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.
Most small charities that feel behind on digital fundraising are not behind on tools. They are running the steps out of order. The pattern repeats. A charity signs up to a platform, sets up a campaign page, posts about it,…
You have been handed the accounts pack. Forty pages. Numbers in columns. Words you half-recognise. And in two weeks, you are being asked to sign it off as a trustee. Most trustees inherit accounting responsibility this way. Nobody walks them…
A step-by-step guide to registering with the Charity Commission for England and Wales Registering a charity in England and Wales follows a clear sequence: settle what your organisation is for, choose a structure, get your objects and governing document right,…
Money inside a charity is not all the same. Some of it is bound by the people who gave it. Some is free for trustees to direct. And some has been earmarked by the trustees themselves, which looks like the…
A volunteer offers to help. You say yes. In that moment, your charity has taken on a set of duties, and the board may not have noticed any of them. Articles about volunteers are usually about finding more of them.…
Small charities tend to arrive at one of two places. Either three policies and some gaps, or thirty downloaded templates nobody has read since the day they were adopted. Both look like a policy problem. Neither is. The useful question…
An impact report is a document a charity produces voluntarily for its donors, funders and supporters, setting out what its work achieved over a period. There is no legal requirement to produce one. The statutory document is the trustees’ annual…
Google Ad Grants gives eligible charities $10,000 US a month in free Google Search advertising. Not £7,500, and not cash – it’s credit that can only be spent on text ads in Google Search, and any of it you don’t…
A local business offers your charity money. Before you accept, one question decides most of what follows: what does the business get back? If the answer is nothing beyond a thank you, HMRC will normally treat the payment as a…
These are two different things, and the names do a good job of hiding that. The trustees’ annual report is a document you write. The annual return is a form you fill in online. Both are due ten months after…