Innovation Lab Home

The Appalshop Innovation Lab Guide is a freely-available workbook for rural organizations that want to incorporate low-cost digital storytelling into their work.

Who is this site for?

The Innovation Lab is designed specifically for small organizations that are undertaking campaigns, outreach plans, or instituting new online communication platforms. If you want to garner more volunteers, share your organization’s story with donors, or let your community know about a pressing issue, this guide is also for you. It will help you launch a campaign or just figure out how to get media content onto your website.

How the guide can help you

Have you been asked to create a communication strategy for your organization? Maybe you need to build your individual donor base or recruit 50 new volunteers. Many times we jump into using a technology without having formulated a plan. We hop onto Facebook or Twitter without asking ourselves simple questions like, “Why this tool?” That approach can lead to shaky results, frustrated interns, and burned out staff.

Read or download the Innovation Lab Guide.

Before you begin, remember to:

• Take your time
• Tap your creative spirit
• Keep it simple

Contact us

If you have questions about the guide or the Appalshop Innovation Lab, please contact Nick Szuberla or Mark Kidd.

Using and adapting this site

Stories and worksheets included in this guide were developed with contributions from community organizations and volunteers working for change in rural communities. We believe they illustrate the power and potential for storytelling to improve the way our organizations and communities work. We have licensed this guide under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0] license, which means you are free to share (copy, distribute, and transmit the work) and remix (adapt the work) under the following conditions:

• Attribution. Please attribute this work as the Appalshop Innovation Lab Guide, but not in any way that suggests that Appalshop endorses you or your use of the work.
• Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.