We know that you invest time, resource and emotion to be with us at IFC Online. We want to do all we can to make that investment worthwhile. That’s why we curate a stimulating programme of learning and experience sharing. But as well as your professional development, we want you to have a personal experience that is rewarding and hugely positive.

To ensure this happens, there are things we encourage, and there is behaviour that we will not tolerate.

We encourage you

• To participate fully
• To ask tough questions
• To share your experience and professional insight with others for the greater good
• To take time to listen, and to do this especially in groups where people are participating outside of their native language
• To let us know how what you learn at IFC Online helps you create more impact in the world
• To fully respect that people from 65+ different countries have different needs and expectations

We will not tolerate

We hope that it is stating the obvious that we will not tolerate any form of harassment – verbal, physical, or sexual – towards any of our participants, volunteers, speakers or our staff team.

If you become aware of any incident of harassment, please report this to any member of the Resource Alliance/IFC team. Subject to the nature of the incident, we reserve the right to exclude anyone from this and all future Resource Alliance events with immediate effect. Subject to circumstances, we may also report individuals or incidents to the police.

Please read below for more information on the Resource Alliance Global Community’s Code of Conduct

What we expect of our Friends, Members and Delegates

The RA Global Community and the IFC Online are not pre-moderated. Our policy is to keep intervention to a minimum and let the conversation flow. That said, we’re also here to make your ‘ lives easier, so where necessary, we will use our discretion to delete posts (or ban posters) if it seems to us that doing so is in keeping with this aim.   

We do have a few rules to ensure that our community and events are a safe place to connect, learn, and share:

• No personal attacks
• No posts that break the law 
• No trolling, misleading or deliberately inflammatory behaviour
• No troll hunting
• No spamming 

You can report any of the above to us by contacting the team. Our statement on diversity and inclusion can be found here. 

Remember, we do not pre-moderate posts. We rely on you to let us know about any posts that break our Guidelines.   

Important information about how we use your data

General Ps and Qs | Post deletions | Swearing | Spamming | Deleting a thread you have started | Trolls and troublemakers | Disclosures of abuse  

General courtesy

We’d appreciate it if you could use the same courtesy when posting messages as you would use when speaking to someone face to face. Please do bear in mind how challenging our work can be, we are trying to make the world a better place ,after all and if there’s one thing all of us could do with, it’s some moral support. 

As we mentioned, we like to let the conversation flow, so we don’t have too many rules. This means when our moderators do step in, they often make difficult decisions based on context, tone, and circumstance – please respect their decisions and treat them civilly.    

Post deletions 

We’re all for freedom of speech. That said, we’ll remove posts we consider to contain personal attacks, to break the law and/or to be obscene, racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic or transphobic, once they are brought to our attention. We will also delete any posts that we think are just seriously unpleasant (please note that any subsequent posts repeating the words in the deleted post may be deleted too). 

If a whole thread is deleted, please don’t start a new one repeating and/or rehashing everything that’s been deleted. This is considered to be bad manners – and, of course, it’s highly likely that the new thread will be deleted, too. 

Swear words and offensive language 

It’s not our policy to delete swear words (we’re all adults, after all) but we do draw the line at obscenity, racist, ageist, homophobic or transphobic language, and wording that is just truly awful. 

Posting links and spamming 

We have no problem with people posting the odd link to other sites/blogs that other posters might find useful or interesting. But we’ll delete anyone’s attempts to spam the boards with links, as a way of promoting their own product, services, survey or e-petition, so not to annoy our community.  If you’d like to know more about promoting your product on, please contact the Partnerships team. 

Deleting a thread you have started 

We don’t generally delete whole threads; it’s frustrating for those who’ve taken the time to write responses to see them removed. That said, we’re here to make people’s lives easier, so if you have a pressing reason for wanting a thread you started to be deleted, please report it to us and we’ll take a look. 

Trolls and troublemakers 

We hope that the vast majority of RA Global Community and IFC Online discussions are genuinely informative, supportive and friendly (even when we disagree with each other!) but, from time to time, we are visited by trolls, for whom friendly supportive chat is definitely not on the agenda. (For those who don’t know, a troll is someone who poses as someone else in order to stir up trouble, fulfil their own agenda, or just for the hell of it.) 

Unfortunately, it’s not always instantly obvious whether a poster is, in fact, a troll. We all tend to be a bit suspicious of new folks posting things of a sensitive or inflammatory nature, but we would rather err on the side of caution and give folks the benefit of the doubt, rather than pounce on someone who may turn out to be genuinely in need of help. We hope you agree. 

That said, we do advise all our members to be aware that not everyone online is who they say they are, we always caution anyone never to give more of themselves to another poster, emotionally or otherwise, than they can afford to spare. 

Sexual harassment

We will not tolerate any form of sexual harassment. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Behaviour that makes a person feel offended, humiliated and/or intimidated
• Uninvited or unwelcome physical contact
• Comments about someone’s appearance, age, sexual comments, crude or obscene language, sexual advances, insults based on gender, and sending sexually explicit written messages.

Disclosures of abuse  

If you’re concerned about someone’s actions, report your suspicions to us and we’ll check them out if you. We promise to take your concerns seriously and closely monitor any potential issues.