Charities monthly round-up – October 2023

Social media guidance

On 18 September 2023, the Charity Commission published guidance for the use of social media in the charity sector. The first of its kind, the guidance was published following a consultation launched in January 2023. Although it notes the important role social media plays in raising awareness and encouraging engagement with charitable causes, the guidance recognises that certain risks are also introduced by social media which must be acknowledged and addressed by charities. In particular, the guidance notes the risk of reputational damage if inappropriate or harmful content is posted, and that there can be a blurring of the lines between personal and professional lives where staff members or trustees have a social media presence.

The Commission has urged all charities using social media to develop a social media policy and has provided a helpful checklist which can be used to inform this policy.

For more information please see the recent blog post from our own Natalie Barbosa.

Charity Commission compliance case regarding a social media post

The Charity Commission has confirmed that it has opened a regulatory compliance case in relation to a controversial social media post made by RSPB. The post in question, which called Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove and Therese Coffey ‘liars’, attempted to draw attention to the Government’s approach to water pollution restrictions. The post immediately ruffled feathers within the sector with some critics calling into question whether the charity had failed to maintain their party-political impartiality.

Perhaps a timely example of the types of risks associated with social media presence mentioned above, this matter serves as an important reminder to charities of the discourse and consequences which can arise from controversial campaigns. Charities should satisfy themselves that they have carefully considered their advertisement campaigns and social media posts in line with the Charity Commission’s guidance on political activity (also known as guidance CC09), and their own social media policies.

NPC findings on what different social groups prioritise for action

New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) has published the findings from their research on which charitable purposes different social groups prioritise for action, specifically in relation to environmental crises.

The findings are aimed at assisting charities with their engagement with different sectors of the public, highlighting where their priorities lie and how they can be empowered to engage in decision-making and action on some of the key topics in the sector.

Some of the key takeaways from the findings include that disabled people and people from ethnic minority communities do not feel that their voices are heard by policymakers. Across the different social groups, participants said environmental crises were already impacting their lives, and that they wanted charities to do more work on helping people through those issues. They have published a number of briefings detailing their findings.

Charity Commission trustee quiz

The Charity Commission has launched a new quiz with the aim of increasing trustee’s knowledge of their duties and responsibilities. Helping to identify where knowledge gaps exist for individual trustees, it is expected that the quiz will allow trustees and boards to recognise areas for improvement and access resources to help fill those gaps.

In order to establish whether this would be a helpful tool for our clients, we took the quiz and found it to be a useful and accessible resource. The quiz can be taken quickly (the Charity Commission states it will take three minutes, it took us four minutes and 28 seconds in total!) and, although it asks quite basic questions about charity governance and trustee responsibilities, it makes complicated legal concepts quite accessible using every-day scenarios trustees might be familiar with.

For us, the highlights of the quiz are the links to guidance documents which appear at the bottom of each question, allowing trustees to easily access information from the Charity Commission on any questions which they struggled to answer correctly.

Charity Commission ‘collections’

On 27 September 2023, the Charity Commission helpfully published a number of ‘collections’ on the gov.uk website. These collections collate relevant guidance documents and five-minute guides on specific topics relevant to charities, such as ‘Accounts, Financial Reporting and Tax’, as well as ‘Managing charity money, assets and property’. Although the guidance documents and quick guides themselves are nothing new, the collections should make it easier for charities and trustees to find guidance documents from the Commission all in one place when tackling specific issues.

Captain Tom Foundation likely to close

Most people working within the charity sector will have by now heard of the negative publicity the Captain Tom Foundation has suffered over the past 15 months following concerns over mismanagement within the organisation. Reporting on the matter has made it clear that the first sign of trouble for the charity came as the Charity Commission refused to allow the organisation to pay a salary of £100,000 to its interim chief executive, Sir Captain Tom’s daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore. Further concerns were then raised by the Charity Commission when the charity made no objection to the use of a private company, owned by Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband, profiting from various trademarks of the name ‘Captain Tom’. More recently, further controversy has been stirred as a result of the Ingram-Moore’s erecting a spa and pool complex at her home, despite the original application for planning permission making no mention of this facility and instead stating that the building would be used as an office connected with the charity.

The Charity Commission inquiry has been open since June 2022 and is still ongoing. However, at a recent hearing regarding the planning permission issue, Ingram-Moore’s legal representatives indicated that the charity was likely to close down. This may come as a shock to many people, particularly given the charity’s meteoric rise and positive publicity in its first year in operation (see our September round-up for more details).

This development serves as an important reminder to charities of the importance of transparency, accountability and pro-active financial management.

Employment update

Our employment team have published a number of interesting blog posts recently which might be of interest to readers:

• Doug Mullen discusses the possibility of a ban on ‘fire and re-hire’ practices in his recent blog post. Doug notes that, whilst this has been accepted practice for some time, the Labour Party has proposed that they will build on regulations already in place regarding termination and re-engagement practices by banning it completely if they are elected to government.
• Anna Dabek explores the recent case of Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland v Agnew in her blog post. Readers should be aware of the regulations regarding unlawful deduction of wages, and ensure that holiday pay is being calculated accurately.
• In a second blog post, Anna also discusses the passing into law of the Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023. With the Act introducing the right for workers and employees to make a formal application to request a more predictable work pattern, the changes will be particularly relevant to any charities currently employing staff on zero-hours contracts.  Anna notes that the Act does not bring any immediate changes into effect and that organisations therefore have 12 months to prepare for the changes.

For any advice on employment matters related to your organisation, please feel free to contact our employment team.

For more information

For more information or advice on the topics raised in this month’s newsletter, please contact Sarah Patrice. Sarah is a partner in the governance, funding and corporate team and advises on a range of concerns for community-based organisations including charities, housing associations and housing co-operatives. She specialises in providing governance, regulatory, contractual, charity, board and company secretarial support and has extensive experience advising on constitutional matters, board disputes, group structures and joint ventures.

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