Editing for policy organizations and NGOs

Policy writing 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 makes the summary stand alone. Many readers won’t get past the first page, so we make sure that the summary works on its own and isn’t just 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. Send us the word limits, funder templates, mandated headings, and required terminology you’re working to, and we’ll work inside them.

Multi-author reports and house style

If your organization publishes to a standard, it helps to write that standard down so that it doesn’t depend on one person’s memory. 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 can open a group account and work with the same small team, which learns your house style and your audience and brings that knowledge to everything you send.

Confidentiality

We’re used to handling embargoed findings, pre-publication drafts, commercially sensitive evaluations, and unpublished data. We share your document only with the people working on it, we’re happy to sign an NDA, and we don’t name clients or quote from their work publicly.