Charity communication policy

The rule: trustees answer for what the charity says

There is no statutory requirement for a charity to have a communication policy. The requirement comes from the trustees' duties. The Charity Commission's guidance on The essential trustee (CC3) asks trustees to act in the charity's best interests, manage its resources responsibly and make sure it is accountable, and what the charity says in public, to its supporters and about the people it serves is one of the quickest ways to meet or fail each of those.

Around that duty sit four pieces of guidance and law that each govern part of a charity's communications:

• Social media. The Commission's Charities and social media guidance expects a charity that uses social media to have a social media policy. Our guide to a social media policy for a charity covers it in full, and this guide does not repeat it.
• Campaigning and political activity. The Commission's CC9 sets what a charity may say about policy, law and elections.
• Fundraising. The Commission's CC20, updated on 3 February 2026, and the Fundraising Regulator's Code of Fundraising Practice govern how the charity asks for money.
• Electronic marketing and personal data. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) govern marketing emails and texts, and UK GDPR governs the personal data in every list the charity keeps.

A communication policy is the one document where those rules meet the charity's own decisions: who may speak, who signs off, which channels are used for what, and what is kept. For a small charity it can be two pages. Policy templates from bodies across the charity sector, such as NCVO, are a quick start, provided every heading is answered for your own charity. What matters is that it is the trustees' decision, written down, rather than the habit of whoever currently runs the newsletter.

What the policy should cover

A useful charity communication policy answers a short list of questions for each audience. Most charities need these parts, whatever the size of the organisation:

1. Purpose and principles. What the charity's communications are for, tied to its charitable purposes, and the standards every message meets: accurate, respectful of the people it describes, accessible, and consistent with the charity's values.
2. Who speaks for the charity. Named spokespeople, who handles media enquiries, and what trustees, staff and volunteers may say in their own name.
3. Approval and sign-off. Which communications need approval, by whom, and how quickly, with a faster route for urgent statements.
4. Campaigning. How the charity decides whether to speak on a public issue, and the rules for election periods.
5. Supporters and fundraising. How the charity contacts donors and supporters, the consent or soft opt-in it relies on, and how people opt out.
6. Beneficiaries. Consent for stories and images, and the safeguarding rules for any direct contact.
7. Internal communication. The channels used between staff, volunteers and trustees, what each may carry, and where records go.
8. When something goes wrong. Who leads communications in an incident, who tells the trustees, and who decides whether the Commission is told.
9. Records and review. What is kept, for how long, and when the policy is reviewed.

The sections below take the parts where charities most often go wrong, in the order a problem usually reaches them.

Who speaks for the charity, and campaigning

The spokesperson rule is the part of the policy people actually need on a bad day. Name the people who may speak to the media for the charity, usually the chair and the chief executive or their equivalent, and say that anyone else who receives a media enquiry takes the journalist's name, deadline and question and passes it on the same day. Say who may approve a statement when the named people are unavailable. And say plainly that a trustee or volunteer quoted as "from the charity" is speaking for it, whatever they intended.

Personal voices need a line too. Trustees, staff and volunteers are entitled to their own views in their own name. The policy should ask them not to present personal views as the charity's, to take particular care with anything about beneficiaries, colleagues, funders or a live complaint, and to route anything about the charity's position to the spokesperson.

The Commission's social media guidance also sets a test for engaging on emotive issues and for what a charity should not post or share, which works as well for a press release or a newsletter; our guide to a social media policy for a charity sets it out.

Campaigning is where the Commission's guidance is most specific. CC9 is clear that "campaigning and political activity can be legitimate and valuable activities for charities to undertake", and equally clear on two limits: "a charity must not give support or funding to a political party, nor to a candidate or politician", and "trustees must not allow the charity to be used as a vehicle for the expression of the political views of any individual trustee or staff member." The Commission also publishes separate guidance on charities, elections and referendums, which is the page to read before any election period.

The policy turns that into a decision rule: campaigning must further the charity's purposes, the trustees (or someone they have delegated to in writing) decide whether the charity takes a public position, and the decision, with the risks weighed, is recorded. A charity that can show why it spoke is in a far stronger position than one that can show only that it did.

Supporters, fundraising and the charitable soft opt-in

Supporter communications carry the most legal detail, and they changed this year. The general rule under PECR is that marketing by electronic mail to individuals, which includes emails and texts, needs their consent unless a soft opt-in applies. Fundraising appeals and promotion of the charity's work count as direct marketing for this purpose.

The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 added a soft opt-in for charitable purposes, in force from 5 February 2026, and the ICO updated its guidance on complying with the electronic mail marketing rules on 28 April 2026 to explain it. Its conditions, as the ICO states them:

• "Only charities can use the charitable purposes soft opt-in."
• "You must obtain the contact details directly from the person you want to send the direct marketing to."
• The person must have expressed an interest in, or offered or provided support for, the charity's charitable purposes.
• "You must ensure that the sole purpose of your direct marketing is to further your charitable purposes."
• "You must give people a simple way to opt out of your electronic mail marketing when you collect their contact details", and "the chance to opt out in every subsequent message that you send."
• It applies only to contact details obtained on or after 5 February 2026. Older lists still rely on the consent they were built on.

