A phrase you now hear quite a bit is ‘lightning rod’. Which means a thing that intensely draws attention, energy and criticism. A charity example would be your patron making a controversial statement, filmed on someone’s phone. The internet-of-voices-and-bots pile into this moment and you are plunged into a media war-room. Or more ominously, premeditated coordinated attacks on charities helping people of certain faiths, or in need of specific help. These leave us feeling deeply alarmed and challenge both leadership and governance. What can we do to prepare?

The first thing you wonder is if we can learn from previous experience. Park your judgement for a moment and look at animal testing activism in the 1990s. Individuals ‘went dark’ taking their staff personal details out of the public, operating a very different public profile than before, and physical security measures were added across buildings and offices. Leaders may need to make an active choice between either drawing fire to themselves or going dark. Both options can serve a greater good. Those with enough personal status and media support in their organisation could turn the flak into advocacy or useful attention. Alternatively you and your board may determine to plan for the organisation not to engage: reducing the press interface as much as possible whilst maintaining public access for users.

Compartmentalisation in charities is likely to become more common. This is dividing off different bits of your business model into different organisations, so that each is protected or limited in the damage that can be done to it. Compartmentalisation is common in commercial entities for many reasons. Charities by contrast have mainly used additional entities for financial reasons. You’ll all know of charities that run companies for their shops or other trading activities. Now separating organisations may be for limiting reputational damage, placing liabilities and risks in the most protective way. This visibility or privacy ‘settings’ of each organisation can then vary. A logical extension to this may be charities moving towards professional trustees, as you get in business with paid boards and non executive directors, as this arrangement there are options of greater personal professional insurance aligned to perceived risks in the role. We may see offshoring of parts of charities increasing: locating in places where there is greater limitation or control on the personal information that is required to be shared with the public.

We cannot be naïve here: no amount of plans will avoid a line in the sand where lawyers are needed. Which leads to the next actions: charity reserves may need to be higher to cover legal support or retainers may need to be a more common part of budgets going forward. A review of insurances can see how these can be appropriately bolstered. Taking the time to set up and go through onboarding requirements with lawyers is sensible; many charities have a longer list of Trustees than a company would have Directors so the process is proportionately more onorous. And no one wants to be enduring administrative stress on top of a crisis.

You may have spotted this issue was covered in the first speech given by Dame Julia Unwin on taking up her role of chair of the Charity Commission. I’m sure all of us welcome her view that the Commission “can, and we must, use every opportunity to say how deplorable these attacks are and ensure that action is taken to protect, and to prosecute”. We can hope that the Commission are moving to practical guidance upstream, to help charities prepare. Because we are all looking at the impact: far reaching emotional, moral and resource effects. Best not to forget that lightening can be fatal.

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