We held a retro with digital, content and communications leaders from a range of charities and not-for-profit organisations to gauge how things are going and share advice on what people are struggling with.

Here’s their pulse check on the sector and how they are navigating some of the challenges that everyone is facing in their organisations.

Changing social media landscape

The retro was held on 16 January - just days after Meta announced significant changes and during a period where X users were deciding to leave the platform due to Musk’s political involvement.

Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and X are key social media platforms for many charities and not-for-profit organisations and the digital leaders shared frustration at the lack of communication from the platforms or guidance on how to navigate the changes.

Impact of Meta changes

Dan Papworth-Smyth has written a helpful explainer on the Meta changes for charities, which we highly recommend reading and also forwarding on to your senior leadership and Trustees to highlight the scale of the potential impact.

From a marketing perspective the changes are significant - from reduced audience targeting and exclusion capability to loss of tracking pixels to enable tailored journeys - and some leaders reflected that Meta will therefore stop being a lower funnel platform.

Some charities also shared that their organisations have been labelled as ‘political’ by Meta because of their strong policy work and online campaigning. This Meta categorisation limits these organisations too from using the full capability of the platform.

The new focus on community moderation has added substantial pressure to some organisations, where leaders are now reviewing processes and creating new ways of working to enable robust moderation. Some charities shared a community-led moderation that they have already been using and that will become all the more important now.

“We are all learning all of this as we go”

The ethics of using both platforms was heavily discussed - from Meta removing their diversity to X’s owner being entwined in US politics - and leaders reflected that these conversations are happening at senior leadership level too.

Challenges of leaving X

When it came to the discussion of leaving X, there were a few key challenges that charities are navigating:

  • Some key policy audiences have shifted to Blue Sky but some have not and so the charity needs to remain active on both channels to speak to both sets of people.

  • Some charities are part of wider networks and need to stay on X until their parent or comparator organisation has left the platform.

  • Practical issues of social media management tools (e.g. Hootsuite and Sprout Social) not having Blue Sky APIs yet, which means scheduling, publishing and moderation on Blue Sky needs to be manual and real-time.

  • Some organisations felt that although there is opportunity in Blue Sky, there is still scalability in X.

  • From a campaigning perspective, there was also a strong feeling that with the rise of far right rhetoric on X, some organisations can see a clear need to remain active on X to speak truth to power.

In November 2024, the Guardian announced that it would be leaving X, as it could no longer justify the ethical cost. They have invested significant time, effort and resources in their presence, so leaving will not have been decided lightly:

“This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”


Team development priorities for 2025

Leaders shared their priorities for team development, focusing on growing skills and expertise in-house, using external experts to upskill and motivate their teams:

  • A new development objective for the team is that when a new change is announced e.g, meta changes, we take time to consider the impact and communicate this internally. This foregrounds team expertise whilst also highlighting a priority issue for leadership and cross-charity teams to pay attention to.

  • Bring in external experts to upskill people internally and offer new or different perspectives

  • Coaching was unanimously agreed to be a game-changer for the digital leaders! Everyone shared that the opportunity to talk through their individual challenges and professional journey with someone who has lived experience of leading digital and communications was invaluable. (Please do get in touch with Yas or James about this 😊 - we’d love to help!)

Decentralisation and digital skills development

As well as the focus on developing their own team, the digital leaders highlighted the importance of increasing digital skills across the organisation.

“Good ideas can come from anywhere”

  • Digital should not be seen as the job of the digital team alone and needs to be opened up to other teams to harness their experience and ownership

  • Increased digital skills releases tensions between teams, particularly where other teams have the capability and capacity to do it themselves and the digital team can be seen as a bottleneck because they are working on projects for lots of teams at once.

  • We need to recognise that good ideas can come from anywhere and people’s voices need to be heard.

  • For organisations embarking on transformation, digital skills are central to lasting and sustainable impact and growth.

However, leaders reflected that despite prioritising digital skills development and making significant headway, it can be deprioritised quickly in favour of other projects:

“It’s the first thing to drop when we get busy.”

One leader has decided to write skills development into business plans for protected time, which is also a way to raise the profile of the project - and the burning need for upskilling - internally.

We would also recommend creating communities of practice for digital skills development as part of the programme’s foundations and to retain momentum across the organisation.

AI: look beyond the technology

Leaders reflected that AI policy and implementation hinges on a strong digital culture and comfort with the new technology across the organisation.

“It’s not just about the tech, we also need to be mindful of people’s attitudes and comfort with AI.”

Some people are nervous about the changes to their roles, particularly as AI tools can be used for writing and creating content, which is something that a lot of organisations have kept tight in their marketing and communications teams.

Opening up the conversations about AI internally and sharing opportunities and challenges with the tools collaboratively was a key for a lot of organisations. We have worked with Platypus Digital to create an AI policy template that guides these conversations internally, giving you a framework of the questions you should be asking and the themes to focus on.

Some people shared concerns about the environmental impact of using tools like ChatGPT and how this is affecting how frequently they use the technology.

We’ll keep checking back with digital leaders this year to hear their progress on their 2025 plans and how they’ve overcome the challenges they’ve faced within their organisation and across the sector.

Proactively Involving your senior leadership in conversations about all of these topics is key to ensuring that your organisation is confronting the challenges and making measured decisions, instead of being reactive. Get in touch with Yas or James if you want some help in how to navigate these conversations so that they are contextualised within your wider digital and organisational strategy.

Thanks for joining us Alex Anning (Changing Faces UK) Caitlin Pearce (Parkinson’s UK), Corinne Clark (Sightsavers), Dan Papworth-Smyth (Breast Cancer Now), Graeme Manuel-Jones (BookTrust), Katherine Newbigging (Locality), Laura King (GRAIL), Elizabeth Griffin-Cariño (Marie Curie), Mark McKenzie-Ray (Local Government Association), Matthew Farrand (Maudsley Charity), Miriam Zendle (NHS Providers) Philip Levine (British Paediatric Neurology Association), Sabrina Powar (Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex), Sam Williams (CAP) and Venuri Perera (Nuffield Foundation).

Next retrospective:

Our next digital leaders retro is: Weds 2 April 1pm

Please sign up via Eventbrite to secure your place - spaces are limited!

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