Half a million people marched through London. Here's the storytelling moment most charities missed.
Last Saturday, half a million people marched through central London in the Together Alliance march. The largest anti-far-right demonstration in British history.
If your organisation works with refugees, asylum seekers, hate crime survivors, marginalised communities, or anyone affected by the rise of far-right hostility in this country, that march was your moment too.
And most organisations missed it.
They shared the BBC article. They reposted someone else's photograph. Some posted a solidarity statement. Then they went back to their content calendar on Monday.
I did something similar. I posted a photo essay from the march on LinkedIn. 380 impressions. Barely a ripple. Not because the photographs were weak or the topic did not matter. But because I showed what happened at the march without connecting it to what my audience needs from me.
That is the mistake.
Why this keeps happening
There is no shortage of moments like this. A policy announcement. A viral news story. A protest. A campaign that suddenly takes off. These moments create temporary windows where the public is paying attention to an issue your organisation works on every single day.
The problem is that most organisations have no system for connecting what just happened in the world to what they do every day.
They have a content calendar. They have scheduled posts. But they do not have a process for when the news hands them a moment they did not plan for.
So they default to one of three things. They share someone else's content. They post a statement that sounds like every other statement. Or they stay silent.
All three waste the opportunity.
What responsive storytelling actually looks like
The organisations that use public moments well do something different. They do not report on the moment. They connect it to their reality.
There is a difference between saying "we support the Together Alliance march" and saying "500,000 people marched against the far right on Saturday. Here is what that movement looks like in the community we serve on a Tuesday afternoon."
The first is solidarity. The second is a story.
The first tells people where you stand. The second tells people what you see. And the second is what builds trust, because it shows that your work is not theoretical. It is happening, right now, in a specific place, regardless of whether the cameras are there.
The connection your audience needs
Your readers, your funders, your supporters - they saw the headlines about the march. They felt something. And right now, they are looking for someone to tell them what this means at ground level.
That is your job. Not to comment on the news. But to be the bridge between a moment the whole country noticed and the work that happens quietly, every day, in your community.
The march will fade from the headlines by Friday. Your work will not. That is the story.
This is Social Impact Storytelling.
Want the practical tools for responsive storytelling?
This article is an extract from the Social Impact Storyteller, my weekly newsletter for charity leaders and social impact professionals.
Every Thursday, I send one storytelling idea and three ways to implement it:
One framework
One template
One AI prompt
This week's full edition includes:
The Moment Connection Method - a three-step framework for turning any public moment into content that builds trust
The Reactive Content Brief - a fill-in template for creating timely content within 48 hours of a relevant moment
The Moment Connector prompt - an AI prompt that identifies the strongest storytelling link between a public event and your organisation's daily work
Subscribe here to get the full toolkit: impactstoryteller.org
Matt Mahmood-Ogston, Award-winning impact storyteller, photographer and charity CEO Founder, Naz and Matt Foundation
