Social Media for Non-Profits: A UK and Ireland Guide

Social media for non-profits works best when a small charity concentrates on one or two platforms its supporters already use and keeps within its regulator’s guidance while it raises money. This guide from ProfileTree, the Belfast digital agency, explains how charities across the UK and Ireland can do that with a small team and a limited budget.

What Social Media Does for a Small Charity

Done well, social media for non-profits brings in donations and volunteers while showing the public that the organisation is active and trustworthy. In an organisation this size, the person posting is often also the fundraiser and the volunteer coordinator. The aim is a steady presence that one person can keep up, with every post serving a clear purpose.

The platforms were built for businesses with products to sell, while a charity has a cause and stories to tell. That changes what good content looks like. A post that shows a volunteer shift, explains what a donation paid for or answers a question people search for will usually do more for a charity than a polished graphic with a slogan on it.

If you would prefer to hand the day-to-day work to a team, ProfileTree offers organic social media management for charities as well as training for staff who want to keep it in-house. ProfileTree is a Belfast web design and digital marketing agency, founded in 2011 and based at the McSweeney Centre. We do not run paid advertising, so everything in this guide is about building an audience the charity owns.

The Rules Charities Follow on Social Media

Trustees carry the legal responsibility for what their charity says online, even when a member of staff or a volunteer does the posting, so any plan for social media for non-profits starts with the regulator’s expectations. Each jurisdiction in the UK and Ireland has its own regulator, and the expectations are broadly similar across all of them.

Charity Commission Guidance for Trustees

The Charity Commission for England and Wales published its guidance on charities and social media in September 2023, after a public consultation. It does not expect trustees to run the accounts day to day. It does expect them to understand their responsibilities and to agree a written policy setting out how the charity’s online activity supports its purposes.

It should also cover how trustees, employees and volunteers conduct themselves when they post on the charity’s behalf. The guidance asks charities to think about the risk from personal posts by people closely linked to them, such as a chief executive, which the public may read as the charity’s view. Political campaigning is covered by the Commission’s separate CC9 guidance, which allows charities to campaign on issues connected to their purposes but never to support a political party or candidate.

A single page is enough for many charities, and our guide to writing a social media policy covers what to put in it. Have the board approve it and record that approval in the minutes, because that protects the person posting as well as the charity.

Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland

Charities in Northern Ireland are registered with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, charities in Scotland with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, and charities in the Republic of Ireland with the Charities Regulator. Their expectations on trustee oversight are similar, so a policy built on the Commission’s guidance is a sensible starting point, checked against your own regulator’s advice before the board signs it off.

Organisations in Northern Ireland often have supporters on both sides of the border, which affects how they take donations and claim tax relief. ProfileTree provides social media support for Northern Ireland charities that takes both markets into account.

Data Protection and Supporter Consent

Data protection law applies as soon as a charity collects supporters’ details through a social channel. In the UK that means the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, which govern marketing emails and texts; in the Republic of Ireland it means the GDPR, overseen by the Data Protection Commission.

Any sign-up form linked from a post needs a clear privacy notice and a positive opt-in for marketing. Take particular care with tracking code on your website (small scripts that record what visitors do). For a health, faith or campaigning charity, a record that someone visited a page about a condition or a belief can count as special category data, which the law protects more strictly. The Information Commissioner’s Office publishes guidance on direct marketing for charities, and our guide to email marketing for non-profits covers turning followers into subscribers you can contact directly.

Fundraising on Social Platforms and Claiming Gift Aid

Fundraising is where social media for non-profits differs most from business use, because what a charity can raise through Meta’s platforms depends on where it is registered. The position changed sharply in 2024. A UK charity can still take donations on Facebook, while a charity registered in the Republic of Ireland cannot.

What Facebook and Instagram Offer UK Charities

UK-registered charities, including those in Northern Ireland, can enrol in Meta’s charitable giving tools. Once enrolled, supporters can set up birthday and challenge fundraisers for the charity, and the charity can add a donate button to its Facebook page and posts. Instagram offers fundraising features to eligible charities through the same enrolment.

Their strength is that a supporter can give without leaving the app. The trade-off is less control over the donor relationship, because the supporter’s details sit with Meta unless the donor chooses to share them. Meta has changed and withdrawn features several times, so check its help centre for the current UK position before you plan an appeal that depends on a particular tool.

Facebook Fundraising Has Ended for Charities in Ireland

Meta withdrew its fundraising products from the European Economic Area, which includes the Republic of Ireland, from 1 July 2024. UK Fundraising reported that active fundraisers ended automatically and donate buttons were switched off for charities based in those countries. The UK was not affected, because it now sits outside the European Economic Area.

For an Irish charity, this means every social post that asks for money should link to the charity’s website or an online giving site. Older advice that tells Irish charities to rely on Facebook Fundraisers is now out of date.

Claiming Gift Aid on Donations That Start on Social Media

Gift Aid lets a charity claim an extra 25p from HMRC for every £1 donated by a UK taxpayer, provided the donor has made a Gift Aid declaration. The HMRC guidance on claiming Gift Aid sets out the records a charity must keep, and those records are where social giving gets complicated.

Facebook has offered UK donors a Gift Aid option, and the Charity Tax Group has reported that HMRC treats eligible Facebook donations as eligible for Gift Aid. A charity that claims must still be able to give HMRC everything it needs for an audit, so check that the donor details you receive are enough before you claim. The simpler route is to send supporters to a giving page that collects a compliant declaration alongside the payment. Gift Aid is a UK scheme; Irish charities claim tax relief through the Revenue Commissioners’ charitable donation scheme, which works differently.

