For as long as we can remember, fundraisers, comms teams, and CEOs across the UK international development sector have been caught in a quiet and uncomfortable paradox.

On the one hand, organisations have committed to better and more authentic storytelling. Many also publicly acknowledge that decades of imagery featuring ‘helpless’ victims, white celebrities stepping in as heroes, and INGOs positioned as saviours are deeply flawed and rooted in colonial and paternalistic tropes that strip people of their dignity.

However, and this is where the rubber meets the road, when decolonised fundraising messaging is proposed, institutional panic sets in. Fuelled by the belief that dignity doesn’t deliver donations, the fear of reduced income (often the main source of unrestricted money), keeps organisations clinging to the old fundraising playbook. This undermines all shifting power statements.

This isn’t helped by today’s perfect storm of severe ODA cuts, shifting geopolitics, and declining donations. Against this backdrop, there’s a real risk that, faced with shrinking budgets which threaten organisational survival, INGOs turn inward. This could see a doubling down on the tried and tested approach of victim and simplified crisis framing, all in pursuit of a short-term Return on Investment to balance the books. AI-generated text and images also make it cheaper and easier to do this at pace.

But it doesn’t have to be this way and there’s now more evidence to show that better stories, emphasising dignity and solidarity, both resonate with the UK public and hold their own in fundraising returns.

  1. The “safety” of the old narratives was an illusion

For years, dominant fundraising practice believed simplified, pity-driven appeals were a necessary evil, required to keep the lights on and fund vital work. But they failed to look at the collateral damage.

By constantly reinforcing the idea that people in the Global Majority are passive, helpless, and perpetually reliant on Western benevolence, the sector helped to create conditions for UK public disengagement. These messages and images only help to fuel the toxic, populist narratives in the UK around refugees, asylum seekers, and foreign aid. When you convince the public for thirty years of a ‘developing world’ in need of ‘endless’ handouts, then you shouldn’t be surprised when politicians cut ODA budgets and the public shrugs its shoulders.

Read the full article about shifting storytelling in international development by Matt Jackson and Jennie Richmond at Alliance Magazine.