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Community story consent review worksheet

A browser-only planning worksheet for nonprofits, schools, campuses, and community organizations to review intended uses, participant choice, story context, and potential harm before publication.

A participant-centered review before publication

Use Cairnwire’s ethical storytelling brief as a guide while your team names the specific story purpose and use, makes refusal and changing consent safe, invites the participant to review the proposed story, and checks whether voice, context, or risks could create harm. If an important concern is unresolved, pause and revisit the story.

Prompts to use

  • Describe each intended channel, audience, partner, and period of use in plain language.
  • Offer time and a consequence-free way to decline, pause, set boundaries, or change consent.
  • Show the participant the proposed story and related materials before publication.
  • Keep the person’s voice and context intact; consider misrepresentation, stigma, exposure, and other foreseeable harm.

Ethical planning aid, not legal advice

This worksheet supports an ethical planning conversation. It is not legal advice and does not determine whether a release, publication, or reuse complies with law. Confirm organization-specific and local obligations with qualified counsel and the people affected by the story.

Editable, browser-only worksheet

Review the story before it is shared

Work through the prompts with the people responsible for the story and, where appropriate, the participant and community partners. Blank responses are questions to resolve, not a score or a compliance result.

Your answers stay in this page’s in-memory state. Cairnwire does not collect, transmit, submit, or save them. Refreshing this page clears the responses.

1. Name the story and each intended use

Be specific enough that a participant can understand what is being proposed and decide what feels comfortable.

What should a reader understand or do, and why is this participant’s story needed for that purpose?

List each specific channel or format under consideration, such as the website, email, social media, print, advertising, video, or an event.

Name the people or groups expected to encounter the story. Include audiences reached by partners or paid promotion.

Describe the proposed use period, reuse plans, and any partner or vendor who may receive or publish the material.

List the words, quotes, images, voice, name, role, location, or other details that may identify or describe the participant.

2. Make participant choice real and ongoing

A request to participate should be voluntary, specific, and open to change. Participation must not affect access to services, education, support, or another benefit.

Who will ask, when and where will they ask, and how will the participant have time to consider or ask questions without pressure?

Explain how a participant can say no, pause, or choose separately about being named, quoted, photographed, recorded, or linked to a location.

Name a safe contact route, who will respond, what changes trigger a renewed conversation, and what steps the organization can take if permission changes.

Consider services, grades, support, access, relationships, recognition, and future opportunities. What will the team say and do to make the choice credible?

3. Invite review of the proposed story

Build participant review into the schedule before anything is published. Share the proposed story in the form and context in which audiences will encounter it.

Include the final words, edits, images, captions, translations, identifiers, placement, links, and call to action that will appear.

Give the participant a reasonable opportunity to review, ask questions, request changes, decline, or pause publication.

Describe how the team will correct inaccuracies, restore missing context, remove a detail, delay publication, or stop if a material concern remains.

4. Check voice, context, and possible harm

Review the whole presentation, not just the interview or quote. A headline, crop, caption, translation, or surrounding claim can change what a story says about someone.

Separate the participant’s own words from edits and organizational interpretation. Where can they correct wording or describe what matters to them?

What circumstances, strengths, relationships, structural factors, uncertainty, or limits prevent a misleading or oversimplified interpretation?

Could one experience be mistaken for everyone’s? Does the story reduce someone to hardship, a case study, a success symbol, or a fundraising device? Whose perspective is missing?

Consider privacy, unwanted identification or contact, stigma, retraumatization, retaliation, safety, sensitive locations, and wider distribution beyond the intended audience.

List unresolved questions, safeguards, approvals, or a reason to pause. Name who will check back with the participant and when.

Before publication: unresolved questions

Use these reminders to identify topics that still need attention. They do not create a pass/fail result or determine legal compliance.

This is an ethical planning aid, not legal advice or a determination of legal compliance. Confirm the obligations and choices relevant to your organization and the people represented in the story.

Guidance: Cairnwire’s completed ethical storytelling brief. Its practices are planning guidance, not legal standards or a compliance determination.

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