The most common request a Communications Director receives is "can you just add this to the website?" Each one is quick:

  • a programme update
  • a new staff bio
  • a campaign page
  • a PDF to download
  • a news story the Executive Director wants referenced.

None comes with a plan for when the content should be reviewed, updated or removed.

After years of this, much of the site describes activities that have ended, staff who have left, or campaigns that finished two funding cycles ago. Nobody knows what is current, because nobody was ever asked to check.

The Communications Director knows the site is a mess but has:

  • no framework for prioritising what to fix
  • no authority to remove content without political consequences
  • no documented process to stop it happening again.

This is the content governance problem. It is not about writing better content. It is about a system for managing what exists.

Why content accumulates and never gets removed

Adding content is easy and politically safe. Removing it is difficult and politically dangerous. Every page was put there by someone who thought it mattered, and removing it means telling that person, or their successor, that it no longer does.

Without a framework, removal is a judgment call rather than a process. So nothing gets removed, and the site grows in one direction only:

  • Pages that were relevant in 2019 sit alongside current content.
  • Blog posts from a previous Executive Director's tenure remain published.
  • Events from last year are still findable through search.

The result communicates institutional disorganisation to anyone paying close attention, and institutional funders always pay close enough attention. Outdated programme information, stale impact data, or expired event pages can lose a gift that was already mentally committed.

The fix is not a one-time cleanup, which only treats symptoms. It is a content governance framework that prevents accumulation in the first place.

What content governance looks like in practice

Content governance answers three questions, continuously: what gets published, who approves it, and when does it expire?

1. What gets published: a publishing process

Scrutiny should match institutional risk. Not every piece of content needs the same approval:

  • A blog post might need sign-off from the Communications Director alone.
  • A new programme page might need input from the programme lead and approval from the Executive Director.
  • A page that makes claims about impact or quotes a beneficiary might need legal or safeguarding review.

The point is not to bureaucratise publishing.

2. Who approves it: documented authority

The Communications Director needs formal authority to approve, delay or decline requests against agreed priorities. Without it documented in a website governance policy, every decision is a negotiation.

Fundraising wants the homepage to lead with a donation appeal. Programmes wants a new initiative. The Executive Director wants a Board announcement. Without clear ownership, the loudest voice wins, and the homepage changes every time someone senior walks past the Communications Director's desk.

3. When does it expire: a review date

This is the question most organisations never ask. Setting a review date at the point of publication changes the dynamic:

  • Content is no longer permanent by default.
  • Someone is responsible for checking whether a page is still accurate six months from now.
  • The Communications Director has a governance reason to contact programme teams about their pages, rather than chasing updates nobody volunteered to do.

The review cycle that actually works

The most practical approach I have seen is a tiered review cycle based on content type and institutional risk.

Homepage and primary landing pages

Review before every major campaign or organisational change, and at least quarterly. These are what funders see first. A homepage still referencing last year's annual report, or a campaign that ended in March, is a credibility problem that compounds every day it stays live.

Programme and service pages

Review quarterly, with the relevant programme lead. Programmes evolve faster than websites: eligibility criteria, locations and delivery staff all change. The review keeps the site describing current reality, not an old brief.

Governance documents

Review annually, immediately after the new annual report and accounts are published. This covers trustee information, policies, financial summaries and regulatory disclosures.

Be clear about what the law actually requires, because Charity Commission transparency and statutory duty are not the same thing. Under the Charities Act 2011:

  • trustees must prepare an annual report (section 162) and, where gross income exceeds £25,000, send it to the Commission within ten months of the financial year end (section 163)
  • any charity must supply a copy of its most recent accounts to anyone who asks in writing, within two months (section 172)
  • a registered charity with income over £10,000 must state that it is registered on documents soliciting money (section 39).

None of that is a duty to publish on your own site. The Commission's publication route is the register, so an annual review keeps the copies you have chosen to publish matching the ones that were filed.

Blog posts and news

Give each a visible publication date and review it at twelve months old. Not every old post needs removing, but posts making time-sensitive claims, citing specific data or describing current activities need checking. A post titled "Our Plans for 2024" still live in 2026 tells visitors the site is not maintained.

Time-limited content

Anything about a specific event, campaign or time-limited activity gets an expiry date at the point of publication. When it passes, the content is archived, redirected or removed, not left to accumulate.

How to handle the "just add it to the website" requests

The solution is not to say no to everything. It is a framework that makes each request assessable rather than arbitrary. Before anything new is published, answer three questions:

  1. Which of your primary stakeholders does this serve? If the answer is "none of the top three", it may still be worth publishing, but it is lower priority.
  2. Who is responsible for keeping it current after it goes live? If nobody can be named, the content has no owner, and unowned content becomes stale content.
  3. When should it be reviewed or removed? Setting a date at creation prevents the accumulation problem entirely.

They are quick to answer, and they turn publishing from reactive ("someone asked, so I did it") to governed ("this content serves a defined stakeholder, has an owner, and has a review date").

Corrections and right of reply

A review cycle catches the errors you find. A corrections route catches the ones someone else finds first: a beneficiary misquoted, a partner's figure wrong, a journalist querying a statistic.

Without a route, each one lands in the general inbox and is settled by whoever is most senior that day: the "just add it" problem in reverse.

The route has four parts, written down and published on the site:

  • How to ask. One address or form named as the place to report an error, linked from the footer and from your press page.
  • Who decides. The page's named owner checks the facts. A disputed correction goes to the Communications Director, and one that touches a trustee, a safeguarding matter or a legal claim goes to whoever your governance policy names for it.
  • How fast you reply. A response time you can keep, stated on the page. The commitment is the acknowledgement; the correction may take longer if the facts need checking.
  • A dated log. Each correction listed with its date, the page, what was wrong and what it now says. Correct the page itself as well: the log shows that you corrected it, and the page stops repeating the error.

Right of reply is the same route pointed the other way. If a page criticises a named organisation or person, their response is handled like any other correction request.

The model is the press's own. The Editors' Code of Practice requires a significant inaccuracy to be "corrected, promptly and with due prominence", and says a fair opportunity to reply should be given "when reasonably called for".

IPSO enforces that Code through its contract with the newspaper, magazine and electronic news publishers that join it, so it does not bind a charity's own website. Borrowing its standard is a choice, not a duty.

Content governance is not content strategy

Content strategy is about what to create. Content governance is about what happens after it is created.

Most nonprofit websites have had some version of strategy: someone decided what pages the site should have, and content was written to fill them. Very few have governance: a system for maintaining, reviewing and retiring that content over time.

Strategy without governance produces the situation most nonprofits are in: a well-planned site that deteriorated because nobody was responsible for maintaining it. The strategy was sound. The governance was absent.

The organisations that maintain visibility keep their content current, structured and reviewed on a documented cycle. They do not publish once and assume it will keep working. Otherwise the site needs another strategy exercise, when what it needs is an operational framework for ongoing management.

If your organisation has never audited its content or formalised how the website is managed, a Blueprint Audit includes a content assessment and produces governance recommendations your team can implement immediately.