Hello {{first_name}}. When you tell your charity's story, or the story about your social impact programme, how do you decide what to leave out?

Most of us never really think about it. We include everything we can remember and hope some of it lands.

This week, for the 3,433 of us here, it is about the opposite discipline… choosing the few details that do the work, and cutting the rest.

Last week, after the edition awareness days, I asked how your organisation shows up for a community or cause it backs, the kind tied to an awareness day or month rather than your own mission. Most of you said up front that the support shows up during the awareness moment and then goes quiet. Only a few described steady, year-round work, and one of you admitted you are not sure your support would survive being audited month by month.

The takeaway is uncomfortable but useful. The awareness-month push is the norm, which means the quiet-months work is exactly where you stand out.

So here is your action this week. Block thirty minutes and plan one visible thing you will do for that community in a month when nobody expects it. One date, one action. That single off-peak action can help build more trust than any logo ever will.

For years, when I was handed a microphone, I used all of it.

If I were given ten minutes, I would speak for ten minutes. If I were given 50 minutes, I would speak for 50. I told our story the way it lived in my head. Everything, in order, all of it true, all of it important to me. Naz, the loss, the foundation, the campaign, the calls we started to get. I did not know which details mattered and which did not, so I kept them all.

I had no emotional destination in mind. I was not steering the room towards a single feeling, or a single thing I wanted people to do… other than to “act” and share some of the immense pain I was trying to process. I was just talking, filling the time I had been given, and then watching.

Because watching was all I could do. Afterwards I would study the room. Did anyone come up to me at the end? Did someone reach out later asking for support? Did a new donor appear? What was the public reaction when the story was told out loud? That was my only feedback loop, the response, after the fact.

Someone would ask me one question, and I would answer with the whole thing. Not the answer they needed. The answer I wanted to give.

What I did not understand then is the thing this whole newsletter edition is about. The same story has many versions, and the skill is knowing which version a moment needs. I did not know how to tell a shorter one to a funder and a fuller one to a room of supporters. And I did not understand the power of a pause. Of stopping, and letting people catch their breath, reflect, think, feel something, before I carried on. I filled every silence, when the silence was where the work happened.

Over time, I refined it. Slowly. Talk by talk. And the refining was almost always subtraction, not addition.

Here is what I learned, and what most storytelling advice skips. Your problem is almost never too few details. It is too many.

Every detail you add asks the reader to hold one more thing. Add enough, and they hold none of them. The extra name, the second date, the other anecdote, the bit of context you are sure they need. Each one divides the attention you have, and attention does not divide well.

The most moving story is not the fullest. It is the most chosen.

So the real question, every time, is not "what can I include?" It is "what earns its place?" And a detail earns its place by doing a job. The strongest details do more than one job at once.

There are four jobs a detail can do. It can speak to something your audience values. It can move the story forward, by showing the problem, the change, or the proof. It can create a feeling. Or it can drive the specific action you want. Keep the details that do at least three of those four. A detail that does only one is decoration, however much you love it. Cut it.

If I could go back to that first room, I would not give them more. I would give them less, chosen well. And then I would stop talking, and let it land.

Run every story detail through these four questions. Keep only the details that earn a "yes" to at least three.

1. Does it speak to what my audience values? Name three things this specific audience cares about (dignity, evidence, value for money, community). A detail that touches one of them earns its keep.

2. Does it move the story forward? Does it show the problem, reveal the change, or prove the outcome? If it does not advance the narrative, it is slowing it.

3. Does it create a feeling? The precise, human moments - a line of dialogue, one sensory image - that make a reader feel something rather than just understand it.

4. Does it drive the action I want? Does it bring the reader closer to the one thing you are asking of them, or clarify what is at stake if they do nothing?

The rule: three of four, or it goes. Loving a detail is not one of the four jobs.

Use this to help you shape any story before you publish or present it.

If you enjoyed reading this newsletter and found it useful, I would really appreciate you forwarding this to a colleague or friend and asking them to subscribe (free): www.impactstoryteller.org

Until next Thursday, sending peace and gratitude for the good work you are doing to make the world a better place.

Warm regards,

Matt Mahmood-Ogston
Award-winning impact storyteller, photographer and charity CEO.
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