Setting up a charity & registration

Setting up a new charity is exciting. We want to hear about your vision and mission and we’d be delighted to help you realise them.

Setting up a charity can also be a daunting task; only around half of the applications made to the Charity Commission to register a new charity are successful, and the process can take several months to complete.

Whether your charity is local, national or global, we can help you navigate the system and support you on every step of the journey.

We want to understand what’s driving your project, what your key goals are, and how we can help you achieve them.

We’ll advise you on:

• whether charitable status is the best fit for your organisation, or whether there are any other options you may want to consider what type of legal structure to choose—whether charitable incorporated organisation, company limited by guarantee, trust, unincorporated association or another structure
• what type of governance model to adopt and who will have what decision making power over the organisation
• the drafting of your charity’s governing document
• the completion of the Charity Commission’s application form
• any specific issues you need us to consider – for example:
• how to link the charity to another organisation and how the Charity Commission will view this;
• founder’s rights;
• how trustees may be paid in certain circumstances;
• what provisions you’ll need to make for people with limited financial means, if people will usually pay to access your services.

Our charity law and not-for-profit law team acts for some of the best-known charities in the country, but we also act for small, local organisations.  We understand the sector, how different charities operate, and how the Charity Commission works.

We’ve helped set up hundreds of charities of all shapes and sizes with purposes ranging from the promotion of biological diversity in the Yorkshire Dales to the advancement of education in contemporary Arab art.
We also regularly help clients who’ve previously had a charity application rejected to secure registration.

Strong specialist knowledge conveyed in ways that make sense, with a very can-do approach; looking at how to make something happen, rather than presenting the barriers that need to be overcome.
The Legal 500 (2025)

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.