You have been running the same service for six years. You are good at it. The people who use it would say so, and some of them would say it on the record. You have a website nobody visits, a social account with a few hundred followers, and a growing sense that other charities are somehow better at being noticed than you are.
The usual next move is to write a press release. It is almost always the wrong one, and understanding why points at what actually works when there is no comms person and no money.
If visibility keeps coming up and never gets solved, our marketing and fundraising support starts with what your charity already has rather than a campaign you cannot staff.
Why your press release did not get printed
Local newsrooms have shrunk considerably. The reporters who remain are covering more ground with less time, and what gets published tends to be what arrives close to ready – a clear story, a named person willing to be quoted, and a usable photograph.
A release announcing that your charity exists and does good work does not clear that bar. It is not news. Neither is a service that has been running for six years, however good it is, because the thing that makes something publishable is that something has changed.
There is a harder truth underneath. Media relations is a specialist job. Charities that get consistent coverage usually have someone who has spent years building relationships with individual journalists, and no article is going to hand you that in an afternoon. For a charity of your size, the time spent chasing coverage that may never come is almost always better spent on channels where you control whether you appear at all.
That is not an argument for giving up on press. It is an argument for changing the order. Get the other things working first, and the press becomes easier, because by then you will have something to point at.
What actually counts as a story
Whether you are approaching a local paper, writing your own newsletter, or posting something, the test is the same. Something has to have changed, or be about to.
The things that qualify are more ordinary than most charities assume:
- a milestone that means something; the thousandth person through the door, twenty years since you started, a service reaching a new area
- a person who will talk, on the record, about what changed for them
- a number nobody else has, because you collected it; waiting times, demand, what you are turning away
- a local angle on something already in the news, where you can say what it means on the ground
- something ending, being cut, or at risk, which is uncomfortable and is usually the most publishable thing a small charity has
Most charities are sitting on several of these and describing none of them. The barrier is rarely a lack of material. It is that the work feels ordinary from the inside, and nobody has stopped to notice which parts of it would not be ordinary to somebody else.
One discipline worth borrowing. Editors want the change in the first sentence, not in the fourth paragraph after the background. If you cannot say what happened in one line, the story is not ready yet.
Where people already look for charities
The most useful shift is to stop thinking about broadcasting and start thinking about being findable. Somebody is already looking for a charity like yours – a donor deciding where to give, a volunteer with time, a family looking for the service you provide, a solicitor advising on a legacy. The question is whether they can find you.
Start with your entry on the Charity Commission register. It is a public page; it ranks well, and for many small charities it is the first thing a stranger sees. Most boards think of it as a filing obligation rather than a shop window, and leave the activities description as whatever was written at registration. It can be updated, and it should read like something a person would want to support rather than something drafted for a regulator.
Then the directories and local infrastructure. Your local Council for Voluntary Service will usually list member organisations, and many run their own service directories that people are directed to. Sector directories put you in front of people who are already looking for a charity rather than people scrolling past one.
Charity listing on Nonprofit Voice is free for registered UK charities, and its Find A Charity directory lets people search by cause and location. Nonprofit Voice is a service of Evolve Catalyst, so treat that as a recommendation from an interested party; it belongs on the list of places worth being, alongside your CVS and any cause-specific directory in your field, not instead of them. Its Media Hub is also worth reading for how other charities are telling their stories.
And claim your Google Business Profile if you have premises or a service address. It is free, it puts you on the map, and it is one of the few places where reviews from the people you help can sit publicly.
Being findable costs nothing and almost nobody does it properly.
A free listing on Nonprofit Voice takes minutes and puts your charity in front of people searching by cause and area. It is the least effort for the most return of anything in this article, and unlike a press release, whether you appear is entirely up to you.
The channels you already own and underuse
Everything above is about being found. This is about what people see when they arrive.
Your website is doing more work than you think and is usually the weakest link. If someone lands on it after finding you in a directory, they want three things quickly: what you do, who it is for, and how to help. Most small charity websites lead with a mission statement and bury all three. That is a structural problem rather than a design one, and our digital and tech support is built around fixing it.
Your trustees’ annual report is a public document that anyone can download from the register, and most charities write it as a compliance exercise. It is also, for a lot of funders, the first substantial thing they read about you. Writing it as something a person would read – what you set out to do, what happened, what you learned – costs nothing extra and does two jobs at once. The same applies to how you describe your public benefit.
A short newsletter beats an unread blog. A few hundred people who chose to hear from you are worth more than a website nobody visits, and it is a list you own rather than rent from a platform.
And your trustees have networks they are rarely asked to use. Not asking their contacts for money; asking them to share one thing, once, when it matters. Most boards have never been asked and would say yes.
When you cannot photograph the people you help
This stops more small charities from publishing than anything else, and it deserves a straight answer rather than being skipped.
If you work with children, or adults at risk, or anyone whose circumstances are sensitive, you often cannot photograph them; and where consent could be obtained, it may still be the wrong thing to ask for. That is a safeguarding judgement, and it should stay a safeguarding judgement. No amount of communications value outweighs it.
What you can do instead:
- photograph and film the work rather than the people – hands, equipment, the space, the making of the thing
- photograph and film staff and volunteers, who can consent freely and are part of the story
- use quotes without faces, with names changed where appropriate and the change made clear
- photograph and film the place, which is often more evocative than a posed group and carries no risk at all
Take photographs or film on a day when nothing is happening, so you have something to hand when something is. Charities that publish consistently are not luckier with photo or video opportunities. They took some pictures in June and still had them in November.
One practical note: where you do use images and videos, own them or make sure they are royalty-free. Publications will ask, and a story held up by an image rights question is a story that does not run.
Where to start
Look at where your charity currently appears, honestly. Your own website, your register entry, whichever directories you are already in, your social accounts. For most small charities, the list is shorter than they expect, and half of what is on it has not been updated in two years.
Fix the free and findable things first, because they compound quietly and nobody has to approve them. Then, when you have something that has genuinely changed, the press conversation is a different one; you will be a charity with a story rather than a charity asking for attention.
Visibility is usually a strategy problem wearing a marketing costume.
Charities that struggle to be seen often struggle to say who they are for, what makes them different, and what they want people to do. That is not solved by posting more. A free clarity call is a straightforward way to work out whether you have a visibility problem or a positioning one.
