Shifting fundraising practices isn’t just about minimizing harm – it’s also about maximizing opportunities. When storytelling aligns with an organization’s purpose, it can foster a better understanding of systemic issues and create meaningful connections between donors and the communities they aim to support.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), one out of every 69 people on Earth is now displaced. That’s about 120 million people, or 1.5% of the global population, who’ve been uprooted from their homes because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations.
How non-profits choose to frame these crises in their fundraising materials has a massive influence on public perception and, ultimately, on broader policy responses. Whether it’s focusing solely on refugees’ vulnerabilities, using sensational imagery, or simplifying complex historical narratives, non-profit storytelling approaches have often caused harm while intending to serve.
Shifting our sector’s fundraising practices isn’t just about minimizing harm – it’s also about maximizing opportunities. When storytelling aligns with an organization’s purpose, it can deepen donor engagement, foster a better understanding of systemic issues, and create meaningful connections between donors and the communities they aim to support. This alignment allows fundraising to go beyond transactional giving, empowering donors to become advocates and partners in the organization’s mission.
Thankfully, the culture of non-profit communications is starting to shift.
We knew we needed to change the way we collect stories and let refugees lead the way.
Shairoze Walji, UNHCR Canada
Shairoze Walji is a senior donor acquisition manager at UNHCR Canada, which works in 135 countries to provide lifesaving assistance for people forced to flee conflict and persecution while ensuring that human rights are upheld by improving and monitoring refugee and asylum laws and policies.
Walji is also part of a staff-led working group that’s been promoting refugee perspectives in communications, marketing, and fundraising practices across the organization since 2021. “We knew we needed to change the way we collect stories and let refugees lead the way,” she explains. “When there are community-based projects that aren’t fundraising, centring local leadership naturally happens at UNHCR. So why weren’t we doing the same in fundraising?”
Thanks to the advocacy of Walji and her team, UNHCR Canada partnered with Evenings & Weekends Consulting to hear directly from refugees living in Canada about their needs and preferences for how their stories are documented. As a result, the organization recently launched its first-ever “Ethical Fundraising and Communications Guidelines” with these critical insights integrated.
Walji and the working group certainly aren’t alone in navigating the tricky territory of pushing for change within large institutions: countless organizations are seeking to challenge long-held norms to share power with communities.
Here are five lessons from UNHCR Canada’s experiences:
Prepare for pushback and to make the case
While the non-profit sector is experiencing a culture change, many still feel attached to old practices. The popularity of “donor-centric” fundraising, which sought to make donors feel like the heroes of their own narratives, unfairly placed refugees in a “recipient” role. Despite these problematic dynamics, advocates of the donor-centric model often remain resistant to change.
When Walji’s working group began pushing toward new, refugee-driven narratives, they encountered raised eyebrows from other offices abroad. “After a while, the Canadian team began to get a reputation,” she says. “People knew that we were going to say something in every meeting.” In response, the group formalized their strategy. They created their own draft guidelines for fundraising and storytelling staff to follow, cited examples from other organizations in their sector, and brought their work to senior leadership for feedback, support, and a budget to bring it all to life.
Validate your findings and challenge your assumptions
Walji and her group had created a fantastic resource in their draft guidelines, but they were aware they had a critical gap. “We knew we were missing the most important perspectives – those of the refugees we work with – but we weren’t sure about how to go about it truthfully,” she says.
To ensure that this engagement was done thoughtfully, and with a trauma-informed lens, UNHCR Canada approached Evenings & Weekends to facilitate focus groups with refugees in Canada. In turn, we leveraged our networks of refugee-serving organizations to connect with 254 individuals who filled out our intake form. Interviews were scheduled with refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jamaica, Rwanda, Mexico, Kosovo, Burundi, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and participants were given $250 in compensation for their time and expertise.
We knew we were missing the most important perspectives – those of the refugees we work with – but we weren’t sure about how to go about it truthfully.
Shairoze Walji
Across the board, participants were supportive of the working group’s guidelines, especially their goals of accurately describing the reality that many refugees are experiencing, maintaining human dignity, and helping campaign audiences directly connect with the circumstances of displaced people.
