St Mungo’s: Interactive storytelling brings employment support to life

When people think of homelessness, they often imagine someone sleeping rough, but that’s only one part of the story. At St Mungo’s, the focus is not just on housing but on recovery: supporting people to rebuild their lives through services like mental health care, skills training and employment support.

When it came to designing a welcome email journey for new supporters, St Mungo’s wanted to go beyond a simple introduction. They wanted to show the depth of their services in a human, engaging way before asking for a donation. The goal was to help supporters connect emotionally with their work and understand the charity’s wider mission.

Choose-your-own-journey built on real experiences and frontline work

The team worked with digital mobilisation experts More Onion to create a new interactive storytelling action using Impact Stack 2.0. Supporters are invited to take part in ‘A Day in the Life of Desrie,’ following a staff member as she supports a client named Hana through the process of finding a job. Based on real experiences from the charity’s employment team, the tool gives users choices at key moments, like attending job fairs, preparing applications and navigating setbacks, until Hana secures a role that suits her.

The result is a simple, engaging way to show just how emotionally complex recovery from homelessness can be. It also highlights the incredible work done by staff like Desrie. While the storytelling action draws from real stories, it also acts as a narrative bridge in the supporter journey, helping new audiences see homelessness differently.

The tool is embedded in the final step of St Mungo’s new welcome email series, which is built in Mailchimp. Most supporters enter the series after taking a campaign action or making a donation. By placing the action toward the end of the journey, the team hopes to leave a lasting impression of what it means to support someone after homelessness and in rebuilding their life.

A scalable storytelling format for future supporter journeys

Internally, the team found the action easy to edit and manage in Impact Stack. It fits visually with their existing forms and campaign tools, creating a consistent supporter experience. And because it’s all built within Impact Stack, the storytelling action can be updated or reused for other services and journeys, whether that’s highlighting mental health support, housing advice or other recovery work.

Help find Hana a job: take up Desrie's challenge here

“It’s hard to explain how powerful this work is, but this tool shows it. And it celebrates our incredible colleagues like Desrie.”

- Patrick Beswick, Assistant Head of Public Engagement, St Mungo’s.