Charity PR that keeps trust intact

01/ What charity PR is for

Four jobs, one reputation.

Most charity PR does one of four jobs: raise awareness of the cause, recruit supporters and members, back a campaign for change, or protect the charity when something goes wrong.

Each job wants a different story and a different outlet. An awareness story needs a human case and a fact the reporter can check. A campaign story needs a clear ask and evidence behind it.

The reputation is shared across all four. A case study handled carelessly in an awareness push can undo years of trust built by the campaign team.

If membership is part of your model, PR feeds membership marketing for charities: coverage creates the moment, and the join journey has to be ready for it.

02/ Case studies and consent

A case study is personal data.

Naming or picturing a beneficiary in a press release is processing their personal data. If you rely on consent, the ICO says it must be “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous”, recorded, and as easy to withdraw as to give (ICO, what is valid consent).

Many charity stories touch health, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. The ICO treats those as special category data that needs extra protection (ICO, special category data).

The Fundraising Regulator’s Code says you must not “take advantage of the trust, lack of knowledge, apparent need for care and support, or vulnerable circumstances” of a donor, and requires permission before taking or publishing photographs of children; for under-13s that means a parent or guardian (Code of Fundraising Practice, section 5). It defines vulnerability as “a state in which a person is especially susceptible to harm due to their personal circumstances” (Fundraising Regulator).

Those standards are written for fundraising, but a story used in a fundraising appeal and a press release is usually the same story. Apply the stricter rule to both.

Consent given in a hard week may not hold in a better one. Check again before each new use, and agree in advance what happens if the person asks you to take it down.

03/ Campaigning rules (CC9)

Charities can campaign. They cannot be partisan.

The Charity Commission’s guidance, CC9, says campaigning and political activity “can be legitimate and valuable activities for charities”, provided they support the charity’s purposes (Charity Commission, CC9).

The limits are about parties and purpose. A charity must not support or fund a political party or candidate, and political activity must not become the reason the charity exists.

Two lines in CC9 matter most for press work. Emotive or controversial material is allowed where it is lawful and “factually accurate” with “a legitimate evidence base”. And trustees must not let the charity become a vehicle for any trustee’s or staff member’s personal or party political views.

So a spokesperson’s personal opinion in an interview is a governance question, not only a messaging one. Brief spokespeople on where the line sits.

Election periods add the rules on non-party campaigning; check them before a campaign runs near polling day.

04/ Reputation and serious incidents

Bad press can be a reportable incident.

The Charity Commission defines a serious incident as an actual or alleged adverse event that results in or risks significant harm to people, loss of money or assets, damage to property, or “harm to your charity’s work or reputation” (Charity Commission, reporting a serious incident).

Reporting is the trustees’ responsibility, even when delegated. The Commission expects “prompt, full and frank disclosure”, and if you decide not to report you need to be able to explain why.

That puts the press office and the trustee board on one timeline. The holding statement and the incident report should tell the same story, because a regulator will read both.

For the wider response to a crisis, see crisis communications for membership organisations.

05/ Honest charity PR

Accuracy is the whole asset.

The CIPR Code of Conduct commits its members to “deal honestly and fairly” with the public and to respect the legal and regulatory frameworks where they work (CIPR Code of Conduct).

For a charity that means every figure in a release has a source a reporter can open, every case study is real and consented, and nothing is inflated to win a headline.

CC9 makes the same point for campaigns: material must have a legitimate evidence base (CC9). A claim a journalist cannot check is a claim that can be turned against you.

A standard structure helps; see the press release template for associations.

06/ Measuring charity PR

Count outcomes, not column inches.

AMEC’s Barcelona Principles 3.0 set goals first, measure outputs, outcomes and potential impact, and state that “AVEs are not the value of communication” (AMEC).

AMEC explicitly widened the principles to cover charities and NGOs, and to count outcomes for stakeholders and society, not only for the organisation.

For a charity, an outcome is something that changed: sign-ups, enquiries to a service, a decision-maker’s response to a campaign. Coverage is the output that may have caused it.

Paid search often catches the demand that coverage creates; see charity PPC for how the two can be read together.

07/ Charity PR with us

PR and communications for charities.

We run communications and PR for membership organisations with our specialist PR partner, including charities with members and supporters.

We plan the story, the consent and the join journey together, so coverage leads somewhere. See PR for membership organisations for how the work is scoped.

The same approach applies to PR for private members clubs and gym PR, and day-to-day messages to members sit with member communications.