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Running your charity guidance

The Running your charity series of guides (available in the sidebar) offer practical advice for both new and experienced trustees, as well as professionals who support charities.

Key considerations

  • Whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been a charity trustee for years this overview is for anyone who is interested in running a charity. 

    It explains how a charity is legally defined and who regulates charities in Northern Ireland. It also sets out what topics are covered in more detail in the four main guides: 

     

    Each guide contains links to more resources and guidance that can support you in your role as a charity trustee. 

  • Charity trustees are the people who control and manage a charity. They serve on the charity’s board or management committee. The charity trustees usually include a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer, but they may also include governors, directors, committee members and people with other job titles.

    Charity trustees make decisions about what your charity does, how it spends its money and how it uses its other resources.

    The trustees must act ‘collectively’. This means that each of them is responsible for running the charity. A trustee must not act on their own unless the whole board of trustees has delegated that action to that trustee.

    In their work, charity trustees follow two sets of formal rules:

    1. The charity’s governing document that sets out: 
    •    the charity’s purposes 
    •    how the charity should be managed and run
    •    how to appoint trustees
    •    how many times a year the charity will meet 
    •    what happens if the charity needs to close.

    It usually says how many charity trustees make up a quorum – that is, how many trustees have to be at a meeting to allow legally binding decisions to be made. 

    2. The law that governs the type of charity - In Northern Ireland, this always includes the Charities Act. Depending on your charity’s legal structure, the trustees may also have to keep to other laws, for example, the Companies Act 2006 (for charitable companies) and the Trustees Acts (NI) 1958 and 2001.

    Read guide 2 to find out more about:

    •    Who can (and who can’t) be a charity trustee
    •    Which people in a charity are its trustees
    •    What charity trustees do
    •    What your legal responsibilities are as a charity trustee.

  • Public benefit is at the heart of what it means to be a charity. It’s about who your charity helps and what difference it makes to them. The law defines ‘public’ and ‘benefit’ in a particular way, and we explain this in guide 3. 

    To be a registered charity in Northern Ireland, all your organisation’s purposes must: 
    •    fall under one or more of the 12 descriptions of charitable purposes in the Charities Act, and 
    •    be for the public benefit.

    This is called the public benefit requirement. More information on meeting the public benefit requirement here.

    As a charity trustee, you’ll need to meet the public benefit requirement whenever you make decisions and fulfil your responsibilities. Examples include deciding what activities your charity will do and how it will use its resources. Our guidance on meeting the public benefit will support you to do this. 

    You’ll also need to be able to explain what public benefit comes from each of your charity’s purposes. This involves answering the following questions:
    •    What direct benefits come from my charity’s purposes?
    •    How can I show that my charity is providing these benefits?
    •    Who does my charity help?
    •    Does any harm come from any of my charity’s purposes?
    •    Does any private benefit come from any of my charity’s purposes? Is this benefit incidental and necessary?

    We’ve published guidance and toolkits to help you understand, explain and report on the public benefit requirement. 

    •    If you want to register a charity: Use The public benefit requirement: statutory guidance and the Purposes and public benefit toolkit to explain how it meets the public benefit requirement. These are available on the Registration support page of our website. 

    •    If your charity is already registered: The [Name of toolkit] will help you show how your charity is creating public benefit in your annual report (the report you send us each year). This is available on the Annual reporting page of our website.

    Read here for more information about:

    •    What the public benefit requirement is
    •    How to show your charity meets the public benefit requirement
    •    How to run your charity for the public benefit. 

     

  • Charities are more effective when people trust them and have confidence in their work. Part of our role is to maintain this trust in charities and the charity sector. 

    Each charity that is registered with us has an entry on our register of charities, which is available to the public. For openness about how charities are run, we publish the trustees’ names on the register unless there’s a good reason not to. As a trustee, you need to keep your charity’s entry on the register up to date, including the names of its trustees. 

    You also need to report to us every year on your charity’s finances, resources and activities. This is known as annual reporting. 

    To do this, you’ll need to fill in an online annual monitoring return and return it to us with:

    • your charity’s accounts
    • the trustees’ annual report
    •  a report from an independent examiner or auditor.

     

    We then publish your annual accounts and reports in your charity’s entry on the register.

    Read guide 4 for more information about: 

    •  keeping your charity details up to date on the register of charities.
    • managing your charity’s finances.
    •  annual reporting.
    •  raising money for your charity.
    • closing or merging your charity.

  • Good governance is about making sure your charity is well managed, keeps to the law and regulations, and continuously tries to improve. It’s important for any charity’s success.

    Your charity will need systems and processes to keep it moving in the right direction and fulfilling its purposes effectively. To keep your charity running smoothly, you’ll need to lead your charity, be accountable (answer for your actions), and manage the charity’s resources in the best way. 

    Even the best-run charities face problems from time to time, and it’s impossible to remove risks entirely. However, you do need to reduce them as much as possible and manage them appropriately. 

    Read our guide 5 to find out how to develop good governance in your charity. It explains how to manage risks and, if things do go wrong, how to report serious incidents to us and other regulators. 

Documents

Running your charity guides

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