Ethical storytelling asks nonprofit leaders to protect a person’s choices, not simply collect permission to publish.
By Arbab Naseebullah Kasi, Chief Executive Officer - CEO, Feel Worldwide Foundation Inc.
A clasped storybook glows inside a glass lantern, a symbolic reminder to handle entrusted stories with care.
A person shares something important with a community organisation. Perhaps it is the difficulty of finding work, the relief of receiving practical support, or the long effort behind a small achievement. Someone listening recognises a story that could help others understand the organisation’s work.
That is a moment to slow down.
The story may be compelling. It may explain a need more clearly than a page of statistics. But the person speaking is not a communications resource waiting to be collected. They will continue living with the experience after the newsletter has been sent and the campaign has ended.
A public story can become part of how neighbours, employers, family members and strangers understand them. The organisation may control its website. It does not control every future audience.
The responsibility, then, is larger than finding accurate words. It is to make sure the person understands the invitation, has meaningful choices and is not reduced to the part of their life that happens to suit a fundraising message.
Saying that a story still belongs to the person who lived it is an ethical position about agency and respect, not a claim about the legal ownership of every recording or publication. It asks a practical leadership question: whose comfort and choices shape the process when a deadline arrives?
The invitation should not feel like a debt
An invitation to tell a story can sound entirely different depending on who makes it.
A communications officer may think they are offering someone an opportunity to be heard. The person receiving support may wonder whether refusing would appear ungrateful. A volunteer may worry that declining a photograph will disappoint the team. Neither concern has to be spoken aloud to influence the answer.
For this reason, enthusiasm is not enough evidence that an invitation has been understood freely. People need a clear explanation of what participation involves, including what happens if they choose not to participate.
Child.org offers a useful public example. In a January 15, 2025 article published by Bond, staff members Lucy Ndegwa and Hattie Rowan described their approach to collecting stories and images. They aim to have an initial conversation 48 hours before interviews or photography, giving participants time to consider the decision. They also show examples of previous communications and explicitly separate participation in storytelling from access to project benefits. The authors reported that some people declined photographs during a visit to Meru, Kenya, and welcomed that choice. These are reported practices and reflections, not evidence that a particular waiting period guarantees informed consent. Child.org’s account on Bond.
The important management lesson is that time for a decision belongs in the production schedule. If a team plans only for interviewing, editing and design, it has already treated the person’s consideration as an inconvenience.
Build the invitation early enough that a refusal does not become a crisis. A story that can only be produced by making someone feel responsible for a missed deadline is not ready to be commissioned.
Explain the actual publication, not an abstract purpose
“We would like to share your story” leaves too much unanswered.
Is this a short paragraph in a report for a small group of supporters? A public webpage that search engines may find? A video distributed through several social platforms? Will a photograph accompany it? Could a partner organisation use the same material?
Those are different invitations. A person might welcome one and decline another.
A practical conversation should describe the intended audience, format and channels in ordinary language. Show a sample when possible. Ask which parts of the experience the person is comfortable discussing and which are outside the conversation. Explain who will contact them next and how they can raise a concern.
The Dóchas Guide to Ethical Communications recommends explaining where and how material will appear, considering possible consequences for contributors and others, and making efforts to share drafts with contributors before publication. Its guidance treats consent as part of a wider responsibility to avoid harm, not merely a completed form. Dóchas Guide to Ethical Communications.
My practical extension of that guidance is to distinguish three decisions in the workflow: permission to have a conversation, agreement about the material selected, and agreement about its planned use. These need not become three intimidating forms. They should, however, be three recognisable opportunities to ask questions.
A useful check is to invite the person to explain, in their own words, what they expect will happen next. This should feel like checking the organisation’s explanation, not testing the person’s intelligence.
Do not force a complicated life into a convenient ending
The familiar success-story shape is tempting: difficulty, intervention, transformation.
Sometimes it describes events accurately. Sometimes it leaves out almost everything that made progress possible.
A person may have received help from a programme while also relying on family, neighbours, previous learning and years of their own effort. They may be proud of an achievement while still facing serious obstacles. A clean ending can quietly turn a partial improvement into a claim that the whole problem has been solved.
