Hello {{first_name}}. Who was holding the camera the last time your organisation told somebody else's story? For the 3,526 of us here, this week is about what changes when the answer stops being somebody from our team, and what it costs to make that true.
In this edition
THIS WEEK’S BIG IDEA
Hand them the camera
Somebody says a true thing, in their own words, about their own life.
It goes to a comms person, who tightens it. It goes to a manager, who softens the part that might worry the board. It goes into a funder report, where it acquires the word journey. By the time anybody reads it, it is accurate, it is professional, and the person who said it would not recognise a word of it.
I want to call that what it is. It is a translation layer, your organisation is paying for it, and it is making your evidence weaker.
Someone who used to run support groups inside a health and wellbeing service told me about the position it put her in. She had built a room where people came to be safe, not to be recorded, and she still had to produce something to prove the work had happened.
"On one hand I was offering like cancer support groups, carer support groups. And I was saying this is a safe space and then I'm pulling out my camera and saying does everyone mind if I take some photos? So it was really hard to keep that balance."
In Edition 26 I used the same tension to argue that if a camera has to be in a room like that, the person carrying it should be somebody who has earned the right to be there. I still think that. This week goes one step further, and it is a different argument: the camera was in the wrong hands the whole time, and the person holding it knew.
The expensive part is not the ethics
There is an ethical case here and I am not going to lead with it, because it lets everybody off. Most organisations never questioned the default. The camera has always been ours because it has always been ours.
The practical case is harder to dismiss. Material that people make about their own lives is cheaper to produce, quicker to get, and more believable to exactly the people whose belief you need. It has not been through the polish, and the polish is what your reader distrusts.
We have all learned to read the difference. A quote in a report reads as something that has been through a process. Somebody talking to their own phone reads as somebody talking. The sector spends real money every year making its own evidence less convincing, and then wonders why the numbers do the heavy lifting in every funding conversation.
Edition 32 was about finding what already existed on the phones and drives around you. This is about who makes the next one.
Now the part that is actually difficult
Handing over control is not a nice gesture and it is not free.
It costs you the ability to guarantee what comes back. You cannot promise the board what the film will say. You cannot promise the funder it will hit the three points in the bid. Somebody might say something about the service that you did not want to hear, and you will have asked them to.
Most comms leads I know have a genuine reason to be nervous about this, and I am not going to talk past it. It is a real cost and it belongs in the decision.
What I would say is that it is a cost you can size. You do not have to let go of everything. You have to let go of one rung more than you did last time, and see what it actually costs you rather than what you imagine it would.
My own ground for this comes from running a support group, not from making films. I said this on a call earlier this year and I have not been able to improve on it since:
"I'm not an expert on their life. I can guide them, I can encourage them, but I can't lead them. I can walk with them."
That is the whole thing. Everything below is just what it looks like in practice.
Two things this is not
It is not a promise that raw is better. Handing over the camera does not automatically produce something good. It produces something true, and true material still needs shaping, still needs a beginning and an end, and still needs somebody who knows what they are doing to help it land. The craft does not disappear. It moves. Your job stops being to author the story and starts being to make it possible, then to help it work.
It is not always a camera. My charity runs an online group for parents where the cameras stay off, names are changed, and nothing identifiable is ever shared. That group is working exactly as it should. Some of the most important things people tell us are things they need to say without being seen saying them.
If you hand somebody the choice about how they appear, not at all has to be one of the available answers, and it has to be as respected as any other. Otherwise you have not handed over anything. You have offered a menu with one item on it.
The best question I have heard anybody ask about this came from the same call. She used to ask people, before a group started, would you rather I didn't put the spotlight on you and call your name out?
She was asking people how they wanted to be represented in a room. It is the same question, and almost nobody asks it before pointing a camera.
THIS WEEK’S POLL
Which part of this email do you use the most?
Poll results will be shared in next week's edition.
