Text reads 'Empowering & Supporting Storytellers - Tools for NGOs & Advocates'.Two people with speech bubbles. In between them is a sticker with 3 people holding hands that reads 'Safe spaces for everyone'.

Empowering & Supporting Storytellers: Tools for NGOs & Advocates

By

Introduction

A guide collated by the Commons librarians for NGOs and storytellers, emphasising the importance of ethical storytelling practices. It provides resources and tools to:

  • hold and empower storytellers and create safer spaces for them
  • co-design and co-create stories collaboratively
  • establish principles and ethics in storytelling and
  • offer examples from organizations practicing ethical storytelling.

We welcome any more suggestions to add to this list.

Resources

PDF cover - Title reads 'Transformational Ethical Story Telling Principles'. Text under title reads 'Stories are powerful. So, how do we ensure Story Telling always centers the Story Holder throughout?'. At the bottom is an illustration of a group of people holding signs. On each sign is a word which collectively reads 'flipping the power together'.

Transformational Ethical Story Telling (TEST) Framework
Transformational Ethical Story Telling (T.E.S.T.) creates safer spaces for Story Holders, empowering them to create, curate and control their Stories, on their own terms. T.E.S.T. is an anti-oppressive framework which aims to flip the Story Telling balance of power, where each person’s rights and needs – regardless of their race, ethnicity, language, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, health, ability, economic status or background – must be respected. Resources by Our Race include the TEST Framework, Story Holder Guide and Story Caretaker Guide.

Stories are powerful. So how do we ensure Story Telling always centres the Story Holder throughout? Source

Screenshot of a worksheet with different questions and boxes to fill out. Text reads 'POWER & POSITIONALITY IN CAMPAIGNS www.forpurpose.au Sense check how power is being expressed within your campaign by looking at the relationship between storytelling and decision-making.' Questions read 'ower and Positionality in Advocacy Campaigns Worksheet (PDF) This simple process can be used to sense check how power is being expressed within your campaign by looking at the relationship between storytelling and decision-making. Whose stories need to be heard in this campaign? Do the people whose stories need to be heard have agency as storytellers? If you are not a storyteller, what is your role? Are you: Supporting and uplifting Collaborating and co-creating, OR are you taking up power and space? 1. Map ALL of the stakeholders that may be touched by the campaign and the social issue it aims to address. 2. Identify those who have lived experience of the issue and/or are directly impacted by the outcomes of the campaign. 3. Have people you have identified with lived experience (whose stories will be shared) been involved in shaping the campaign strategy and making decisions? If not, is it because there are barriers to participating in campaign decision-making? Is there a possibility that you are a barrier? What are the barriers to participation in the campaign - digital, social, physical, and financial? What can you do to remove the barriers? 4. Reflect on the way you might invite people to participate in the campaign using these guiding questions: Who decided who will be included? How will different people be invited to participate? How might the nature of the invitation affect their feelings of inclusion? 5. For each person or community make notes on how you will address access, decision-making ability, invitations, and recognition. !!! If sufficient power for decision-making doesn’t sit with people with lived/living experience/expertise how will you remedy this?Should you be involved in this campaign at all or should you distribute your space and resources as an ally?'

Storytelling with Community: Applying Co-design Principles in Collaborative Storytelling for Advocacy Campaigns, For Purpose
As campaigners and organisers, we know stories of lived experience are powerful, and we’re eager to involve the community in our storytelling. But how do we do this meaningfully and with care? This resource includes tips, tools and workshop presentation slides from a workshop session for digital storytellers and organisers working with affected communities.

Whose stories need to be heard in this campaign? Do the people whose stories need to be heard have agency as storytellers? Source


Self care for Storytellers or Your Story is Yours, Broke Project
This guide is designed to help you either create boundaries for your own needs as a storyteller or work with communities to tell their stories. The worksheet is divided into two parts, inspired by two different pieces of research. See pg. 2 for 10 Questions to take care of Storytellers.

