Political activity and campaigning: guidance for charities

We’ve published a new guide to help charities campaign in the run-up to an election.

Key points to be aware of are:

• If you engage with politicians, make sure this is even-handed and does not give the impression that your charity supports or opposes any particular party or candidate.
• It is unlikely that charities will need to register with the Electoral Commission. Agree and monitor your campaign expenses (especially when jointly campaigning with any partner organisations) to avoid spending over £10,000 and thus needing to register.
• Ensuring you have relevant policies, such as campaigning and social media policies, in place. These should reflect your charitable objectives and how your organisation will campaign in practice.
• Carrying out a risk assessment for any campaigning or political activity.
• Enabling your trustees to familiarise themselves with basic charity and electoral rules around political campaigning (the Charity Commission’s CC9 guidance) so they can approve your campaigning with authority.

This follows the guidance we published in 2023.

The information above refers to England and Wales. We published separate guidance on Scotland in 2023, which is still up to date.