Concerns around ethical storytelling in the storytelling boom strengthened around the time of the COVID pandemic, gaining interest from organizations that fund nonprofits — and are concerned with the practices of organizations they may be funding — and narratologists studying the use of narrative texts (stories) in business and society.

Publicly available resources generally fall into three categories:

• Practitioners who share their own organization’s policies and principles

• Development organizations and funders who fund research reports that survey practitioners and publish practices currently in use, and discuss concerns for consideration

• Academics who research the use of stories and offer ethical criticism of their use

Without a clear authority on the practice — such as a professional association — the current strategy for most organizations appears to be surveying others’ practices to inform the development of their own.