I've used the Charity Commission CC3 The Essential Trustee guidance and 25 years of being a charity trustee, chairman and board mentor to create this practical guidance on the role, duties and responsibilities of trustees of charities. There are 4 sections - Charity Commission CC3, trustee resources, support for trustees and charity trustee duties FAQs.
What Charity Commission CC3 (The Essential Trustee) is, charity trustee roles and responsibilities and the duties of trustees of a charity.
Trustees have overall control of a charity and are responsible for making sure it’s doing what it was set up to do. They may be known by other names, such as directors, board members, governors or committee members. The Board acts collectively and can delegate authority to others, such as staff or volunteers, but cannot delegate responsibility. The trustees are ultimately responsible for everything.
I think the Charity Commission trustee guidance can be a bit opaque at times, but their CC3 The Essential Trustee is is a useful introduction to your duties and responsibilities in your role as a trustee.
Charity Commission CC3 (The Essential Trustee: What's Involved) is key guidance that all charity trustees must be aware of. Charity trustees have 6 main responsibilities:
CC3 should be given to all trustees on appointment.
What you need to know will vary depending on your charity's size, role and what role you might play as a trustee but these are a good place to start.
No one would reasonably expect a charity trustee to have the expertise of a finance professional or lawyer (unless you are one), but anyone can (and should) ask, is the budget on track, what are the key risks or are we confident we're meeting our legal obligations and keeping people safe? If the answer is no, or we're not sure, then ask, what are we as the charity trustees going to do about that?
Charity Excellence enables trustee boards to ask all the question they need to, including the ones you don't yet know about, and connects you to the relevant guidance, resources and people to help you. Listed below are a selection I've made available on the website but you'll find far more within the system and everything is free.
There’s a lot more to your charity responsibilities than CC3 but the Charity Commission's guidance can be pretty opaque, so I've listed below some resources I've put online to support charity trustees.
This article explains what good charity governance is, how trustees should use the UK Charity Governance Code and gives you key questions to use as a checklist for your trustee board's governance.
Better still, just register with Charity Excellence and you can assess your governance online in 30 mins and be connected to a huge range of resources; everything is free.
Or click the AI Tech Bunny icon in the bottom right of your screen and ask it absolutely anything about running a charity, using short questions, including key words.
The Charity Commission guidance includes specific regulations on filing your online annual return, report and accounts. Here's what you need to know and do to prepare and submit yours, with links to all the resources you'll need, including the Charity Commission login.
A practical guide to charity independent examination and audit reports of charity annual accounts, including thresholds, the difference between audit and independent examination, and how to find an auditor or independent examiner, with links to all the resources and Charity Commission guidance you'll need.
There are various charity policies required by UK law and the Commission. This resource provides guidance and links to free sample policies you can use to create yours. It covers key charity policies, including financial reserves, conflict of interest, fundraising, data protection, safeguarding, whistle blowing, risk management and volunteering.
The Charity Commission takes conflict of interest very seriously. This is a sample policy template and guidance for charity trustee boards, with links to other related Charity Commission and Charity Excellence resources.
This resource provides an example reserves policy template, explains why a reserves policy is important, what you should include, the different types of financial reserves, questions to ask yourself and links to resources to help you. It is a simple guide to the Charity Commission CC19 guidance on reserves and is aimed primarily at small charities.
You can download these and many more policies in Word format. Register, login, click the in-system AI Bunny icon, then the Policies button and tell it what policy template you want.
How to find and recruit charity trustees for a charity board can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. This practical guide gives you everything you need, including links to organisations who will help you find and recruit trustees for free.
We faces huge challenges and need to appoint the best amongst us to lead. To do that, we need to recruit from the biggest possible pool of trustee candidates - the whole community. As a sector, we don't, but how can any charity board claim to represent its community, if it isn't representative of it? This practical guide explains what the issues are and how to address these.
This resource enables charity trustees to understand the Fundraising Regulator and Charity Commission CC20 regulations and guidance on fundraising and donations, as well as other laws, legislation and regulations.
Many charity trustees find fundraising a challenge and others are simply not able to make a significant financial donation. However, there are lots of opportunities for them to support your work, many that are easy and anyone can do. Here are 20+ of my own.
Plus, use Funding Finder, to find a huge range of grants and Help Finder to find lots of free fundraising support and also companies that make product/financial donations. There's a fundraising online health check, with 100+downloadable funder lists, and huge resource base of policies and templates. Quick, simple and everything is free.
To find the funding and free help you need - Register Now
A practical, 3 step strategic plan template and guide to create your charity's strategy, including how to carry out your PESTLE and SWOT analysis, with examples.
A simple to use charity fundraising strategy template that gives you a simple 4 step process and examples to create your fundraising strategic plan that anyone can use.
This practical, planning template (with examples) enables anyone to create a great charity annual business, or project plan, including how to set objectives and targets, reporting, communications and a simple checklist to enable you to ensure it will be a success.
For the financial planning toolkits and resources, see the Finance Index.
We need effective charity trustee board and management fundraising, finance and other reporting for good decision making, but writing reports is often very time consuming and all too often these are not acted upon, or sometimes even read. Here are 12 ways in which to ensure that your reports are effective and have impact and take less time to write.
A practical step-by-step guide to impact reporting for charities. The real value in having an impact report, what impact is, measurement, evaluation, what to include, how to make impact reports really effective and how to create and publish a great charity impact report. Not least for your funders. This resource provides a simple example template that anyone can use.
This resource provides simple plain English explanations of a whole range of charity and management terms that are often used, but not always understood. It's a less extensive version of the list in-system.
Completely free, Charity Excellence works for any charity and requires no expertise to use. It provides a huge range of support for trustees, from an online governance health check and resources to finding funding and free help.
A registered charity ourselves, we provide 8 online health checks, the huge information hub, Quality Mark and 3 online directories.
Fast, Simple & Everything Is Free
To find the funding and free help you need – Register Now
In addition to the 6 systems within Charity Excellence, we provide a range of free Artificial Intelligence (AI) services.
Just click the AI tech bunny icon in the bottom right of any web page or in-system and tell it what you need. Ask as many questions as you wish to, they're free, available 24/7 and will not collect any personal information. Register and login and the in-system AI Bunny can also write funding bids and download policies for you in Word format.
This section provides governance and trustee FAQs that answer the most common questions asked about being a charity trustee.
I am not an accountant, nor a lawyer and no advice can be applicable to all organisations, in all circumstances, so this resource is no more than a guide to understanding. I've summarised the regulatory guidance and augmented this with my own experience and Internet research, but I am not competent to provide professional advice. I have included links to the source guidance to enable you to check this yourself and, if you think you might need professional advice, use Help Finder to find pro bono support.