The policy should say which basis each supporter list relies on, where the evidence of it is kept (the wording shown at the point of collection as well as the answer), and who is responsible for honouring opt-outs across every channel, including the ones run by volunteers. All the Data (Use and Access) Act's data protection and PECR provisions are now in force, and the ICO has been updating its guidance to match, so check the date on any ICO page before relying on it.

Fundraising sits alongside. CC20 reminds trustees that "as trustees, you remain accountable for your charity's fundraising", and asks them to "register with the Fundraising Regulator and follow the Code of Fundraising Practice". A communication policy does not need to reproduce the Code; it needs to say who signs off fundraising appeals, and that they follow it.

Internal communication, beneficiaries and incidents

The internal part of the policy is the one most often left blank, because it feels informal. It is where the charity's decisions are actually discussed. The policy should list the channels used between staff, volunteers and trustees, and for each say what it may carry: logistics anywhere; anything about a named person, a decision, a complaint or a concern only on a channel the charity controls and can search. Our guide to a staff messaging policy sets out that table and the record rule in detail, and it applies to trustees as much as to staff.

Beneficiaries need their own rules. Stories, quotes and photographs of the people a charity serves need informed consent that says where they will appear and for how long, and a way to withdraw it; the consent record is kept with the image. Where the charity works with children or adults at risk, the safeguarding policy decides who may contact them directly and on which channel, and the communication policy points to it rather than creating a second rule.

Incidents test all of it at once. The Commission's guidance on reporting a serious incident covers events that result in or risk significant harm to beneficiaries, staff or volunteers, loss of money or assets, damage to property, or harm to the charity's work or reputation, and says "all trustees bear ultimate responsibility for ensuring their charity makes a report, and does so in a timely manner." The policy should say who leads communications in an incident, that the trustees are told before anything public is said, that a holding statement is approved by a named person, and that everything said, to whom and when, is logged. A charity that reports an incident to the Commission will be asked what it knew and when; its communications log is part of the answer.

The statement that was agreed in a group chat

Most communication policies describe the charity's voice as if it were produced in one place. In practice the decisions behind it are made in messages. A local journalist rings the chair's mobile on a Friday afternoon. The chair, the chief executive and one other trustee agree a two-line response in a thread on their personal phones, with a change of wording the treasurer was not happy with. The statement goes out by email; the thread that approved it, including the objection, stays on three phones.

The same happens every week in smaller ways. A supporter asks to be taken off every list in a direct message to a volunteer. A beneficiary withdraws consent for a photograph in a text to the project worker. A trustee questions whether a campaign post is within the charity's purposes, in the trustees' group, and is overruled by two thumbs-up. Each of those is part of the record the policy depends on: an opt-out the charity must honour, a consent it must act on, a decision the trustees took. None of them is anywhere the charity can search, and an end-to-end-encrypted consumer app is built so that it cannot be.

The honest fix is not a rule forbidding trustees and staff from messaging each other, which moves the conversation somewhere less visible. It is to give those conversations a channel the charity owns. ComplyChat provides one: a mobile number verified by SMS is an identity on it, so volunteers and trustees without a charity account can take part; everyone added is told the channel is on the record and can object or leave; and messages are recorded on the server as they are sent. On paid plans the lasting record files into the charity's own Microsoft 365 once its tenant is connected, under its own retention rules. It is not a press office, a supporter database or a consent manager, and it does not decide what the charity says; the policy and the people it names do. ComplyChat Free covers personal messaging, with one private group, direct messages, up to 25 staff and three calendar months of recent history, and no Microsoft 365 archive.

A question for the next trustees' meeting: take the last statement the charity made in public. Could the board show, from a record the charity holds, who approved it, what alternatives were discussed, and whether anyone objected?

Official guidance and your next step

The Charity Commission's guidance is the starting point: The essential trustee (CC3), Charities and social media, campaigning and political activity (CC9), charity fundraising (CC20) and reporting a serious incident. The ICO's guidance on direct marketing using electronic mail covers PECR and the charitable purposes soft opt-in, and NCVO publishes practical guidance and templates for members. Quotations here are from those pages as published on 25 September 2026.

This guide is a summary for charities in England and Wales, not legal advice. Scottish charities are regulated by OSCR and Northern Irish charities by the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, and a live dispute about a statement or a marketing complaint should be handled on advice.

Then do one thing: list every channel through which your charity spoke to anyone last month, public and private, and beside each write who is allowed to use it and where its record is kept. The blanks are the policy you have not yet written.