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What policies should a charity have? The charity policies required by UK law and the Charity Commission depend on your role and activities. This resource explains the most common charity policies and procedures charities need and guidance and links to free charity policy templates you can use to create yours. It includes a list of all the charity policies and procedures you can download in Word format from within Charity Excellence for free. It also includes links to the Charity Commission guidance and rules relating to policies, and guidance on the policies the Charity Commission wants, and those for staff, grant makers, and AI.
Every charity/non profit needs a set of policies to manage risk, meet legal requirements, and demonstrate good governance to regulators, funders, and partners.
But having a policy is not enough – it needs to be relevant, up to date, and actually used in practice.
Listed below is the Charity Commission policy guidance that I am most frequently asked about, but this list is by no means exhaustive. I have created charity policies for each of these that meet their requirements and include links back to the relevant Charity Commission guidance.
And the Charity Commission isn't the only relevant regulator. Others include HMRC, the Fundraising Regulator. There are also others that are relevant for charities in specific sectors, such as DFE, CQC and the Electoral Commission.
You can download any of our 65+ other non profit policies by clicking the button below. Other organisations also produce policies but charge at least £100 to access these. All of our policies are free.
Our policies have been updated to be 'AI Ready' where necessary.
Other areas:
The policies you might need depend on a range of factors, including which regulators you have, the activities you undertake, staffing, and even your own culture. As you score our health check questionnaires (all 8 should take no more than a couple of hours), the system will help you ask yourself the questions you need to and connect you to policy downloads and a whole range of other resources too. Complete all 8 to qualify for our free Quality Mark.
And Charity Excellence does a lot more than that. It's one-stop shop for anything your charity might need.
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The Charity Commission lists a series of policies that you complete as part of your annual return. This list is broad and not always tailored to individual charities, so not every policy will be relevant. You can download any of these by logging in the Charity Excellence.
Here's the list: risk management, investment, safeguarding, conflicting interests, volunteer management, complaint handling, paying staff, social media, financial reserves, external speakers, bullying, serious incident reporting, trustee expenses and campaigns and political activity.
There is no single list but this is my own list of some of the most common/key policies that charities have.
Plus key staff policies if you employ people, such as disciplinary, grievance and capability. The top 10 most popular policies downloaded (in priority order) are: Safeguarding, Data Protection, Financial Reserves, AI Policy, Volunteer Agreement, Conflict of Interest, Code of Conduct, Complaints, Volunteer Recruitment and Risk Management.
Very few policies are explicitly required by law, but charities must still comply with all relevant laws (e.g. safeguarding, data protection, employment), and policies are the main way to demonstrate this. The specific legal requirements may vary depending on the nature of the activities your charity undertakes and the countries in which it operates.
You will always wish to think about any health and safety policies you might need and if you have staff a health and safety policy statement is a good idea may be a regulatory requirement. Equally, with staff, you'll need to think about policies such as grievance, disciplinary and capability. The Acas website has lots of guidance, downloadable policy templates and a free help line.
I have created policies that cover almost anything you might need and each has been written to be fully compliant with Charity Commission E&W guidance.
If you work with children or vulnerable adults, you must have a Safeguarding policy. What others you might need depends on your cause on and role. If you complete the system health checks, it'll enable you to decide what you might needs but here's some guidance.
Data Protection and a Volunteer Recruitment and Selection policies are often very useful.
The most common policy required by grant makers is safeguarding. If you work with children or vulnerable adults this is a must have anyway. If you want to cover the most common, these are probably safeguarding, plus possibly data protection (GDPR), financial controls, conflicts of interest, equality/EDI and complaints policy but they sometimes ask for some weird and wonderful ones. One I've heard of wanted a modern slavery policy, which is only a requirement if your income exceeds £36m pa. That's why we created one, even though the vast majority of charities would never need it.
If you are a grant maker, you should have a grant making policy. Grant makers don't often specify policies they expect potential grantees to hold.
The banks can be a real pain and may ask a whole series of detailed questions, when opening an account or as part of their know your customer processes. Particularly, if you work overseas in areas such as Pakistan, Somalia or Afghanistan. I've written a guide with links to people to help you, templates etc. I've also created charity policies for anti money laundering, anti bribery and due diligence (for sanctions) that you can download by logging in.
A non-exhaustive checklist of common policies that may need updating with notes to help you. We have been updating all of our policy downloads to reflect emerging AI requirements since 2023, so all are 'AI ready'. We try to keep the AI sections separate within our policies to allow charities to extract and use these in their existing policies, if they wish to do so.
| Policy | AI Relevance / Explanatory Notes |
| Data Protection & Privacy | Include compliance with Data Protection Act and ICO guidance on AI and data protection. Address how AI systems process personal data, retention and security, consent, and transparency. |
| Equality, Diversity & Inclusion | Prevent algorithmic bias and discrimination in AI systems. Ensure fairness and inclusivity in AI-driven decisions. |
| Complaints | Add procedures for handling complaints about AI-generated decisions or content, including contestability and redress. Reworded to manage the growing use of AI to submit 20+ page long complaints using quasi-legal language. |
| Safeguarding | Cover risks from AI misuse (e.g., deepfakes, scams) that could harm vulnerable beneficiaries or staff. |
| Fundraising | Reflect Fundraising Regulator guidance on AI use. Human review of AI-generated fundraising content, including AI bid writing. Fundraising bot safeguards for vulnerable people. |
| HR & Recruitment | Address AI use in recruitment (e.g., automated screening) and ensure compliance with equality laws. Include transparency and fairness in AI-assisted hiring. |
| Social Media & Communications | Add rules for AI-generated content, ensuring it is clearly identified and ethically used. Safeguards to mitigate deepfake use. |
| Risk Management | Integrate AI risk analysis, including bias, misinformation, cyber security threats, and environmental impact. |
| Governance | Define board oversight for AI decisions and annual review of AI performance and ethics. |
| Imagery Ethics | Responsible use of AI-generated images, avoiding misrepresentation and ensuring cultural sensitivity. |
| Financial Controls | Ensure AI tools in finance are monitored and audited for accuracy and compliance. Scams, including deepfake. |
| Grant Making | Transparency and fairness in AI-assisted decisions, with human oversight. Guidance on use of AI in applications. |
| Procurement | Ensure ethical sourcing of AI tools and services, compliance with charity procurement rules, and vendor transparency. |
| IT Use | Define acceptable use of AI systems, security protocols, and monitoring to prevent misuse and ensure compliance. |
| Consent to Use Imagery | Extend consent to cover any potential sharing/input with internal or external AI systems. AI will not be used to create content using real people. |
A registered charity ourselves, the CEF works for any non profit, not just charities.
Plus, 65+ policies, 8 online health checks, the Quality Mark and the huge resource base. Our AI Ready programme and our 11 free online AI training courses.
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I am not an accountant, nor a lawyer and no advice can be applicable to all organisations, in all circumstances, so this guide to charity policies 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, register, then login and use the Help Finder directory to find pro bono support. Everything is free.
