Welcome and good morning! I’m delighted to welcome you to our growing community of 2,591 charity leaders, fundraisers, and social impact professionals who are learning to write better stories. Stories that help secure funding and foster positive change in their communities.

I asked whether you create different versions of your stories for different audiences.

The votes split equally three ways. A third of you said yes, always. A third said sometimes, for major campaigns or funding bids. And a third said something else - I would love to know what that something else looks like in practice. Reply and tell me.

What strikes me about that split is the middle third. "Sometimes, for major campaigns or funding bids." That suggests audience adaptation is treated as a special occasion - reserved for high-stakes moments rather than built into how you approach every story. Edition 9 made the case for why it needs to be the latter. This edition asks a question that comes even before that.

Before you adapt a story for different audiences, you need to ask whether the story should exist at all.

Last Saturday, I stood on the pavement in Central London and watched the Million Women Rise march move through the streets.

I was there as a supporter and as a documentary photographer. I had my camera. I had access. I had a platform to share whatever I captured.

And yet some of the most important decisions I made that day were about what not to photograph.

The march was led by Black and Global Majority women calling for an end to violence and abuse against women and girls. That space belonged to them - not to me. My role was to witness, to document where it was appropriate to do so, and to amplify rather than interpret.

Every photograph I took involved a decision. Not just a technical one - exposure, framing, light - but an ethical one. Why am I raising my camera right now? What does this image do to the person in it? Is this mine to tell?

Those three questions are ones I have been applying to photography for years. But they apply equally to every piece of impact communication your organisation produces. The case study. The grant report story. The social media post. The annual review.

The question most organisations never ask is the most important one: who asked for this story to be told?

Not to illustrate this edition. But because each one represents a deliberate decision - about who to photograph, what I was trying to honour in the frame, and what I was choosing not to extract.

Three women leading the march from the front, playing djembe drums as they move through Regent Street. Behind them, the city continues - a double-decker bus, Georgian-style buildings, a police officer at the edge of the frame.

This was the first image I made. I chose it because it shows leadership, not victimhood. These women are not being documented as people who need help. They are leading thousands of women through the streets of Central London, setting the rhythm of the whole march. The camera's job here was simply to be honest about what was actually happening. Power. Agency. Movement.

When your organisation photographs the people you serve, ask yourself: does this image show them as they are, or as you need them to appear in order to make your funding case?

She is looking straight into the camera. Not performing for it. Not softening for it. Her expression is still and direct - the look of someone who has decided what they believe and does not need to explain it.

She saw me raise the camera and held my gaze. That is a gift a photographer does not take lightly. She chose to be in this photograph. That directness is the story - not her vulnerability, not her pain, not a narrative I have constructed around her. Just her presence, her conviction, and her decision to look back.

How many of the stories your organisation tells were equally chosen by the person at their centre?

"The Future Is Female." "Women Against the Far Right." "Together We Can End Male Violence Against Women." A fist in the air. An open mouth. Dozens of women in motion behind them.

I did not try to find a single face to carry the story of the whole march. That would have been a reduction. This image is deliberately collective - it refuses to flatten thousands of women into one spokesperson. The story here is not about an individual. It is about the scale and the shared intention of what happened that day.

When you tell your organisation's impact story, are you looking for the single neat narrative - because it is easier to tell - when the truth is actually messier, wider, and more powerful than that?

They are the ones told without asking first.

The infrastructure of impact communication creates relentless pressure to produce content. Grant reports need case studies. Websites need stories. Social media needs posts. Annual reviews need faces. And the path of least resistance is always the story that is already in front of you - the beneficiary who is willing to speak, the photograph taken at the last event, the quote gathered at the end of a session.

None of that is malicious. But convenience is not the same as consent. Availability is not the same as permission. And a story that exists because your communications calendar needed filling is a fundamentally different thing from a story that exists because a community wanted it told.

The Million Women Rise march was not a content opportunity. It was a political act, organised by women who had decided what they wanted to say and how they wanted to say it. My job as a documentarian was to understand that difference and work within it.

Your job as a communicator is the same.

Apply these before you raise a camera - or before you commission photography, brief a case study, or share anyone else's story. They work whether you are using a professional camera or a smartphone.

Question 1: Why am I raising my camera right now? Is it because this moment deserves to be documented, or because you have your phone out and something is happening? There is a difference between photographing because a moment has meaning and photographing because you can. Most people never pause long enough to notice which one they are doing.

Question 2: Would the person in this frame recognise themselves in it? Not "did they consent" - that is a separate and necessary conversation. This is simpler. If the person in your photograph saw it shared online tomorrow, would they feel their story had been treated with care? Or would they feel reduced - to a symbol, a statistic, a piece of evidence for someone else's argument?

Question 3: Is this mine to tell? You are present. You have a camera. That does not automatically make this your story. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is lower the camera, be in the moment, and find another way to be useful.

These questions apply equally to written stories, case studies, grant reports, and social posts. The medium changes. The discipline does not.

Five honest questions. Answer them before any story - photograph or written - leaves your hands. There are no right answers to aim for. There is only the honest one. If any of your answers make you pause, that pause is the point.

Use this prompt to review any existing piece of impact communication - a photograph caption, a case study, a social post, a grant report story, a section of your annual review.

How did you get on with using this AI prompt? I'd love to hear from you. Just hit reply if you have any questions.

Most charity teams lose their best stories before they ever get told. A conversation with a beneficiary. A moment from a site visit. A quote that came up in a trustee meeting. None of it captured, none of it usable.

This free Notion template gives you a simple system for capturing impact stories the moment they happen and tracking them through to publication.

Get the free template

Most of my best thinking happens with headphones on. These are the two playlists I have built and return to regularly - binaural beats and vocal-free tracks chosen to help you get into deep focus and stay there.

If this edition has made you think about a story your organisation is currently telling - or one you are about to tell - I would genuinely like to hear about it. Reply and tell me what came up.

The framework, the template, and the AI prompt above are practical. But the most useful thing you can do this week is sit with the question this edition is built around.

Who asked for this story to be told?

If you found this newsletter useful, please forward it to a colleague and invite them to subscribe at:
www.impactstoryteller.org

Until next week, sending you safe and peaceful energy

Matt Mahmood-Ogston
Award-winning impact storyteller, photographer and charity CEO.
Portfolio: ogston.com