For trustees, CEOs and founders doing three jobs at once
Practical guidance for the people running small UK charities - trustees carrying legal duties alongside a day job, CEOs holding a service together with a team of two, and founders working out what they've taken on.
Every article is checked against the regulators rather than against what other people have written, and it's pitched at the scale you actually work at. Nothing here replaces advice on your own situation. It should tell you what the rules say, what they mean at your size, and what to do next.
Something needed answering on a Tuesday. The next board meeting was six weeks away, the funder wanted a response by Friday, and the chair dealt with it. Nobody objected. Nobody minuted it either. That happens in small charities constantly, and…
Small charities rarely delegate too little. They delegate constantly and write almost none of it down. The chief executive has been approving spend up to around eight thousand pounds for three years because that is roughly what feels right. No…
Legal responsibility starts the day someone is appointed, not the day they feel ready. A new trustee who has read nothing, seen no accounts and met none of the staff is still jointly responsible for every decision the board takes…
An empty trustee seat costs you nothing until it takes the board below quorum. At that point, you cannot make a valid decision, and everything waiting on one stops. That deadline is usually closer than the vacancy makes it look,…
Income decides it, mostly. Below £40,000, you usually need no external scrutiny at all. Above that, you need either an independent examination or a full audit, and most small charities can choose the examination, which is lighter and cheaper. At…
A budget is a plan for what the charity intends to do next year and what that will cost. It is not a report, a forecast, or a tidied-up version of last year. That distinction matters because it decides how…
A meeting held the wrong way produces decisions that are not valid. That is the reason to care about the mechanics of it, and it is a higher stake than the subject usually suggests. An invalid decision can be challenged…
There are two sets of questions. One set gets asked every time the board meets, because the answers move. The other attaches to fixed points in the year, because the calendar forces them. Boards that only have the second set…
A small charity does not have a risk appetite. It has a capacity, and capacity is a financial fact rather than a board preference. Five trustees, one grant covering seventy per cent of income and three months’ reserves is not…
Three answers, and they pull in different directions. Trustees are collectively responsible for making sure measures exist to protect anyone who comes into contact with the charity. The Charity Commission’s safeguarding guidance is non-statutory, so departing from it does not…