Participants said it was important for refugees to co-create their own stories, giving them opportunities to talk about what their life was before displacement and its ongoing impacts. They agreed with moving away from making audiences feel guilt, instead encouraging them to reflect on and recognize their privilege and capacity. They also wanted to see it continually communicated that refugees don’t have the choices or options that others may have access to.
When Walji and her team embarked upon this work, they had a few predictions of what they would hear from refugees – namely, that they would want their experiences depicted not with raw honesty, but instead through a more asset-based lens. “We may want to shy away from showing the reality of the conditions refugees and displaced people live in because it doesn’t look like the greatest portrayal of where someone lives,” Walji explains. “But what we heard from our community was ‘No, that’s an accurate picture of how we lived, so you shouldn’t shy away from showing actual reality.’ As long as it wasn’t done through a lens of pity, they wanted the reality to be shown. It was an important reframe for us.”
Be specific with your protocols
If you’re seeking to inspire behaviour change within an organization, it helps to be as specific as possible about your desired actions. After validating their guidelines with the focus groups, UNHCR Canada created an updated document grounded in four pillars:
- Imagery: When taking and sharing photos, staff should aim for accurate, unstaged portrayals and provide appropriate context for images, avoid an over-reliance on imagery of children, and ensure the active and informed consent of all people depicted.
- Language: Communications staff should use accurate terminology, avoid overstating or exaggerating the impact of donations, ensure that refugee voices are at the centre of communications and their words are highlighted, and remove “saviour” framing or excessively congratulatory language toward donors.
- Stewardship: When building relationships with donors, fundraising team members should reinforce the values of respect, accuracy, and dignity for refugees and displaced populations.
- Tangibility: Tangibility is a popular fundraising tactic in the charitable sector. It gives donors the impression that they are buying something specific for those in need, like a blanket or a first aid kit. However, these gifts are generally only symbolic in nature, with the funds supporting overall programming needs. Staff should ensure that all opportunities to donate are presented clearly and accurately.
Plan a sourcing strategy for storytelling
Following the focus groups, it was clear to UNHCR Canada that refugees needed to be engaged in the process earlier. However, when refugees come to Canada, it is challenging for communications and fundraising staff to connect. “When you’re in the field, there’s actually more access and opportunities to collaborate with, and receive consent from, the people we’re serving,” Walji notes. “That’s why we approached Evenings & Weekends to connect with these communities here in Canada.”
Validation among target communities is critical, but ideally, story subjects would be engaged from the very start. To create these opportunities for consent and co-creation, UNHCR Canada has launched a new project to support fully refugee-led storytelling. “It involves going into the field and staying there a little longer,” Walji explains. “They’re creating space for people to tell their own stories, not just approve them.”
The team has completed campaigns in Bangladesh and Kenya and plans to expand this work following a successful refugee-designed fundraising campaign in collaboration with Jess Crombie, an academic specializing in INGO (international non-governmental organization) communications. “Refugees ran a whole direct-mail campaign, they produced all the materials, and they were paid for this work and insights,” Walji says. Despite some staff members’ fears that the campaign would underperform compared to the classic, donor-centred approaches, Walji says that the refugees’ work was just as successful with most donors. The report from the first project launched in November in collaboration with the Resource Alliance.
Embrace a culture of iteration
Shifting storytelling practices within organizations, especially in the non-profit sector, requires intentional efforts to include the voices and perspectives of the communities being represented. Embarking on this work requires thoughtfulness and care, but Walji still encourages others exploring these topics to be bold in getting started. “What I’d love to tell other people is just to try,” she says. “There’s always room for improvement, whatever improvement, that you can do within your organization right now. If you feel like there’s something that needs to change, there’s probably a bunch of people on your team that are, like, ‘I feel that as well.’”
By aligning fundraising practices with ethical storytelling, UNHCR Canada demonstrates how non-profits can not only minimize harm but also inspire donors to engage more deeply with their mission – building a foundation for trust, understanding, and impact.
