How to Write a Charity Case Study: Template and Examples

Published 2026-10-02 · Last reviewed 2026-10-02

A good case study connects a person's experience with evidence of change. Use this practical template to tell a clear, respectful story without overstating your charity's contribution.

A funder asks for a case study. Your team has attendance records, helpful feedback and a few encouraging conversations, but turning them into a convincing story is harder than it looks. Which details matter? What can you claim? And how do you tell the story without making someone feel exposed?

A charity case study is a focused account of a person's experience, the support they received and the change that followed. It adds context to your outcome figures and helps readers understand how a service works in practice. This guide gives small UK charities, CICs and social enterprises a reusable structure, interview prompts and a clearly fictional worked example.

Start with the purpose, not the most dramatic story

Decide what the case study needs to explain before choosing a contributor. A grant report might need to show how a mentoring programme supported a particular outcome. A trustee report might need to explain why some people left a service early. A website story has a different audience and a wider public reach.

NCVO distinguishes evaluation case studies from marketing case studies: evaluation should illustrate learning, not just showcase your best results. A positive story can be valuable, but one exceptional experience should not be presented as typical. Where possible, include different perspectives, including people who experienced limited change or found something difficult.

Write a simple brief: the audience, the question the story should answer, the intended publication channels and the approximate length. Check the funder's requirements before drafting. This prevents collecting personal details you do not actually need.

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Agree permissions and protect the contributor's choices

Explain the request in plain language before interviewing or photographing someone. Say who will read the story, whether their name or image will appear, whether it may be shared online and how they can raise concerns. Agree separately what can be shared with a funder and what can be published publicly; those are not interchangeable uses.

Bond's guidance, drawing on Child.org's practice, stresses that refusing to take part must not affect someone's access to support. Give people time to decide, offer a genuine option to decline and avoid asking a trusted worker to pressure them into agreeing. Storytelling permission should not be assumed from attendance at a session or from a general service form.

Check your organisation's data protection and safeguarding procedures as well as publication permissions. A changed name does not necessarily anonymise a story: a location, photograph or distinctive event may still identify someone. For children, sensitive circumstances or concerns about decision-making capacity, involve the appropriate safeguarding or privacy lead before collecting or publishing material.

Keep a record of the agreed uses and a clear contact route for changing those permissions. Explain practical limits honestly: you can remove material from channels you control, but cannot guarantee retrieval of printed copies or material others have already downloaded or reposted.

Collect evidence before writing the narrative

Bring together the relevant records: a starting-point assessment, session dates, agreed goals, feedback, follow-up notes and any outcome measures. Distinguish what the participant reported from what a worker observed and what a record confirms. If an outcome has not been checked, do not write as though it has.

Attendance is evidence that someone used a service, not automatically evidence that their confidence, wellbeing or circumstances improved. Six mentoring sessions are an output. A participant describing a change in how they approach a job interview is a reported outcome. The difference matters when the story sits alongside a funding claim.

Ask about other influences, too. Family support, another service, a change in employment or the participant's own sustained effort may all contribute. Use proportionate language such as 'the sessions helped Alex practise' rather than 'our programme transformed Alex's life'.

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Use these participant interview questions

Ask open questions and let the contributor decide what they want to discuss. Avoid leading prompts such as 'How much better did our programme make your life?' Do not require someone to repeat a distressing experience just to make the introduction more compelling.

• What were you hoping to get from the support when you first joined?
• Which parts of the experience were useful, and which were less useful?
• Is there something you can do now that you found difficult before?
• Can you describe an example of that change in everyday life?
• What else helped, and what is still difficult?
• What would you want someone reading your story to understand?
• Are there details, words or images you do not want us to publish?

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A reusable charity case study template

Copy the structure below into your working document. The bracketed prompts are instructions, not claims to publish. Keep the evidence and permissions notes in your internal record rather than including private information in the finished story.

