The Charity Commission of England and Wales put out a press release, “Regulator issues Official Warning to charity over video containing distressing content: UK Friends of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers issued with an Official Warning over social media post.”
The video in question is no longer available, so it is not easy to determine whether the contents were so “distressing” to warrant such a warning, but there are lots of things for charities to keep in mind.
The Charity Commission noted that:
The regulator has found the trustees breached their legal duties and are responsible for misconduct and / or mismanagement over failing to have any policies or procedures in place around the charity’s website and social media platforms. They had outsourced all control of their website to a third party – a former executive director of the charity.
In allowing content to be posted without proper review or due diligence, the trustees failed to act in the charity’s best interests, or manage its resources responsibly.
Key takeaways in the view of the Charity Commission:
- If your charity uses social media, the charity needs a written social media policy.
- If you don’t have a written social media policy or don’t want to have a social media policy, that is fine, but your charity should not be using social media.
- The failure to have a social media policy, whether there is any problematic content or not, is a breach of the trustees’ duties to the charity.
With social media being so important and the ramifications so dire to a charity, it makes sense that charities have a social media policy. Some charities are expending huge resources, whether volunteer or professional, on social media. It is for some charities the main method of communication and an important fundraising tool. With its growing importance, it means it is even more important that charities take it seriously and have a social media policy.
In my view, the social media policy itself is important, but may not even be the most important matter when it comes to appropriate social media use. Other factors, such as whether there are appropriate controls and education, etc., may be just as important. That being said, if you don’t have a social media policy in place, you also probably don’t have adequate controls over social media, and perhaps it is unlikely that there is adequate education of those involved with social media to understand the concerns of the trustees/directors of the charity.
It is also not enough to just have a social media policy, other controls and education for the future. You also need to consider whether the social media and websites of the charity contain material that could be problematic. In the case of this UK charity, the video was apparently a number of years old.