As storytellers and practitioners, we have to approach the work of sharing stories with an ethic of care. – pg. 1


Who Tells the Story? A Guide to Empathetic Social Change Storytelling Where Nonprofit Organizations, Clients, & Communities are Partners in Shaping Narratives, Kate Marple (one will need to enter email address to download PDF)
“This guide is intended as a tool for nonprofit organizations. After examining the roles that sympathy and empathy play in social change storytelling, it suggests some practices nonprofit organizations can use to partner with clients and communities to tell their own stories. These strategies are not meant to be definitive or comprehensive; there are certainly limitations to my perspective. For years, I’ve been looking for resources to help me do this work better, and it’s the conversation I most want to have with people in communities and people who work in this field. My hope is merely that this guide sparks deeper conversations inside organizations and with each other about how we are telling stories for social good.” – p.3
See related article – Informed Consent & Storytelling: 8 Things to Make Sure You Talk About
It includes:

  • Sample Questions for a Consent Conversation
  • Sample Interview / Story Release


Ethical Storytelling Resources
Ethical Storytelling is a community of nonprofit practitioners & storytellers learning how to integrate a new standard of storytelling. Here are some useful resources:


Manawa Ora Tikanga for Lived Experienced Storytellers
This is a Tikanga tool for lived experience storytellers developed by Mind & Body Emerge Aotearoa and Mahitahi Trust with lived experience storytellers. This tool is an excellent model for co-creating a process for storytelling with community, and it offers some useful prompts for examining the purpose, intent and desired impacts of the storytelling.

Intersectional approaches to lived experience storytelling can effectively rework ideas of societal discrimination. This means our stories need to be ‘big-picture’ and show how we are connected to each other and to the environment and social arrangements. – pg. 10


The Dignified Storytelling Handbook, Dignified Storytelling
The Dignified Storytelling Handbook is a resource to help storytellers and organisations promote and employs torytelling practices that are grounded in a deep respect for human dignity. The Handbook provides suggestions of issues to consider and actionable steps for putting the Dignified Storytelling Principles into practice. It also offers points for The Handbook provides suggestions of issues to consider and actionable steps for putting the Dignified Storytelling Principles into practice.

Dignified Storytelling upholds human dignity, a quality that every person is born with. We all matter equally. – pg. 12

Examples from Organisations

My Story, My Dignity content guidelines, Freedom United: Let’s end modern slavery together
These guidelines set out practical steps we are taking at Freedom United to play our role in disrupting unhelpful narratives and provide a blueprint for other organizations to follow.

Ethical Storytelling on Gender based violence: A Guide by the Irish Consortium on Gender Based Violence
The aim of this guide is to help organisations talk about gender based violence (GBV) in a way that respects and protects those who have experienced GBV. The guide is primarily focused on the ethical challenges of engaging with a survivor of GBV who chooses to make her story public, via communications campaigns, fundraising campaigns, or programme reporting.

Storyteller Protection Policy, This is Aotearoa
This Protection Policy outlines our commitment to kaitiakitanga over the stories shared on our platform This is Aotearoa, managed by ATA Limited, and emphasises the rangatiratanga (sovereignty) of storytellers over their narratives.

Voice of Witness Ethical Storytelling Principles
The following ethical storytelling principles are informed by VOW’s 15+ years of experience conducting ethics-driven oral history and centering the voices of people impacted by—and fighting against—injustice. We are grateful for our community of partners, narrators,* editors, and advocates who helped shape these core tenets. While we approach storytelling through an oral history methodology (learn why), these principles are relevant to many forms of community-based storytelling. This framework is grounded in values of respect, dignity, empathy, transparency, collaboration, and equity.

Shifting the power: A resource hub for journalists and storytellers, On Our Radar
On Our Radar’s toolkits and guides have been developed from a decade of working with communities on the margins to share their stories. They have developed a set of tools, trainings and workshops to support those who would like to co-produce award-winning media and/or build community reporter networks.

Sharing your lived experience safely, Butterfly Foundation
Different pieces of advice from people about sharing your lived experience safely.

Sharing stories, Maternal Mental Health Alliance
Includes useful templates such as:

Listen to Podcasts

Explore Further

Share Resource

Share on LinkedIn

Topics:

Collection:

Tags:

Format:

Language:


  • Author:
  • Organisation: Commons Library
  • Location: Australia
  • Release Date: 2025

image Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND

Contact a Commons librarian if you would like to connect with the author

Topics