Solicitation policies in the age of Slack and GoFundMe: what the NLRB allows, and why one exception can become the rule

A popular employee is facing surgery. A coworker starts a GoFundMe and posts the link in the team’s Slack channel. The manager thinks it is a kind gesture and lets it stand. Six months later, an employee posts a union authorization card link in the same channel, and the same manager deletes it under the no-solicitation policy.

That is an unfair labor practice charge waiting to happen. The problem is not the GoFundMe, which was a decent thing to allow. The problem is that the company allowed one kind of solicitation and then enforced the rule against another. In this area, one small exception can become the precedent that defeats the whole policy. The issue is diligence.

The basic rules

Federal labor law protects employees’ right to talk with each other about unions and working conditions, including at work. Employers may still set reasonable rules, and the Board’s long-standing framework is:

• Solicitation (asking someone to join, sign, give, or buy) can be banned during working time, meaning the time when either employee is supposed to be working. It cannot be banned during breaks, meals, or before and after shifts. A rule that bans solicitation during “working hours” is presumptively unlawful, because those hours include breaks.
• Distribution of literature can be banned in working areas at any time, but generally not in non-working areas such as break rooms and parking lots during non-working time.
• Non-employee organizers generally can be kept off private property, as long as the company does not let other outside groups solicit while excluding unions.
• Off-duty employees generally cannot be barred from outside, non-working areas like parking lots, unless the rule is limited to the interior and working areas, clearly communicated, and applied to all off-duty access, not just union activity.
• Union insignia such as buttons and shirts are generally protected, subject to special circumstances. The Board’s 2022 standard for uniform policies was rejected by the federal appeals court covering Texas, which favors a balancing of the employer’s legitimate interests.

Why one exception matters

A no-solicitation rule is only as strong as its enforcement. If the company lets employees sell fundraiser candy, circulate a sports pool, promote a side business, and pass around a GoFundMe, but stops union solicitation, the rule looks like it was really aimed at the union. The Board’s test for when allowing some solicitation makes a ban on union solicitation discriminatory has changed over the years, and it recognizes a narrow allowance for a small number of isolated charitable acts. But the safest assumption is simple: every exception you allow is one you may have to allow for everyone.

That is why the danger is usually not the policy. It is the well-meaning manager who makes a one-off call, and the absence of any record of what was allowed and why.

Email, Slack, Teams, and other company messaging

Under the Board’s 2019 Caesars Entertainment decision, an employer may restrict non-business use of its email and other IT systems, as long as it does not discriminate against protected activity, and with an exception where company systems are the only reasonable way employees can communicate with each other. That decision remains the most recent Board standard as far as published decisions show, but it has long been a target for change, so build policies that would survive a stricter rule too.

In practice, messaging platforms create problems that bulletin boards never did:

• Social channels become the forum. A #random or #community channel where employees post fundraisers, pet photos, and side businesses is a place where the company has allowed non-business communication. Removing union posts from it, but not the rest, is discrimination.
• Employees create their own channels. Decide who may create channels, what they may be used for, and who administers them.
• Monitoring has limits. Routine monitoring under an existing, announced policy is one thing. Starting to watch channels or messages because employees are organizing can be unlawful surveillance, or create the impression of it.
• Deletion has consequences. Once a charge, complaint, or lawsuit is reasonably anticipated, relevant messages must be preserved. Auto-delete settings and casual cleanups can become spoliation problems.
• Off-duty posts on personal accounts about pay, managers, or working conditions are often protected concerted activity, even when they are unflattering.

GoFundMe and coworker fundraisers

Employees wanting to help each other is a good thing, and a policy that forbids it outright feels cold. There are three workable approaches:

1. One approved channel for hardship help. The company runs or sponsors a defined employee assistance program, and coworker fundraising goes through it. That keeps charitable solicitation in one consistent lane. Talk with a tax advisor about how to structure an employee relief fund.
2. An open non-work forum. Allow any solicitation, of any kind, in a designated social channel or on a break-room board during non-working time, and keep work channels for work. Union solicitation is then treated exactly like everything else.
3. No exceptions. Ban all solicitation during working time and on company systems, and enforce it every time. This is the cleanest legally and the hardest culturally.

What does not work is deciding case by case, based on whether a manager likes the cause.

What an exceptional policy contains

What an exceptional review process looks like

Housekeeping that matters more than people think

• Bulletin boards: decide who may post, what, and where, and remove items consistently.
• Break rooms and parking lots: confirm signs and practices match the policy.
• Vendor and sales visitors: outside solicitation by vendors you allow is part of the consistency picture.
• Managers’ group texts and chats: they are company communications about employees, and they get preserved and read in litigation.
• Onboarding and the handbook: the policy new hires sign should be the one managers actually enforce. See union organizing and the NLRB in 2026.

Navigating the tightrope

Solicitation policy is a tightrope between a workplace that feels human and a rule that holds up when it matters. Most companies fall off it through inconsistency, not bad intent. Crawford Law reviews solicitation, distribution, and messaging policies against current Board law, builds a practical exceptions and review process, trains the managers who apply it, and helps fix inconsistencies before they become charges. That is the firm’s approach to everything: deal with small problems while they are still small.