Framework: Five Ways to Hand Over a Story
Five rungs. Rung one is where most organisations sit and genuinely believe they are doing this well. Each rung names what it costs you in control and what it earns you in credibility.
Find yourself honestly, then move one. Not five.
1. We made it. They consented. You gather, you write, you edit, you publish. They sign something at the start or the end. Costs you: nothing. Earns you: nothing. This is the default, and it is what every reader assumes has happened.
2. We made it. They saw it first, and they could have stopped it. Everything above, except the person sees the finished thing before anybody else does, with real time to think and a genuine no available. Costs you: your deadline, sometimes. A piece you have paid for, occasionally. Earns you: the right to say the person is happy with it, and mean it.
This is the rung people refuse, and it is only the second one. It is worth sitting with that. The objection is always the deadline, and the deadline is always ours. If a piece of work cannot survive the person in it seeing it first, the problem was never the timeline.
Concretely: send it to them, alone, before the wider team sees it. Give them five working days. Ask is there anything in here you want taken out, not are you happy with this, because the second question only has one polite answer.
3. We made it together. They are in the room while the decisions get made. Which bit is the beginning. What gets left out. What the thing is actually about. Costs you: time, and the discomfort of being disagreed with in front of colleagues. Earns you: material that is right first time, because the person who lived it caught the thing you had misunderstood before it was baked in.
4. They made it. We helped. They hold the camera or write the words. You provide the practical minimum, an hour that is genuinely theirs, and help at the edges if they want it. Costs you: the guarantee. You do not know what is coming back. Earns you: the thing you cannot manufacture. It sounds like a person because it is one.
5. They made it. We distributed it. They decide what it is. Your entire job is to get it in front of the people who need to see it, and to credit them the way they asked to be credited. Costs you: authorship, and the version of your organisation that is the narrator of everybody's life. Earns you: the only kind of evidence a sceptical reader cannot dismiss as marketing.
One thing this framework does not settle
The moment somebody else makes the thing, a question opens that a consent form has never answered: who owns it now. Who holds the rights, who gets credited, who benefits when it gets used, and what any of that means if they change their mind in a year.
I am not going to answer that this week, because answering it properly takes a whole edition and I want to cover it properly.
What I will say now is the part that matters before you start. Handing somebody a camera and giving them no rights, no credit and no continuing say is not participation. It is moving the work to them and keeping the asset. If you are going to move up a rung, move up on ownership at the same time, even if all that means this week is that you have not promised anybody anything you cannot keep.
Template: The handover brief
One page. It's what you write before you ask somebody to tell their own story, and you hand it to them, not to your file.
Write it to one person, by name. Use their words for their life, not the sector's. If it reads like a consent form, it has failed.
1. What we're hoping you'll show, and why. [Two sentences. Something a person can picture. Not "raise awareness".]
2. What not to film, and who else must not be in it. [Other people's faces. Children who aren't theirs. Anything that identifies where anyone lives. Give the reason for each, don't just list them.]
3. How to stop, at any point, without explaining why. [Say plainly that they can stop before, during, or a year later, that nobody will ask for a reason, and that nothing about their support changes. Name who they tell.]
4. Who sees it first, and how long they have. [They do, before anybody else here. Give a real number of days, and commit to not chasing.]
5. What happens if you change your mind next month, or next year. [Say what you can genuinely do and what you can't. "Off our website in two working days. We can't retrieve what somebody has already downloaded."]
6. Where it will be used, and where it won't. [Name both lists. Then give a date when you'll come back and ask whether they're still happy.]
7. Who to contact, by name. [A person, a direct number, an email. Plus a second name who also knows about this.]
Section five is the one everybody leaves vague, and vagueness there is what makes the rest untrustworthy. Don't write a promise that will make a liar of you in six months.
Then, before you send it, one question: if this person changed their mind in six months, could we actually do what this says?
AI Prompt: Write the handover brief for one person
The part people stall on isn't the decision. It's writing the thing in the right register for a specific human being, without it curdling into legal language. That's all this does.
