A social media guide for charities
Social media has been a game changer for all kinds of organisations across the globe, and it's showing no signs of slowing down.
With the power to reach millions at their fingertips, social media offers an unprecedented opportunity for charities to engage with supporters, raise awareness, and drive their missions forward. However, navigating the landscape of social media requires an understanding of the platforms, how it can benefit you, and creating a policy.
Read our simplified guide below to discover help and guidance for charities using social media.
The benefits of using social media for charities
By maximising your social media use and impact, your charity has the potential to benefit from the 5.24 billion social media user identities in use as of February 2025:
- Increase reach: Boosts a charity’s visibility, driving support and fundraising opportunities.
- More personable: Fosters community building and helps develop better donor relationships.
- Better contact: Provides a way to respond to key issues as they happen.
- Cost-effective marketing: Offers a low-cost solution for promoting charitable causes.
Social media platforms for charities
When deciding on which social media platform your charity should use, you need to understand your audience and which platforms they prefer.
According to Backlinko, Instagram reached 1.74 billion users as of March 2025, providing charities with access to a vast audience. Users of this platform are able to share photos and videos, creating a space where visual content must be highly impactful to succeed. CALM’s Missed Birthdays campaign is an example of a powerful visual used on Instagram, which successfully created through-provoking moments and encouraged people to engage.
As of 2025, Facebook has 3.07 billion monthly active users, taking place as the platform with the most users. Facebook has become a successful platform by helping to build communities, through features such as sharing statuses, creating groups and advertising events. Macmillan’s Facebook page, for example, has attracted over 1.1million followers, and keeps them engaged with regular posts, Q&A sessions and relevant news articles.
X
The social media platform X, formally known as Twitter, has around 600 million monthly users. Renowned for real-time posting and updates, X is one of the best ways you can raise awareness for your charity. For example, The British Red Cross uses their X account to engage users with a mix of their own campaign information and compelling news stories.
YouTube
As of January 2025, YouTube is one of the best ways to promote your cause with over 2.7 billion people accessing the platform. Quality videos are used to captivate audiences, with compelling and original storytelling performing the most successfully. Homelessness charity, Shelter, used video content to bring to life the realities of homelessness and raise awareness of their charitable cause.
Known for being the world’s largest professional network on the internet, LinkedIn has over 1 billion members worldwide. The platform provides eligible nonprofits with access to discounted talent, learning, and fundraising solutions, and the ability to share content with over 22 million nonprofit professional members. Charities such as Mental Health Foundation have excelled in their use of LinkedIn, focusing their content on improving mental health and well-being for employers and employees.
TikTok
As one of the newest and most popular social media platforms, TikTok has just over 1.58 billion monthly active users. According to Charity Digital, TikTok are eager to help and support good causes through its TikTok for Good initiative, helping charities to use the platform to raise funds and awareness. RSPB’s Bird of the Week series saw an incredible positive impact from utilising TikTok, leading to a 115,000 increase in followers and an additional 23 million views since the video series began in January 2024.
How to use social media as a charity
Create a policy
Setting a social media policy is essential for informing members of your charity with how they are expected to use social media when representing the charity. GOV.UK share how your social media policy should explain:
- Your guidelines around the conduct of trustees, staff and volunteers when using social media on behalf of the charity.
- How to engage with the public on social media.
- Who is responsible for the day-to-day management of the charity’s social media.
- How your charity uses social media to help deliver your charity’s purpose.
It is essential you provide accessibility guidelines within your social media policy to ensure that content shared is able to be accessed by all. This includes capitalising hashtags, providing alt text for images, and supplying closed captions. To discover more accessibility tips, read our dedicated guide, here.
Your policy should clearly set out the standards you expect from the people within your charity – ensure to signpost the policy in an accessible place, such as your charity’s shared files, to create a streamlined social media presence.
Manage risk
A social media policy, as advised above, will help your charity manage risk, however, there are additional steps which can be taken to further reduce the chances of risk. You need to make clear to charity trustees, staff and volunteers that they should not post or share content which is:
- Harmful
- Inconsistent with your charity’s purpose
- Not in your charity’s best interests
- In breach of the law
GOV.UK also informs how you need to ensure that your use of social media complies with any laws relevant to your charity, for example:
- UK GDPR rules on publishing personal information or data
- Privacy laws and making sure you have consent
- Copyright law
- Defamation law
- Whistleblower protection
- Equality and human rights
Build a content calendar
Put together a structured content strategy, including ideas for posts and ideal publishing dates, making sure to align content with any important and relevant annual awareness days. Creating a timeline for your social media content and scheduling it ahead of time is ideal for ensuring your charity remains consistent within their social media efforts whilst building up a relationship with followers.
Design enticing content
Focus on the positive side of what your charity does, including fundraising efforts and the difference you are making to those your charity supports. Use quality imagery and video as this will always receive a better response than a text-only post. For example, post engaging images on Instagram to entice followers, and use relevant hashtags to find your ideal audience. Management software, The Access Group, share the areas of content your charity can focus on, including donation and fundraising campaigns, promoting success stories, upcoming events, news and advice, and humanising your charity.
Digital marketing agency, Boss Digital, summarised which types of content perform best on each platform:
- Facebook – Ideal for building a community, sharing updates, and organising events.
- X – Great for real-time updates, news sharing, and engaging with influencers.
- Instagram – If your nonprofit’s work is highly visual, this platform can be impactful.
- LinkedIn – Suitable for networking, partnering with other organisations, and recruiting volunteers or professionals in your field.
- YouTube – Perfect for sharing video content, storytelling, and educational material.
- TikTok – Growing in popularity, especially among younger audiences. Ideal for creative storytelling and engaging in trends.
Engage with followers
NCVO reports how establishing a social media presence for your charity is ideal for building communities and creating opportunities for conversation, sharing and learning, especially among hard-to-reach audiences. Sharing daily content and regular charity work, for example a day in the life video, makes for an organic way to foster a community and engage with volunteers and donors. While large-scale campaigns may be hard to replicate, even the smallest of charities can benefit from social media and the current news cycle by quickly responding to supporters and creating a 'community feel'.
Read more help & guidance for charities, or discover our charity insurance solutions.
Please note: This article provides guidance for information purposes only. It should not be relied upon wholly when making or taking important business decisions – always seek the services of an appropriately qualified professional. The views expressed by websites referenced to are limited to those of the websites, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Markel Direct.