Choose Your Campaign Type: Story/Survey

A guide to help you pick the campaign type that fits your programme.

🎯 Who is this for?

This guide is for anyone setting up their first campaign in Folktale. You need to be signed in to create a campaign.

Overview

Folktale organises all data collection around campaigns. A campaign is how you ask questions, collect stories, or gather field data from your contributors.

There are two campaign types in Folktale: Story and Survey. Each one is built for a different kind of work. Choosing the right type from the start means your data is easier to analyse and your reports are stronger.

This article helps you decide which campaign type fits what you need to do.

Understand Each Campaign Type

With Story Campaign, you will be able to collect people's experiences in a video, audio, images, or text. While with Survey Campaign, you will be able to collect measurable data using numbers, ratings, and multiple choice. Here is what each campaign type does and when to use it.

🎙️ Story Campaign
Best for	Open-ended qualitative collection. Contributors share their experience in their own words via text, audio, or video. AI synthesises responses into themes.
Examples	Capturing community voices, documenting lived experience, gathering evidence for donor reports, and amplifying beneficiary perspectives.

📝 Survey Campaign
Best for	Structured questions where contributors respond directly. Supports multiple choice, rating scales, short text, and open-ended questions.
Examples	Beneficiary feedback surveys, programme evaluations, community needs assessments, and post-training reflections.

Match Your Programme to a Campaign Type

Use this table to help quickly confirm your choice.

My programme needs to...	Survey	Story
Collect structured feedback (ratings, multiple choice)	✓
Capture lived experience in people's own words		✓
Track quantitative indicators for MEL reporting	✓
Let contributors respond at their own time & pace	✓	✓
Collect data in the field with limited connectivity	✓	✓
Generate AI-synthesised themes from responses	✓	✓
Produce compliance-ready outputs for donors	✓	✓

Create Your Campaign

If you're interested to try making a campaign for Free, follow the steps in our article How to Create a Campaign. Then, once your campaign is created and you want to receive responses, follow our article How to Launch a Campaign.

💡 Tip: Not sure how to write good questions? Folktale's campaign assistant will help you create good questions that can be useful for your campaign.

What to Expect After Launching

Once your campaign has been launched and responses come in:

Folktale's AI can start analysing responses immediately.
Your campaign dashboard shows all the responses, results, and key findings in real time.
You can share a report directly from your campaign data.

🎉Congratulations! You're ready to start collecting.

Head to your Folktale account and create your first campaign.