If you spend a few minutes scrolling through social media, you will almost certainly find a charity campaign on your feed.
The story follows the same pattern. There is a problem or people in need. An organisation is responding, and they need your support to do even more. For a long time, this approach has helped charities and non-governmental organisations connect with supporters and raise vital funds. And it has worked — at least by the measures we have traditionally used to measure effectiveness.
But as the sector has begun to reflect more deeply on representation, dignity and power, we find ourselves asking a different question. What has this way of telling stories cost? What stereotypes have we perpetuated and who have we harmed? Increasingly, these conversations have focused on communications teams.
Communications professionals discuss consent, imagery, language and representation. We have developed guidelines and produced toolkits to help strengthen our capacity to recognise and tell better, more ethical stories. But as far as real organisational change goes, we have been asking the wrong people to solve the problem.
Ethical storytelling is often treated as a communications issue. I believe it is fundamentally a leadership issue.
Every campaign tells two stories
One is about the people whose lives an organisation exists to improve. The other is about the organisation itself.
The choices we make about whose voices are heard, which images are selected, how people are framed and what compromises are considered acceptable say something about our values. More than that, they reveal how we exercise power.
This is why storytelling belongs in conversations about leadership.
When a campaign is criticised for reinforcing stereotypes or exploiting vulnerability, attention often turns to the communications team. They produced the campaign, approved the images and wrote the copy.
I want to be precise here. Communications professionals are not passive. We frame briefs, propose concepts and make creative choices. But the culture in which those choices are made is not ours to set.
The approval chain for campaigns often extends well beyond communications. When an image or a story that degrades the dignity of a person or perpetuates stereotypes gets approved, the question worth asking is what conditions made that approval feel like the obvious decision.
Communications professionals rarely define those conditions. They work to organisational priorities, respond to fundraising expectations and operate within cultures that determine what success looks like.
If success is measured only by campaign performance, it is hardly surprising that teams continue to reach for approaches that have historically delivered results. Expecting communications teams to transform storytelling without changing those wider conditions asks them to solve a problem they did not create.
Leadership shapes the conditions
Leaders decide which risks an organisation is prepared to take. They decide whether protecting dignity is non-negotiable or something to be weighed against fundraising targets. They define success and they create the culture in which decisions are made.
How an organisation tells its stories is found in what its leaders reward, what they question and what they are prepared to say no to. It is found in whether a staff member who raises a concern about an image is listened to or sidelined. It is found in what happens when a more honest story feels like a harder sell, or when the work of reframing its storytelling is treated as unnecessary and unrewarding.
Most organisations already know what ethical storytelling looks like. The sector is not short of policies, principles or guidance. What is much rarer is the willingness to act on those principles when doing so carries a cost. When the less dramatic image may attract less attention. When a more balanced story feels less emotionally compelling. When changing course introduces uncertainty.
The evidence increasingly suggests that dignity-centred storytelling does not underperform. Donors who connect with a story that respects the person it depicts tend to stay.
And it is worth questioning the assumption built into that cost. The evidence increasingly suggests that dignity-centred storytelling does not underperform. Donors who connect with a story that respects the person it depicts tend to stay. The argument that ethical storytelling will radically affect the income of an organisation is one we should be prepared to examine thoroughly.
What leadership on this looks like
When I joined Chance for Childhood, one of the things that drew me to the organisation was its willingness to lead publicly on what many organisations were still discussing privately. Through the #OverExposed campaign, its leadership made a clear commitment to place children's rights, dignity and agency at the centre of its storytelling.
Within a year of launching the campaign, around 90% of the organisation's image library no longer met the ethical standard it had set for itself. They had archived images that were once considered acceptable because they no longer aligned with the organisation's values. That kind of change happens when leadership is prepared to look at what it has previously permitted and redefine what good looks like. It requires conviction and a willingness to take on the cost. That cost can include rebuilding an image library, changing long-established ways of working, challenging assumptions about what makes an effective fundraising campaign and investing in new skills across the organisation.
But the return on that courage extends far beyond reputation.
Three relationships that change
It changes an organisation's relationship with the communities it exists to serve. When people see themselves represented with dignity, nuance and agency, the story is no longer one of a passive recipient waiting to be helped. It becomes one of partnership. The need can still be named honestly, but it is understood alongside resilience, capability and the reality that lasting change is something communities help shape, not something done to them.
It also changes the relationship with supporters. Ethical storytelling invites people to engage with complexity rather than stereotypes. Instead of asking donors to respond to pity, it asks them to invest in justice, partnership and lasting change. That creates the conditions for a different kind of relationship, built on understanding and trust.
Finally, it changes the organisation itself. Most people join this sector because they want their work to reflect their values. When an organisation's storytelling aligns with those values, the gap between what it says and what it does begins to close. Staff are no longer asked to choose between doing what feels effective and doing what feels right. The culture itself rewards an ethical way of working.
None of these outcomes happen overnight, and none are guaranteed. But ethical storytelling is not simply about avoiding harm. It is about building stronger relationships with the people we serve, the people who support us and the people who work alongside us.
The questions that matter
I do not believe the future of ethical storytelling will be shaped primarily by better communications guidance, although that remains important. It will be shaped by leaders who are prepared to ask different questions when the campaign is on the table and the decision is being made.
The question is no longer, "Will this perform?" but "Does this represent people with dignity?" Not, "Will this help us raise more money?" but "Is this consistent with the values we claim to hold?"
Organisations do not accidentally tell unethical stories. They tell the stories their culture permits. And culture is always a leadership responsibility.