonprofits, coalitions and purpose-driven organizations build strategic narratives and messaging systems that make their work easier to understand and communicate consistently.