99 Stories, One Mission: How IEL Proved What ‘Changing Systems Through People’ Actually Looks Like

Before Gather Voices

• IEL had a conference videographer every year and conducted both sit-down and man-on-the-street interviews, but this approach captured moments, not mission. Getting members to prove IEL’s impact in their own words, intentionally and at scale, wasn’t something the format could deliver.
• IEL had also tried collecting member video stories virtually in previous years, but without a structured platform to guide and prompt participants, the effort never gained traction. When the ask is simply 'record and send us a video on your own,' participation is hard to drive.
• The result: years of conference content that documented the event rather than amplified the mission, leaving IEL’s team to keep telling that story themselves instead of letting their members tell it for them.

The Gather Voices Solution

• IEL used Gather Voices to deploy a video kiosk on-site, inviting attendees to record short reflections on what “changing systems through people” means in their daily work. The kiosk made story collection intentional, visible, and scalable, with no film crew, no scheduling, and no friction for IEL’s team.
• Members submitted on their own schedule and in their own words. No two said the same thing, which is exactly the point. Authentic, peer-level voices carry a kind of credibility that no brand message can replicate.
• The resulting library is centrally organized and immediately ready to deploy across every channel and use case IEL needs, without spinning up new production each time.

The Strategic Impact

• A community school coordinator from Prince George’s County shared how putting students in charge of food distributions helped them find their voices, offering concrete, school-level proof of what systems change looks like in practice.
• A nonprofit leader from Austin described doing more with less and watching his community move systems when they showed up together, making the mission land as lived reality, not positioning.
• Blake Leeper, a 2-time Paralympic medalist, connected IEL’s mission to a belief that change is possible through showing up and doing the work, extending the story far beyond the education sector.
• Attendees have already used their videos to share with managers, demonstrating the value of their work and the conference as professional development, social proof that works person to person, not just channel to channel.
• IEL is now deploying the library across blast emails, LinkedIn, grant proposals, board presentations, 2027 conference promotion, annual reporting, and sponsorship and exhibitor outreach, all from one two-day campaign.

For IEL, this is not a content play. It’s a proof play. A library of 99 authentic member voices saying, in concrete personal terms, what “changing systems through people” looks like in practice is the difference between an organization describing its impact and an organization’s members proving it. Your members, leaders, volunteers, and advocates already believe in what you do. Gather Voices gives you the infrastructure to capture that belief at the moment when it’s most alive and use it everywhere, all year long.