Charities and campaigning

There is widespread confusion about the extent to which charities are allowed to campaign. The relevant legislation in this area is the Charity Commission’s CC9 guidance. This page outlines the key things you need to know if you are a charity, or are thinking of applying for charity registration, and want to campaign.

Charity Commission guidelines about charities’ rights to campaign can be summarised as follows:

• To become a registered charity, an organisation’s main activities must be ‘for charitable purposes, which are for the public benefit’. If an organisation’s purposes are political then it cannot be considered charitable.
• Of course, many charities do undertake work that is ‘political’. Such political activity, or political campaigning can be done if it supports an organisation’s charitable activities. So basically, charities can undertake campaigning work, as long as it’s not their main activity.
• It gets more complicated because a Charity’s Board might decide that the best way to achieve its charitable purposes (for example, to reduce rough sleeping) is to undertake political campaigning (for example, to broaden statutory responsibilities to house all rough sleepers). If this is the case, the charity must ensure that this campaigning activity does not become the reason for why the charity exists.

So, charities can campaign to change, or indeed preserve, legislation. But only if this campaigning work supports its wider objectives as a charity. Charities cannot work for a ‘political purpose’ – this means they cannot work to further the interest of any political party. Charities must remain independent, and be balanced in its involvement with different political parties.

But what do you do if your charity agrees with the policies of one particular political party? Well, you can give your support to a political party in this situation, if it can be demonstrated that doing so would enable you to achieve your charitable objectives. But charities have to ensure that they do not become mouthpieces for political parties’ policies.

Visit the Charity Commission website for a more comprehensive explanation of the legalities. In 2010, The Charity Commission also published ‘Speaking Out’, a very detailed guide about campaigning and political activity by charities.

Former Chief Executive of the Charity Commission, Andrew Hind, commented:

"Campaigning, advocacy and political activities can all be legitimate and valuable activities for charities to undertake. In fact the strong links charities have into their local communities, the high levels of public trust and confidence they command, and the diversity of causes they represent, mean that charities are often uniquely placed to campaign and advocate on behalf of their beneficiaries. "

Case study

In 2010 Oxfam was cleared by the Advertising Standards Agency for a climate change campaign they ran for which the ASA received complaints about the validity of the statement: ‘You’re right. People dying thanks to climate change is a long way off. About 5000 miles, give or take’.

The campaign was allowed by the ASA to continue, as the link between people dying as a result of climate change was deemed to be fairly accepted by scientists. There was a "robust consensus" that there was "extremely strong evidence for human-induced climate change." However, this is a lesson to make sure you research and check your campaign facts thoroughly so that you can back up all the statements you make.