At a time when charities and not-for-profits are navigating immense challenges, from economic pressures to shifting audience expectations, the power of storytelling has never been more vital. Earlier this week, Medialab had the privilege of hosting a session led by Matthew and Caroline from LookUp, who unpacked how charities can harness storytelling across three key dimensions: the future story, the culture story, and the selling story. With guest speakers from Alzheimer’s Society, Youth Sport Trust, Work Style Revolution, Smartworks, NABS, Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), Macmillan Cancer Support and the SHM Foundation, alongside our Integration Director Nick Parker, the panels shared thoughtful and practical insights on how organisations can evolve and elevate their storytelling to create genuine impact.
1. Future Story: Making Vision Tangible
This panel explored how to bring an organisation’s vision to life in a way that feels real, relatable and achievable. Charities are often tackling complex, large-scale issues that can seem too big to solve. The panel highlighted the importance of evolving stories to remain resonant, while maintaining consistency and delivering a clear value exchange.
Charlotte Matier from Alzheimer’s Society spoke about the charity’s journey to refresh its core story. Moving from “a world without dementia” to “it will take a society to beat dementia” made their narrative more actionable, inclusive and rooted in community impact. Alison Oliver from Youth Sport Trust shared their approach to grounding vision in relatable milestones, such as their “Class of 2035” initiative, which humanises future outcomes. Alex Hirst from WorkStyle Revolution added that authenticity, consistency and adaptability are vital in building a narrative framework that inspires change.
This panel underlined the need to break down long-term goals into achievable steps, guided by audience insight and behavioural science.
2. Culture Story: Aligning Purpose and Profit
The second panel tackled the intersection of culture and commerce within charities, particularly how to unify fundraising and marketing efforts. Historically treated as separate, these functions must now integrate to drive both income and impact.
Nick Parker, Medialab’s Integration Director, reminded us that integration lives in the minds of audiences — the most important first step in any integration effort is for different teams to align around the shared target audience they collectively want to reach. Hemma Gooljar from Smartworks emphasised the need to challenge the notion that “money is a dirty word” in the charity sector, and instead see income generation as a shared responsibility. Lou Thompson from NABS offered a candid look at their commercialisation journey, noting that transparency, stakeholder engagement and internal change management were critical to their success.
The panel also discussed the importance of consistency in storytelling despite inevitable fragmentation, and that to allow for this by having a range of different narratives. Hemma summed this up nicely by saying “you have to have the broader book, and understand which chapters to read when”. To ensure consistency takes effort but is important. For example, NABS’ new articulation, ‘advancing mental wellness’, serves as their golden thread – a unifying concept that ensures all messaging ladders up to a cohesive vision.
3. Selling Story: Turning Connection into Action
The final panel focused on the selling story – how charities use narrative to cut through to drive income, change and future growth. Although “selling” can feel like a loaded term in this sector, panellists agreed that compelling storytelling is crucial for delivering for their respective causes.
Shaun Hill from Macmillan shared a powerful example of a partnership with Love Honey to address the taboo subject of sex after cancer. The campaign enabled staff to engage in long-overdue conversations in a respectful, impactful way and, by doing so, used stories to address an area that had previously been “shrouded in silence and stigma”. Alicia Robinson from CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) spoke about their “Missed Birthdays” campaign, which navigated the sensitive topic of suicide with dignity, while providing audiences with tools to take action. She spoke about how they “talk about suicide, but shout about life”.
Anna Kydd from the SHM Foundation highlighted the challenges faced by smaller organisations that lack time and funding to reflect on their storytelling. She shared the uplifting example of the Friendship Bench – a scalable initiative where trained grandmothers offer CBT-informed mental health support on public benches.
This panel stressed the importance of balancing negativity with hope, using real-world examples, and ensuring that every story offers a call to action.
Key Themes and Takeaways:
- Make Vision Achievable and Actionable: Break down ambitious goals into relatable, concrete steps rooted in audience understanding.
- Unify Internal Functions and Ownership: Fundraising and marketing must work together with shared responsibility for storytelling and income generation.
- Embed a Storytelling Culture: Everyone within an organisation should recognise their role as a storyteller, both internally and externally.
- Balance Realism and Hope: Use emotional storytelling frameworks like crisis → solution → impact to drive empathy and action while avoiding sensationalism.
- Scale with Purpose and Consistency: Leverage trusted partners and platforms to extend reach without losing narrative integrity or authenticity.
LookUp are an independent StoryTelling Consultancy that helps brands and organisations unlock growth by finding clarity in their stories – they have lots of great examples on their website and Substack for anyone interested in finding out more. At Medialab, we understand that effective storytelling begins with understanding your audience. By interrogating data, we identify what’s resonating, what needs to evolve, and how to deliver the right message to the right person at scale. Our work with Alzheimer’s Society on “A Week in Blackpool”, among other recent campaigns, demonstrates how creative strategy, audience insight and media performance can come together to create stories that both move people and deliver results. From helping charities craft their golden thread to amplifying their narratives across paid, owned and earned media, we believe in storytelling with purpose, scale, and authenticity.
