Editing for policy organizations and NGOs
Research reports, policy briefs, evaluations, and funding applications, edited for the people who have to act on them rather than the people who wrote them.
Policy writing has a harder job than most. It has to be rigorous enough for the specialists reviewing it and clear enough for the people who will act on it, and those are rarely the same reader.
We edit for the people who have to act on it, without losing the rigor the specialists expect.
What we work on
- Research reports and working papers
- Policy briefs and summaries for decision-makers
- Program evaluations and impact assessments
- Funding applications, bids, and donor reporting
- Consultation responses and submissions
- Annual reviews and board papers
- Guidance and toolkits
What editing does to a policy document
It separates evidence from recommendation. Where a document slides from what the data shows into what the organization thinks should happen, readers stop trusting both. We flag the joins and make the basis for each claim explicit.
It makes the summary stand alone. Most readers won’t get past the first page. It has to work on its own, and it can’t be the introduction with the tense changed.
It handles many authors. Where chapters were written by different people or passages have been lifted from earlier reports, we make the whole read as one organization and flag where two authors contradict each other.
It respects the constraints you’re writing under. Word limits, funder templates, mandated section headings, required terminology: send them and we’ll work inside them.
Multi-author reports and house style
If your organization publishes to a standard, that standard shouldn’t live only in one person’s head.
We’ll work to your existing style guide, or build one with you if you don’t have one yet. Organizations that publish throughout the year usually run a group account: the same small team and a house style we hold and apply to everything you send.
Where we stop
We edit the writing, not the argument, so we won’t strengthen a claim your evidence doesn’t support or soften a finding to suit an audience.
If the evidence doesn’t carry the document, we’ll say so while there’s still time to do something about it.
Confidentiality
Embargoed findings, pre-publication drafts, commercially sensitive evaluations, and unpublished data all come to us regularly. Your document is shared only with the editor working on it, and we’re happy to sign an NDA. We don’t name clients or quote from their work publicly.
Send us the report
Tell us who has to read it and what you need them to do. We’ll agree the scope with you before quoting.
Get a quote