Choosing the Right Platforms for Your Charity

Much of the advice on social media for non-profits assumes a team large enough to cover every platform. Choose one main platform where your supporters already spend time, and treat any others as places to share adapted versions of the same content. A charity that posts well on one platform will see more return from its time than one that posts occasionally on five.

Facebook groups and events still suit charities with a strong local base, such as a food bank or a community centre. Instagram and TikTok suit charities with something to show, such as an animal rescue centre or a community arts project, and both have search features that people use to find information and advice. A short video that answers a question in its first few seconds, with the question spoken aloud, shown as on-screen text and written in the caption, gives the platform the best chance of matching it to people searching for that subject.

LinkedIn is where companies look for charity partners and where professionals offer their skills as volunteers, so it is a good place to find your next treasurer. Posts shared from the personal profiles of the chief executive and trustees often reach more people than posts from the charity’s page alone.

Telling Beneficiaries’ Stories with Consent and Dignity

The people a charity serves should appear in its content as people with their own voice, and never only as recipients of help. Images that show people at their lowest point can raise money in the short term, but they risk the trust that keeps supporters giving over many years and can hurt the people shown in them.

Before you publish a story about someone your charity supports, run it through these checks:

• The person is shown doing something or saying something in their own words, and is shown as more than their hardship.
• The person has given specific consent for this story on this platform, knows it will stay online and knows how to withdraw consent later.
• A general consent form signed when they first used your service is not treated as covering social media.
• The post avoids before-and-after framing when the “before” shows someone at their most vulnerable.
• The person would be comfortable if friends, family or an employer saw the post.

A photograph of an identifiable person is personal data, so consent records matter legally as well as ethically. The strongest stories usually come from people who want to share them, so build a small group of willing storytellers and support them properly. Our guide to content marketing for non-profits covers how to plan those stories across a year.

Volunteers posting about a shift, or fundraisers sharing their training for a challenge event, reach people the charity’s page never would. Give them a short brief and a hashtag, then share the best of what they post on the charity’s channels.

Running Social Media with One Person and a Few Hours a Week

A charity with one part-time communications person can keep a reliable social presence with about twenty minutes a day and an hour a week for planning. The routine matters more than the volume, because supporters notice when an account goes quiet for a month and then posts five times in a day.

A workable daily routine looks like this:

• Spend the first five minutes replying to comments and messages from the past day.
• Spend the next seven minutes posting one planned item or a quick update on something happening that day.
• Spend five minutes commenting on posts from partner organisations, local businesses and supporters.
• Spend the last few minutes noting any question or comment that could become a future post.

AI writing tools can save time here. Write three or four sentences about the story you want to tell, ask the tool to draft versions for each platform, then edit every draft for accuracy, tone and the dignity checks above. Never paste a beneficiary’s name, health details or other personal information into an AI tool, because that is a data protection risk in its own right.

“Training only works if someone does the thing afterwards. That is why ProfileTree’s social media training for charities and small businesses in Northern Ireland is built around the organisation’s own accounts, and people leave the McSweeney Centre in Belfast with the changes already made.” Ciaran Connolly, founder of ProfileTree

Video deserves a place in the routine once the basics are steady. A short clip filmed on a phone, with a volunteer or a supporter talking to camera in natural light, is enough for Instagram and TikTok, and subtitles make it accessible to people watching without sound. For a sense of what a planned piece can do, see a charity video we produced for a client.

Measuring What Social Media Does for Your Charity

Success in social media for non-profits shows up in actions that move the charity forward, so give follower numbers far less weight. A small audience that acts on what it sees is worth more to a charity than a large one that scrolls past.

These are the measures worth tracking each month:

• Count the clicks from social posts to the pages where people give or volunteer, using UTM tags (short labels added to the end of a link so your website analytics show which post sent each visitor).
• Record the donations, volunteer enquiries and event sign-ups that came from those clicks.
• Track new email subscribers who joined through a social post, because they become an audience you can reach without relying on a platform.
• Watch the engagement rate, which is the number of comments, shares and reactions divided by the number of people the post reached.

Record the time each piece of content took alongside what it achieved. A two-hour video that brings in ten volunteer enquiries is a better use of a small team’s week than an eight-hour report that a handful of people open. Over a quarter, that record shows you which formats deserve more of your time.

A First-Year Plan for a Charity Starting from Scratch

An organisation with no social presence yet can build a working one in a year if it sets the foundations before it chases growth. This plan assumes one or two people with a few hours a week between them.

Months One to Three: Foundations

Audit every account the charity has ever opened, and close the ones that have been dormant for more than six months so that supporters do not find an abandoned page. Choose your main platform, then write the policy and have the board approve it. Set up a simple content calendar in a spreadsheet and mark the awareness days that matter to your cause.

Months Four to Six: Content and Community

Settle on three kinds of post: stories that show your impact, posts that show the people behind the charity, and posts that ask for something specific, such as a donation, a volunteer or a share. Recruit five to ten willing storytellers and put a proper consent process in place for them. Add one regular video format, such as a short weekly update filmed on a phone.

Months Seven to Twelve: Growth

Review your figures each quarter and do more of what brings in clicks and enquiries. Add a second platform only once the first is running smoothly, and adapt existing content for it. Plan one larger appeal for a key giving moment, such as Giving Tuesday in late November or early December, and have the posts and a single donation link ready well in advance.

Getting Help with Your Charity’s Social Media

The next step for most charities is to give the person running the accounts the skills and the confidence to do it well. ProfileTree’s digital training for charity teams covers social media for non-profits and content planning, including how to measure results, and it is built around the charity’s existing channels. Training starts from £350 plus VAT, and charities that would prefer the work done for them can talk to us about ongoing social media management, which is quoted on request.

Questions About Social Media for Non-Profits