Charity governance and commercial

Our team of specialist charity lawyers can advise you on all commercial aspects of charity law and regulation. We support charities and their trustees to deliver their mission.

All charities need an up-to-date constitution and effective governance arrangements to enable trustees to manage them well and remain compliant. Our specialist charity solicitors work with you to make sure your governance documents are clear, flexible and reflect best practice. We also work with charities with different structures, including Royal Charter corporations and Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies.

Charity governance

We advise on all aspects of charity governance, including constitutional reviews and reviewing or implementing the full suite of governance policies. We can carry out a bespoke charity governance review and help you implement change. We provide trustee training and updates to help trustees understand their legal duties and identify best practice.

We seek to help resolve cases of governance disputes, including disputes between trustees and staff, or between trustees and members. 

We are experienced in liaising with the Charity Commission and obtaining consents, schemes and orders. For example, consents to pay trustees, or to amend your governing document. 

Some charities have complex arrangements for holding assets. We help charities make the best use of assets held subject to permanent endowment. 

Supporting your operations

We seek to understand your charity’s ambitions and business model and help protect your assets and mitigate risks arising from your activities. We advise on all types of commercial agreements and help negotiate contracts and identify and to manage commercial risk.

We also help protect your charity’s brand and intellectual property and ensure you comply with the law, regulation and best practice in fundraising activities. We can advise on how to meet requirements when you obtain and hold data.

Fundraising

We advise charities on navigating fundraising law and regulations, working with third party fundraisers, corporate supporters, and running lotteries. We have experience working with the Fundraising Regulator and supporting charities in their registration or handling of complaints. 

Collaborations and mergers

Charities often collaborate and increasingly this requires a more formal approach, whether establishing a joint venture or entering into a collaboration or consortium agreement. We understand the vehicle dynamics of working with other organisations, while ensuring each charity preserves its identity.

We regularly advise on charity mergers and understand the sensitivities that can arise. We help guide trustees and executive teams on the process, from initial discussions to considering future governance structures to implementation.

• Incorporation: If your charity is unincorporated we can help you decide whether to incorporate, taking into account your organisation’s risks.
• Charity Commission investigations:We are very familiar with the Charity Commission and have advised many charities and their trustees on regulatory action taken by the Commission. We can help trustees navigate regulatory compliance cases, challenging decisions where required to protect your charity and its reputation.
• Charity trading: We can advise on when a trading subsidiary may be required, help you establish a trading vehicle and manage the relationship between the charity and its subsidiary.

Working overseas

We also have particular experience helping international and not for profit charities and charities that conduct work overseas.

We can help you with:

• amending your governing document
• governance reviews, policies and trustee training
• changing your legal structure and incorporation
• mergers, joint ventures and collaborations
• negotiating commercial contracts
• making serious incident reports to the Charity Commission
• responding to a Charity Commission investigation or inquiry
• setting up a trading subsidiary
• grant making, including grants to overseas entities or non-charities
• fundraising arrangements and regulatory compliance
• complying with data protection requirements
• structuring or working internationally
• trade mark registrations
• charitable investments
  

We are a specialist team of charity lawyers, working only with charities and not-for-profits. This means we have deep sector knowledge and experience, understanding not just the law, but the approach of regulators and the environment charities operate in. Many of our team are charity trustees themselves, so know first-hand the challenges you are facing. 

Charges are based on hourly rates plus administrative charges and disbursements but we’re flexible and are happy to discuss charging rates in relation to your budget for a particular piece of work. Where there is unpredictability or for the initial stages of a project, we’ll provide an estimate of your likely legal costs and will update this as your requirements or the circumstances of the work change.

For work where we can predict or clearly anticipate the work to be done, we can also act on a fixed or capped fee basis.

We’re happy to discuss your requirements free of charge and will then provide an estimate of costs.