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Funding
How to build a charity storytelling plan that wins funding
A content calendar tells you when to post. A storytelling plan tells you which stories will win funding. Five steps to build one, and who should own it.
Most charities have a content calendar. Hardly any have a storytelling plan.
You can tell which one you’ve got by what happens when a funding deadline lands. If everyone scrambles for a case study, the annual report has no usable story in it, or something big happens in the news and you share someone else’s article, you’ve got a calendar.
A content calendar tells you when to publish. A storytelling plan tells you why you’re telling each story, who it’s for and what it needs to achieve. One fills slots. The other wins funding.
This guide is for charity leaders who want the second one, and want to know who should own it.
Why most charity content planning fails
It isn’t your team’s fault. Most teams are stretched, and under pressure they fall into one of three habits:
Reactive storytelling. The deadline is close, so you grab whoever’s willing, rush consent and hope it’s good enough.
Convenience storytelling. You tell the stories of whoever answered the email first. Your story bank reflects availability, not strategy.
Calendar storytelling. The story exists because there’s a gap on Tuesday.
None of these are strategic. When time is short, every story you develop needs to earn its place.
Step 1: Decide the Emotional Destination first
Before you plan a single piece of content, answer one question:
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What should my audience feel at the end of this story, and what should they do because of that feeling?
I call this the Emotional Destination, and it’s the first step of The Social Impact Storytelling Framework.
If you want funding, the destination might be “moved by the human cost and confident change is possible”. If you want your board’s support, it might be “reassured the strategy is working”. Get this wrong and even beautiful stories drift. Get it right and everything else is easier to shape.
Ask for: one written Emotional Destination for each major audience, agreed by leadership, before anyone gathers a story.
Step 2: Audit the stories you already have
Most organisations have more material than they think. It’s in programme reports, feedback forms, thank-you emails, meeting notes and the memories of frontline staff.
Take your last annual report, your latest funding bid and your three best-performing posts. Ask:
Is there a story here, or just a description of activity?
Does it start with a person, or with the organisation?
Does it connect one person’s experience to the bigger picture?
Does it land at the Emotional Destination you just wrote down?
If you genuinely don’t have enough story leads, set up a simple capture system: a way for your frontline team to note moments of change as they happen, in two minutes, before the details fade. I built a free Story Capture Pipeline in Notion for exactly this.
Step 3: Triage before you develop
Developing a story properly takes hours: interview, write-up, consent, photography, sign-off. If your team captures ten leads a month and can develop two, how do you choose?
The question that decides it:
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If I could only develop three stories this quarter, would this be one of them?
I use a Story Triage Matrix. Score each lead from one to five on four things, weighted:
End Vision alignment (40%): Does it show movement towards the change we exist to create?
Timing (30%): Is there a deadline soon, or will the chance disappear?
Completeness (20%): Can we actually finish it, with consent and access?
Type needed (10%): Does it fill a gap in the stories we already have?
Multiply each score by its weight and add them up. Develop anything scoring 4.0 or more this week. Between 3.0 and 3.9, this month if there’s capacity. Below 3.0, archive it and look again next quarter.
A moving story that doesn’t connect to your End Vision shouldn’t be developed, however moving it is. That’s the hardest discipline in the whole plan.
Step 4: Leave room for the moments you can’t predict
The moments that matter most are rarely in the calendar. A policy announcement, a public inquiry, a march. For a few days the public pays attention to something your organisation works on every day, and most charities miss it.
I’ve done it myself. In March 2026 I posted a photo essay from the Together Alliance march in London. It got 580 impressions. Not because the photographs were weak, but because I showed what happened at the march without connecting it to anything my audience needed.
The fix is what I call the Moment Connection Method. Don’t report the moment. Connect it to your reality. “We support the march” is solidarity. “Here’s what that movement looks like in the community we serve on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon” is a story.
Ask for: 20% of storytelling capacity left unscheduled each quarter, so the team can respond within 48 hours when a moment lands.
Step 5: Map stories to the year
Only now do dates come in. Notice the order: purpose first, then the calendar.
For each quarter, name two or three moments where a well-told story could make a real difference: a funding deadline, the annual report, a board meeting, a campaign. Match your highest-scoring stories to them. Set the development deadline at least two weeks before the publishing date, so consent and sign-off aren’t rushed.
A simple rhythm:
Week 1 of each quarter: score new leads, name the quarter’s moments.
Week 2: assign the top two or three stories and start consent early.
Every Monday, 15 minutes: review last week’s leads, score them, check progress.
Throughout: keep the 20% free for the unexpected.
Who should own the plan
This is the part I feel most strongly about. Storytelling usually sits in comms, and then it becomes about output: how many posts, how many case studies.
When it sits in strategy, it becomes about impact: which stories prove the mission works, which ones build trust with funders, which ones make the case undeniable.
You don’t need a storytelling department. Most organisations don’t have one. You need one person who owns the plan and has the authority to say no to stories that don’t serve it.
A word of honesty about training, because I run it. A single session rarely changes how a team works. The moment training stops working is when someone says, “We had that four-hour session, so we’re sorted now.” Plans stick when people use them on real work and come back to talk about what happened. That’s why I build a follow-up into every workshop.
Six questions to ask before you sign off a storytelling plan
What is the Emotional Destination for each audience?
Which stories do we already have, and where are they?
How do frontline staff capture moments as they happen?
How are stories chosen for development, and by whom?
How much capacity is left for moments we can’t predict?
Which funding deadlines and reports is each story for?
Where to start this week
Take twenty minutes. Write your Emotional Destination for your most important audience. Then read three recent stories and ask whether they landed there. If they didn’t, you don’t need more stories. You need a plan.
If you’d like your team to build one together, built around your organisation, that’s what my social impact storytelling workshops are for.
Questions people ask
How often should we update a storytelling plan?
Review it every quarter, with a 15-minute check every Monday to score new story leads and track progress.
What’s the difference between a content calendar and a storytelling plan?
A calendar says when and where to publish. A plan says why each story is being told and what it needs to achieve, then maps stories to the moments where they’ll matter most.
How many stories should a small charity develop each quarter?
Two or three, well told and matched to specific funding moments, will usually do more than a dozen developed in a rush.
How do we persuade our board it’s worth the time?
Talk about funding. Show them the Story Triage Matrix as a way of deciding where limited time goes, and connect each planned story to a specific bid or report.
Matt Mahmood-Ogston is a London-based social impact storyteller and documentary photographer. He founded the Naz and Matt Foundation in 2014 and has led it for more than 12 years.
