Having an online presence is a central way for charities to support and advocate for their beneficiaries, explain their work, and engage supporters and donors. But in a changing social media environment, we recognise the challenges for charities in navigating the online landscape successfully, including keeping their staff and volunteers protected online.
An increasingly fractious environment
Social media provides charities with the opportunity to raise awareness for their causes and engage with their beneficiaries more directly than ever before. Having a presence online can also, however, provide a space through which some people can meet charities with hostility.
The Commission recognises that online abuse, intimidation and misinformation directed towards causes, organisations, staff and volunteers, is a problem that many charities are grappling with whilst they seek to promote their work through social media.
While charities, like other organisations, should expect to be challenged and criticised on occasion, we increasingly see online commentary that goes beyond that and deliberately targets and undermines the legitimate work of charities.
The fast-paced nature of social media, the limits to self- and statutory regulation of platforms, and rapidly advancing technologies such as generative AI, all make this a really challenging environment, particularly for communicators on the front line.
These are often new challenges that trustees have not encountered before, even if their communications staff may have more understanding or experience handling such incidents.
We will play our part in supporting the sector to manage these risks, including by offering advice and guidance for charities as they navigate online spaces.
The Commission’s role
A vitally important part of our work is highlighting the immense positive impact that charities have. We use our own social media channels, as well as senior staff visits to charities and the release of sector-wide data from our online Register, for example, to help convey this message to the public. But we’re interested to hear from charity communicators about other ways we can help highlight the impact of the sector.
We continue to promote the message that the charities on the Charity Commission Register are a trusted starting point for donations and support, underpinned by a world leading regulatory system that helps ensure money is reaching its intended cause. We did this recently to support appeals for donations for the devastating earthquake in Myanmar, for example.
When it comes to campaigning online, we continue to be clear that the law supports the right of charities to speak up, where it is delivering on their charitable purposes.
Our role as a fair, balanced and independent regulator responsible for increasing public trust in charities also means that we need to rigorously assess concerns raised about charities’ use of social media, being clear where there is no breach of charity law, but stepping in with regulatory action when required.
For example, last year we published a General Election casework summary which highlighted examples of where charities got it either right or wrong in campaigning and offered some lessons learned, including for charities using social media as part of their campaigning activity.
As charities seek to navigate novel and difficult challenges in a fast-paced and changing online environment, we’re here to provide support. This comes both from our online guidance, as well as our dedicated call centre team.
Our advice
We recognise that an increasingly fractious online environment can present trustees with difficult decisions as they lead their organisations to further their purposes whilst being mindful of risks, including to staff and volunteers.
Trustees and communications teams should read our social media guidance carefully and refer to our general decision-making principles when considering these issues.
You should have a policy that sets out how staff and volunteers are expected to use social media and keep it under regular review. This is important to ensure that social media use always furthers a charity’s purpose and is in its best interests, that risks are managed, and that there are clear controls and processes in place, including for if things go wrong.
Charities can be involved in issues that provoke strong emotions and can use social media to engage on these emotive issues. It is important, however, that both communicators and trustees understand the risks involved in engaging on such topics and consider how to mitigate these risks.
We know that there may be novel challenges for charities to overcome in navigating a changing social media landscape. We do not expect charities to be perfect.
Broadly speaking where trustees can evidence that decisions have been made in the charity’s best interests, with reference to our guidance, and with the rationale behind them properly recorded, we will not come down hard on you.
Additionally, if staff or volunteers of a charity have been the subject of repeated abuse or intimidation online, or where a charity has been the subject of an intensive and sustained misinformation campaign, this may meet the threshold for the submission of a serious incident report to us.
Having such reports from the sector allows us to have a better understanding of the challenges charities, individually or collectively, are facing.
Social media will remain a powerful tool for charities, but in an ever-changing online environment there are risks that charities need to manage. We’re committed to playing an active role in supporting the sector to do so.
Image credit: Photo by hookle.app on Unsplash
