The Impact Storytelling Collective opens 9 November. Founding members join free.
Leadership
What a fractional head of storytelling does for CSR and social impact teams
What a fractional head of storytelling does for CSR and social impact teams, what three days a month looks like, and when it beats hiring.
Matt Mahmood-Ogston, social impact storyteller, standing between concrete pillars at the Barbican, London. © Alice Horsely
Most CSR and social impact teams have plenty of impact to show. What they’re short of is time, and someone senior to decide which stories get told.
The work is happening. Your charity partners are doing remarkable things with your funding. Your employees are volunteering. Your data shows real change. But the stories that prove it arrive late, thin, or not at all. When they do arrive, they often come with a quiet worry attached: are we allowed to use this?
A fractional head of storytelling is a senior storyteller on your team for a few days a month. They decide which stories get told, gather them safely with your partners, and turn them into material your leadership, your board and your partners are proud to put their name to.
Why CSR teams struggle to tell their impact stories
In my experience, the same three gaps turn up again and again.
The stories belong to someone else. Most of your impact happens inside a charity partner. The people in the story are their beneficiaries, not your customers. Getting a story means asking a busy partner for time, access and consent, and doing it without damaging the relationship.
Nobody senior owns it. Brand and comms teams are stretched across everything. The CSR team knows the programmes but rarely has a storyteller. So impact stories fall between the two, and end up being written the week before the impact report is due.
The safe option is the dull option. When nobody is sure about consent, people fall back on what feels safe: the cheque handover, the logo on the T-shirt, the group photo. Those pictures prove you were there. They don’t show anything changed. I’ve written more about what happens when company purpose harms the community it means to help.
“
Those pictures prove you were there. They don’t show anything changed.
I’ve worked on both sides of these partnerships. I spent most of my career in user experience design, in digital agencies and on the corporate side for organisations including NatWest, RBS, Lloyds and Barclays, working out how people use, understand and respond to what they see on screen, including the stories. Before I started my charity, I was CEO of JobPage, an award-winning social tech startup, working for one of the Dragons from BBC’s Dragons’ Den. I’ve now run that charity for more than 12 years, so I know the partner’s side too: the consent, the safeguarding, the sign-off. Most of what goes wrong in CSR storytelling goes wrong at the handover point between company and charity.
What a fractional head of storytelling actually does
The role sits above content production. It’s about deciding, shaping and protecting the story, then making sure it gets used.
Owns the story pipeline. Agrees with you and your partners which stories matter this quarter, and why.
Runs consent and sign-off properly. Every person in every story agrees to where it goes and for how long, and your partners approve it before it’s published.
Turns your data into human proof. Takes the numbers in your impact or ESG report and finds the people inside them.
Captures the material. In my case that includes the photography, so you aren’t briefing a separate photographer on a sensitive shoot.
Prepares leadership. Gives your executives and board a clear, honest story they can tell in a speech, a report or a meeting with a partner.
Builds your team’s confidence. Shows your people how to spot and capture stories themselves, so the work doesn’t stop when I’m not in the room.
What three days a month looks like
Three days a month is enough to run a steady storytelling rhythm without needing a full-time hire. A typical month might look like this.
Day one: plan. Review the pipeline with your team. Check in with one or two charity partners. Agree which stories to develop and what each one is for.
Day two: capture. Spend time with a partner programme. Interviews, photography and consent conversations, done with the partner, not around them.
Day three: shape and sign off. Write, edit and select. Take the finished story back to the partner and the people in it for approval, then brief your comms team on where it should be used.
In between, there are short check-ins to keep things moving. You’re paying for judgement and outcomes, not hours at a desk.
When it beats hiring, and when it doesn’t
A fractional role makes sense when:
you need senior storytelling judgement but not a full-time person
most of your impact happens through charity or community partners
you have an impact report, ESG report or anniversary coming up
you’ve had a near miss on consent, or a partner who felt used
It probably isn’t the right fit if you need daily social media content, a press office, or large volumes of production. For that, an agency or an in-house content team will serve you better. A fractional storyteller works best alongside them, deciding what’s worth making.
What it costs
My fractional storytelling retainer starts at £5,000 a month plus VAT, for three days a month, with a three-month minimum. Photography on capture days is included.
Compare that with the full cost of a senior permanent hire once you add salary, employer costs and recruitment, or with an agency retainer that still needs someone senior to brief it.
Five questions to ask any fractional storyteller
Whoever you hire, ask these before you sign:
How do you get consent from people who are supported by our charity partners?
Who approves a story before it’s published, and can a partner say no?
Can you show me work where the partner and the people in it were proud of the result?
What will you need from my team each month?
What will we have at the end of three months that we don’t have now?
A good fractional storyteller will have clear answers to all five.
One thing to do this week
Pick one charity partner and ask them a simple question: what’s the story from our partnership that you’d most like the world to hear? Then ask what would make them comfortable sharing it.
Their answer will tell you more about the health of your storytelling than any content calendar.
Why work with me? My work has been covered by more than 200 media outlets, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and The Guardian. I’ve given more than 90 talks and workshops, and my largest campaign reached 54 million people.
Want to see how I think about storytelling? My newsletter, The Social Impact Storyteller, shares one practical storytelling idea every Thursday. My guide to what social impact storytelling is is a good place to start.
If you lead a CSR or social impact team and want a senior storyteller on your side, see how I work with CSR and social impact teams, or start a project.
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.
