Find the stories worth telling
Your organisation is already full of them.
I help nonprofit teams uncover fresh, specific story ideas from the work they’re already doing — so you can move beyond familiar messaging and find the angles, moments and human details people actually remember.
Your cause may be familiar. Your treatment doesn’t have to be.
Nonprofits often tell me some version of:
“We’ve already featured a beneficiary.”
“We’ve already covered this programme.”
“We’ve already told that story.”
Usually, that doesn’t mean the subject is exhausted. It means one version of the story is exhausted.
A familiar cause can still feel fresh when you change the angle, sharpen the human detail or find a smaller way into the bigger story.
That’s the work I help teams do.
Three ways to find a better story
Change the angle
Look beyond the expected version. What are people used to seeing? What is happening just outside that frame?
Sharpen the focus
Find the phrase, moment or human detail that makes the story feel lived rather than polished.
Change the scale
Stop trying to tell the whole story at once. One small moment can carry something much bigger.
You don’t need a new cause. You need a new way into the story.
Try it with your own stories
Download the free Find a Better Story worksheet
I created this practical worksheet to help nonprofit teams uncover new story ideas from work they already know inside out.
Use it with one campaign, programme, cause or communications challenge to find fresher angles, more specific human detail and smaller entrances into the bigger story.
Download the worksheetNo 47-page ebook. Just practical exercises you can actually use.
Want help finding the stories?
Sometimes the hardest part isn’t writing.
It’s knowing what is worth writing about.
I work with nonprofit teams at that earlier stage — before the campaign, before the copy, before everyone disappears off to make the thing.
Together, we look at the work you’re already doing and find the raw material with the strongest creative potential.
A campaign you’re struggling to make feel fresh
A programme that is difficult to communicate
A cause you talk about repeatedly
Case studies or interviews you haven’t made enough of
A wider bank of stories your team could develop
The exact format depends on what you need.
Find the idea first. Create the content second.
What could we uncover?
Fresh angles
New ways into subjects your organisation talks about repeatedly.
Human detail
The moments, language and observations that make stories feel real.
Story entrances
Smaller ideas that can carry much bigger meaning.
And, importantly, a clearer sense of which ideas are actually worth developing.
Why me?
I started out training as a screenwriter, then spent most of the last 20 years working in sales and marketing.
Those two worlds have more in common than they first appear. Both depend on attention. Both depend on making somebody care enough to keep going.
And in both, the most valuable part often happens before the writing begins: finding the idea, angle or detail that makes the story worth telling.
That’s the part of the work I love most.
Tell me what you’re working on
If you have a campaign, programme, cause or communications challenge you’d like help thinking through, tell me a little about it.
I’ll come back to you personally and we can see whether working together makes sense.