Voice of Witness, an oral-history organisation, published seven ethical storytelling principles in August 2022. Among them are respecting the whole person rather than imposing a victim-or-hero frame, recognising narrators as experts, and making stories accessible to the communities whose experiences they describe. These are practice principles, not a formula promising fundraising results. Voice of Witness’s ethical storytelling principles.
For an editor, the challenge is to keep a story readable without making a life artificially simple. Not every obstacle needs describing. But what remains should not create a false impression.
Consider an illustrative example, not a real beneficiary account. A community employment programme wants to describe a participant who has started a new job. The organisation provided interview practice. The participant also completed a qualification independently and arranged childcare with relatives. A responsible account can explain the programme’s contribution without implying that it created the entire outcome.
It can also leave room for the person’s own priorities. Perhaps the meaningful change is not the job title but a more predictable journey home. The organisation should not decide in advance which detail is allowed to count as success.
Editing is where respect becomes visible
Careful interviewing can be undone by careless editing.
A headline can make a person sound helpless when the article does not. A caption can reveal a location deliberately omitted from the text. A photograph can draw attention to someone who agreed to speak without being recognisable. A social post can turn a nuanced observation into a sweeping claim.
Review the entire package, not only the article body.
Give the contributor a manageable version to review through a channel they can use. A long document sent to someone who mainly uses a basic phone is not necessarily a meaningful opportunity to respond. Agree on a workable review method and a realistic response window before the deadline becomes urgent.
Ask focused questions: Is anything inaccurate? Does anything feel more identifying than expected? Is there something you agreed to discuss privately that should not appear here?
Silence should not automatically be interpreted as approval where approval was promised. If the person cannot be reached, follow the agreed process rather than quietly lowering the standard to protect the publishing calendar.
Editors still have responsibilities to accuracy and readers. Respecting a contributor does not mean publishing an unsupported claim because it appears in an interview. It means addressing the problem openly, checking what can be checked and avoiding a misleading impression.
Keep promises within what the organisation can control
It is kind to offer a route for concerns. It is unkind to promise powers the organisation does not possess.
A team can establish who handles requests to change or remove material from channels it controls. It can review future reuse. It cannot honestly promise to retrieve every screenshot, printed copy or independent repost once a story has circulated.
Explain that distinction before publication, in calm language. The purpose is not to frighten someone into silence. It is to make the decision less surprising later.
Be especially careful when circumstances could change. A detail that feels safe today may become uncomfortable after a move, a new job or a change in family relationships. Avoid collecting identifying details simply because they make the writing vivid.
For sensitive stories, or stories involving children, an ordinary communications checklist is not enough. Use the organisation’s relevant safeguarding procedures and qualified advice where needed. A signed form should never become a reason to ignore a foreseeable concern.
Sometimes the appropriate decision is to tell a story about the work without identifying a particular person. Sometimes it is to use a clearly labelled illustrative scenario. Sometimes it is not to publish. Restraint is an editorial choice, not a failure of imagination.
Make care part of the system
A small organisation does not need an elaborate new department to improve its storytelling. It does need clear responsibility.
For the next proposed story, name one person who will keep the agreement, review and publication details together. Record the intended uses and any restrictions in a place the publishing team can actually find. Keep sensitive information out of broadly shared planning documents.
Before release, compare the finished article, image, caption and social copy with those agreements. After release, make sure the contributor receives a usable copy or link if they want one. If reuse is proposed later, check the original scope instead of assuming that an old approval covers a new campaign.
Leaders should also ask what their teams are rewarded for. If the only visible measures are the number of stories published and the money raised, careful decisions not to publish can become invisible work.
Make room in an ordinary editorial review to discuss a declined invitation, an avoided disclosure or a sentence changed because it overstated the organisation’s contribution. These decisions can demonstrate judgement without exposing anyone’s private circumstances.
The goal is not to remove emotion from public storytelling. It is to make emotion answerable to truth and care.
A strong story may help readers understand a community. An ethical process should also leave the person who shared it with something valuable: clarity about what happened, a fair representation of what they chose to share, and the knowledge that their boundaries mattered.
Before your organisation asks for its next story, what would make it genuinely easy for someone to say, “Yes, but not that part,” or simply, “Not this time”?
