How to commission a charity awareness film: A practical guide for charity communications teams

Commissioning a film is one of the most significant communications investments a charity can make. Done well, it tells your story in a way that no other medium can, moving audiences to care, act, donate or advocate on your behalf. Done poorly, it’s an expensive exercise in disappointment.
The difference between the two is rarely about budget. It’s almost always about process.  Specifically, about the decisions made before a camera is ever switched on.

This guide is for charity communications managers, fundraising leads and marketing teams who are approaching a film commission for the first time, or who have commissioned films before and want to get more from the process. It covers every stage from defining your objective through to signing off the final cut.

The most common mistake charities make when commissioning a film is starting with the format rather than the objective. “We need a film for our website” or “we want something for social media” are not objectives, they’re distribution decisions that have been made before the real question has been answered. The real question is: what do you want someone to feel, think or do after watching this film? One answer. Not three.

A film designed to move a general public audience to donate for the first time needs to be made differently from a film designed to deepen the commitment of existing supporters. A film designed to raise awareness of an overlooked issue needs to be made differently from a film designed to drive traffic to a fundraising page. The objective shapes everything – the story, the tone, the length, the format, the distribution strategy.

If your commissioning team can’t agree on a single primary objective before approaching a production company, that disagreement will surface at every subsequent stage of the production, often at the most expensive possible moment.

A good creative brief for a charity awareness film is neither too long nor too short. It gives a production company enough context to understand the challenge and enough creative freedom to solve it well.

What to include:

The objective: one clear sentence about what the film needs to achieve.
The audience: who you’re making it for, what they currently think and feel, and what you need to change.
The tone: not a list of adjectives (“warm, inspiring, authentic”) but a description of how you want someone to feel watching it. Moved? Challenged? Hopeful? Urgently motivated?
The story material available: who or what could be at the heart of this film. A beneficiary whose story illustrates the cause. A community affected by the issue. A moment of transformation. The richer your sense of what stories are available, the better.
The budget: not a range, but your actual budget. A production company that knows your budget can tell you honestly what’s achievable within it. One that doesn’t will present options that may be wildly outside your reach, wasting everyone’s time.
The timeline: when you need the film, and what’s driving that date. A trustee presentation, a campaign launch, a fundraising event. The timeline shapes how much pre-production time is available and whether multiple rounds of feedback are realistic.
The distribution plan: where the film will live and in what formats. Social cuts, a website version, an events cut, a broadcast version. This needs to be in the brief from day one, not requested as an afterthought after the main film is locked.

What to leave out:

References to films you like without explaining why you like them. “We want something like the John Lewis Christmas ad” tells a production company nothing useful unless you can articulate what specifically you respond to, the pacing, the emotional tone, the absence of voiceover, the use of music.

Prescriptive creative solutions. “We want to follow a beneficiary for a day” is a creative solution, not a brief. If you arrive at the brief stage with a fixed creative idea, you’re not commissioning a creative partner, you’re hiring an operator. The best films usually come from briefs that describe the problem clearly and leave the creative solution open.

For most charity awareness film commissions, approaching two to three production companies is the right number. More than three and the process becomes unwieldy, pitches take significant time and resource on both sides, and the marginal difference between a fourth and a fifth pitch is rarely worth the additional effort.

Some charities run formal tender processes with detailed specifications and scored evaluation criteria. These are appropriate for larger commissions or where procurement requirements demand them, but they can inhibit the kind of creative conversation that leads to the strongest briefs. If your procurement process allows it, a more conversational approach, sharing the brief, having a discussion, then requesting a creative response, tends to produce better outcomes.

The relationship between a charity and its production company works best when it’s genuinely collaborative. Not a client-supplier transaction, but a creative partnership in which both sides bring expertise that the other doesn’t have.

Your expertise is the cause, the audience, the story material and the strategic objectives. The production company’s expertise is storytelling, filmmaking craft and the practicalities of production. The best films come from briefs where each side respects and relies on the other’s expertise rather than trying to do both jobs at once.

In practice, this means: Being open to creative challenge. If a production company pushes back on an element of your brief, the story you’ve identified, the format you’ve specified, the length you’ve assumed, listen carefully before defending your position. They may be seeing something you can’t from inside the organisation.

Giving clear, consolidated feedback. The most damaging thing for a film in post-production is contradictory feedback from multiple stakeholders arriving at different times. Agree internally before feeding back to the production company, and consolidate all feedback into a single response at each stage.

Trusting the craft. If you’ve chosen the right production company, trust them to make creative decisions that serve the story. Micromanaging the edit, requesting specific shots, questioning music choices, asking for different words in the VoiceOver, is rarely productive and often counterproductive.

We’ve been making charity awareness films for twenty years, for organisations ranging from national household names to small specialist charities working in areas that most people have never heard of.

Our film for Age UK on the theme of loneliness was built to work across a national awareness campaign, digital, broadcast, events and supporter communications, and found its story in the smallest details of a day lived largely alone. Read the Age UK loneliness case study →

Our film for Dravet Syndrome UK was made to a modest budget for a cause most people don’t know exists — and won Bronze in the People’s Choice category at the Smiley Charity Film Awards 2026, recognised by the BFI and IMDb. Read the Dravet Syndrome UK case study →

Our RSPCA DRTV campaigns have run across broadcast and digital, raising significant funds by finding the balance between difficult content and genuine hope. Read the RSPCA Elton campaign case study →

In every case, the film worked because the brief was clear, the creative collaboration was genuine, and the story was trusted to do its job.

From initial brief to final delivery, a charity awareness film typically takes six to twelve weeks, though this varies considerably depending on the complexity of the production and the availability of contributors.

A rough breakdown:

Weeks 1-2: Brief development, production company selection, pitch process
Weeks 3-4: Pre-production – story development, contributor identification, location recce, shoot planning
Week 5: Shoot day or days
Weeks 6-9: Editing, review and feedback rounds
Weeks 10-12: Final cut, colour grade, sound mix, delivery in all required formats

Tighter timelines are possible, we’ve delivered films much quicker when a campaign date is fixed and the brief is clear. But rushed productions are rarely the best productions, and the pre-production stage in particular should not be compressed without good reason.

How do I find the right story for a charity awareness film?

The best stories are almost always already inside your organisation – beneficiaries whose experience captures the essence of what you do, staff whose commitment to the cause is genuinely inspiring, communities whose lives have been changed by your work. A good production company will help you find and develop those stories, but the raw material is usually closer than you think.

Do I need a script before approaching a production company?

No! What you need is a clear objective, a sense of the story material available, and an honest brief. The creative development of the script can be part of the production company’s job.

Can we use actors instead of real beneficiaries?

Yes, and for some subjects this is genuinely the right approach, particularly where real beneficiaries would face privacy concerns, reputational risk or emotional difficulty. Scripted, actor-led films can be extraordinarily effective when the writing and performance are strong. Our RSPCA DRTV used scripted storytelling to powerful effect.

How many rounds of feedback should we expect?

Most productions include two rounds of structured feedback, one on a rough cut and one on a fine cut, before a final approved version is delivered. Additional rounds can be built into the contract but add time and cost to the process.
What rights do we have over the finished film?

Standard practice for charity commissions is a full licence for the charity to use the film across all their own channels in perpetuity. Be clear about this in the contract, and be equally clear about what the production company retains the right to do with the film (showing it in their showreel, submitting it to festivals, using it in their own marketing).