• Title: [Describe the specific experience or change in plain language. Avoid promises such as 'a complete transformation'.]
• Starting point and goal: [What did the person want help with? Include only background needed to understand that goal.]
• Support provided: [What did your team do, over what period, and how did the person take part? Check dates and activity counts.]
• Change and evidence: [What changed? State whether the evidence comes from self-report, observation, an assessment or another record.]
• Participant perspective: [Insert a verified, approved quotation if available, or clearly attributed paraphrase. Never invent a quote.]
• Contribution and context: [What part did the service play? What other support, circumstances or personal actions contributed?]
• Remaining challenges: [What has not changed, remains uncertain or needs follow-up?]
• Learning and next step: [What did the team learn, and what will happen next?]
• Internal checks, not for publication: [Evidence sources, agreed channels, naming and image choices, contributor review, staff approval and a review date.]

Worked example: a fictional digital skills case study

The example below is entirely fictional. Alex is an invented person, the six sessions are hypothetical and the outcomes are not JENY customer results. It demonstrates structure, not evidence you can reuse in a funding application.

Alex wanted to become more comfortable using online services but often asked a relative to help with basic tasks. At the start of a community digital skills course, Alex identified sending an email attachment and finding reliable information online as personal goals.

Over six weekly sessions, a volunteer supported Alex to practise those tasks on a tablet. The fictional session records show regular attendance and repeated practice. At the final check-in, Alex reported being able to send an attachment without asking the relative for help. A worker also observed Alex complete that task during the session.

This suggests progress towards one agreed digital skills goal. It does not show that Alex could manage every online task independently. Practice at home with the relative also contributed, and Alex still wanted support with unfamiliar forms.

The team's next step would be to offer follow-up practice and check whether the skill was maintained. The learning is specific: repeated practice on a personally relevant task may be useful, while wider digital confidence needs separate evidence.

Let the participant check how they are represented

Share an accessible version of the draft before publication. Ask whether it is accurate, whether it sounds like their experience and whether anything should be removed. Offer a conversation or read-through if a written document is not accessible. A hurried approval request immediately before a deadline is not a good substitute for meaningful review.

Check quotations against your notes or recording and the agreed use. Light editing for readability must not change meaning. Do not turn a staff interpretation into a participant quotation, join different people's words into one quote or use an AI-generated sentence as something a person said.

Keep the person's agency visible. Describe their decisions, effort and priorities, not only what your organisation did for them. Avoid unnecessary descriptions of hardship and do not imply that a staged or generated header photograph shows the actual contributor.

Five mistakes that weaken charity case studies

• Treating a success story as a programme-wide finding. Add relevant wider outcome evidence and make clear what one account can and cannot tell you.
• Confusing participation with change. Explain the outcome separately from the number of sessions attended.
• Claiming sole responsibility. Acknowledge other services, relationships and the participant's own actions where relevant.
• Reusing a story outside its agreed channels. Check the permissions before moving a funder-only account onto a public website.
• Keeping an old story in circulation without checking it. Review whether the details, permissions and portrayal still fit the intended use.

A final checklist before you share the story

Read the draft alongside its evidence and publication record. Ask a colleague who was not involved in delivery to check whether the claims are clear and justified. If they cannot tell what changed, how you know or whose perspective is being described, revise it.

• The story answers a specific question for its intended audience.
• Dates, activity counts and outcome statements match the underlying records.
• The contributor's words are accurate and their representation has been reviewed.
• Names, images and identifying details match the agreed publication choices.
• Continuing challenges, other influences and evidence limitations are not hidden.
• The final version, agreed uses and next review date are stored where authorised colleagues can find them.

Make the next case study easier to prepare

The most useful improvement is often a better routine, not a better writing trick. Record relevant goals, feedback and observations during delivery so that reporting does not depend on someone's memory months later. Keep the working evidence restricted, and share only the reviewed public version with the intended audience.

JENY brings contacts, activities, feedback and project evidence into one workspace, helping teams organise the information they need for reporting. A clear record can make drafting easier; it does not replace participant choice, evidence checking or professional judgement. Start with one properly reviewed case study and use what you learn to improve the next one.

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