Working with a charity recently, it\u2019s still clear that many Trustees (and board), do not understand the Public Benefit requirements.\u00a0 It\u2019s a dry topic certainly, but an important one (as it is a legal requirement).\u00a0 It\u2019s also a good litmus test as to how your board and your Trustees are keeping on top of technical details about running the charity.<\/p>\n
In essence, to exist as a charity, you \u201cneed to have only charitable purposes which must be for the public benefit\u201d.\u00a0 And whilst your board and trustees are operating the charity, then you must continue to make sure this is the case.\u00a0 And finally, any annual reporting must confirm that the charity has conformed to the public benefit requirement.<\/p>\n
If your annual report doesn\u2019t include a public benefit statement, then make sure it does next time.\u00a0 If you as a Trustee don\u2019t understand it, then please make sure you do.<\/p>\n
Where to learn about this\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s all on the Charity Commission website. The complete<\/a> \u2013 explains everything \u2013 guide is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to look at \u2013 the overview, the requirements, how to operate as a charity using public benefit requirements and how to report on it. To do<\/strong><\/p>\n Need help?<\/strong><\/p>\n If you need it, we (VANEL<\/strong>) can brief your board\/trustees on Public Benefit, check over any statement you may have already written, and give basic guidance on what you should be doing.\u00a0 Give us a 15 minute slot in your board meeting, or arrange a quick one-to-one with us.\u00a0 \u00a310 for the session for VANEL Members or Friends.\u00a0 Contact Karl Elliott (karl@vanel.org.uk<\/a>, 01472 231123).<\/p>\n Remember that the definitive advise comes from the Charity Commission.<\/p>\n\n All charities, and all Trustees need to be aware of, comply with and report on the Public Benefit compliance of their charity. Do you? Do you need to know more about this? Read some detail and advice on public benefit here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"xn-wppe-expiration":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-action":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-prefix":[],"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3cThd-PL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3209"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3211,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209\/revisions\/3211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSimple summary here<\/a> \u2013 read this first.<\/p>\n
\nAll of the wording is online, but many parts are also available as downloads (for example, an overview is here<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n