Thoughts of a CEO June 2024

There’s only a matter of days now before the UK General Election. We all have our personal political opinions, preferred parties and policies, hopes for the outcome etc, and that’s fine at home, but can get more complex in the office.

Those of us who are registered charities have a legal obligation to be independent of party politics. Get it wrong and we can put trustees, staff and volunteers at risk, and our reputation can suffer. Unfortunately, it is quite easy to unintentionally become involved in party politics. For example, what if a prospective candidate ask you for an endorsement? What do you do?*

I’d argue that the risks also hold true for those of us who are not registered organisations, so please keep reading if that’s you!

Having said that, we can still campaign for causes that we are passionate about. We don’t have to be silent, we just need to be careful what we say:

Share your position on a particular social issue by all means, but don’t reference a political party’s approach (whether you agree with it or not).
Shout your views about topics that relate to your purpose – but don’t ask people to vote a particular way – explicitly or implicitly.
Feel free to contact candidates, talk about what’s concerning you, but make sure you don’t become associated with that candidate. They can support you, you can’t support them.

It’s a complex issue to get right. To be honest, I even felt a little queasy about writing the above bullet points (I went through about twenty drafts), but we can’t be shy about shouting from the rooftops about the issues we care about – in fact it is our obligation to do so.

Fortunately, there is comprehensive guidance from UK government on what charities can and can’t do during an election cycle (and beyond); I recommend taking a look just to reassure yourselves. I also suggest taking a look at NCVO’s guidance too – the language is a little more… accessible, shall we say.