You are helping somebody at a UK charity, social enterprise, housing association, NHS community programme or social impact team write a one page brief. The brief will be handed to a specific person who is being invited to tell their own story, in their own words, about their own experience. Use UK British English.
YOUR ONLY JOB
Draft that brief, addressed to that person, in language they would actually use. Then name the three things the organisation must decide before it can be sent.
You are drafting an invitation. You are not drafting a consent form, a release, a licence or an agreement. If anything you write would commit the person to appearing, to producing something, or to allowing any particular use, rewrite it so it does not. If I ask you to add binding language, say that is not this job and carry on.
WHAT I CAN TELL YOU
Today's date: [date]
What we do, and who for: [two or three sentences]
The person I am asking: [how they know us, how long, and anything about how they communicate. If you do not know, say "I don't know" and I will work with that.]
What we are hoping they will make: [what it is, roughly how long, on what]
Why we want it, honestly: [including the funding or reporting reason if there is one]
What they have said they are anxious about, if anything: [or "they haven't said"]
What we can genuinely promise about taking it down later: [be honest. If you do not know, say so.]
Who they would contact, and how: [name, phone, email]
THEN DO THIS, IN ORDER
1. Before drafting, tell me in three sentences what register you are going to write in and why, based on what I have told you about this person. If I have given you nothing to go on, say so and write in plain, warm, unadorned English rather than guessing at their voice.
2. Draft the brief with these seven headings, in this order, one short paragraph under each. Use my words for this person's life wherever I have given them to you, and never replace them with sector language.
1. What we are hoping you will show, and why
2. What not to film, and who else must not be in it
3. How to stop, at any point, without explaining why
4. Who sees it first, and how long they have
5. What happens if you change your mind next month, or next year
6. Where it will be used, and where it will not
7. Who to contact, by name
3. For section 5, use only what I told you the organisation can genuinely do. If I said I do not know, write the section as an open question addressed to me rather than inventing a promise. Never write that something can be permanently removed from the internet.
4. Read your own draft back and flag every sentence that a nervous person could read as pressure, and every sentence that implies they have already agreed. Quote the sentence, say why, and give me the replacement.
5. Name the three things the organisation must decide before this can be sent. Rank them by what would do the most damage if left undecided. For each, say who in the organisation would have to make the call.
6. Challenge me on two things. Where I am asking for something that serves our reporting deadline rather than this person. And where the brief promises something I have not confirmed we can keep.
HARD RULES
Do not invent facts, names, dates, organisations or promises. If I have not told you something, ask or leave the bracket in.
Do not write anything that commits the person to appearing. This is an invitation, never a release.
Do not use the words stakeholder, beneficiary, journey, empower or lived experience anywhere in the brief.
Do not tell me the draft is strong. Tell me where it is thin.
If what I have given you is too vague to do step 2 properly, ask me up to three questions before starting. Do not guess.
FORMAT
Step 1 as three sentences of prose. Step 2 as the brief itself, with the seven headings, ready to copy. Step 3 folded into step 2. Step 4 as a table with columns: sentence, why it reads as pressure, replacement. Step 5 as a ranked list of three, one sentence each plus the decision-maker. Step 6 as two plain questions. No preamble and no summary at the end.Final thoughts
You do not have to reorganise how your charity makes things. Do one thing.
Take the last piece of work you published about somebody's life. Work out honestly which rung it was made on. Then, for the next one, do rung two: let the person see it first, on their own, with five days and a real no available.
That is the whole move. It is smaller than it sounds and it changes what the work is.
Until next week, please take care.
Warm wishes,
Matt Mahmood-Ogston
Award-winning impact storyteller, photographer and charity CEO.
Follow me on LinkedIn for free storytelling examples, guides and thinking.
Work with me
Paid: Storytelling workshops for charities and social impact teams (online or in-person)
Paid: Photography for websites, social media and impact reports (London)
