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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30154
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I agree with most of what others have said. Let me just add:

Unless your goal is to attack this organization, what do you gain by using a real organization?

You're obviously aware of the danger: As someone else said, even if you don't see your portrayal of the group as trashing it, they might. Even if their case is absurd, if they take you to court, you have to pay lawyers to defend yourself, and maybe no matter how absurd you think it is, a judge or jury will agree with them.

So what's the up-side? If the organization is very well known, maybe you can get a short cut on explaining the back story. Like if you write, "Bob went to Kentucky Fried Chicken", you don't have to explain that this is a fast food restaurant that serves chicken. But this can also be a drawback. What if some real fact about this group clashes with what you need for your story? Or what if out of ignorance you make inaccurate statements about the group? Someone who knows more about the group than you do might find your story jarring because you say things that don't make sense. That could be trivia, like, "What? He says the hero visited the president of the group and stood in his office looking out the window?? But the president's office doesn't have any windows ...". Or it could be more substantive. Like I've read stories that talk about groups that I'm a part of and I often find myself saying, "No, that's not why we opposed the XYZ Bill. It had nothing to do with the money, it was all about the ethical issue ..." etc.

You will automatically drag in reader's opinions about the real group. If you talk about, say, the Catholic Church, presumably real Catholics will automatically have positive thoughts and real atheists will have negative thoughts.

And if you use a real group and say anything negative about them at all, you risk alienating potential readers. We live in divisive times. If I open a novel and there's a reference to my religion or a political party, I am instantly on edge. If I'm in the mood for a fun adventure story or an intriguing mystery, I don't want to read a diatribe against things that I believe in. There are times when I am happy to get into a rip-roaring debate, but there are also times when I'd just rather not. I've often tossed books aside because they got into religious or political or social debates that I was just not in the mood for, I wanted to read some light fiction.

Using a real group doesn't really add to the realism of a story. I've never heard someone say, "That movie was totally unbelievable because there is no such company as Wayne Industries. I checked every stock exchange in the country and it's not listed on any of them." Readers of fiction readily accept fictional companies, fictional religions, even entire fictional nations.

I suppose I'd use a real group when it's a group that monopolizes that "area" so that supposing a fictional group could be jarring. Like if I needed to refer to American politics, I might mention Congress and the president, because trying to talk about "the United State Parliament" or the "king of the United States" would be too jarring. Unless this is an alternate history story or something, readers know that the US doesn't have a king and a parliament. But outside of major organs of government, I'm hard pressed to think of examples. I wouldn't balk at a fictional agency within the government. Life if a novel said that the spy worked for the National Intelligence Bureau -- a name I just made up, I don't think there's any such group -- few readers would hesitate over it for a moment.

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