New Charity Guidance, Forms, Templates and Fundraising Agreements

Two new folders of documents have been added to the Simply-docs Charities and Non Profit group; Charity Start-up and Professional Fundraiser Agreements. These documents include detailed guidance notes and template documents useful to both new and existing charities.

Charity Start-up

This new folder includes the following 5 sets of detailed guidance notes;

Guidance Notes - What makes an organisation a charity in law?
These guidance notes will assist charity founders to clarify a fundamental point to be settled before taking any step to set up thier planned organisation – whether or not the planned organisation will have charitable status in law.

Guidance Notes - Formalities Required On Business Documents Used By Charities
These guidance notes provide information on the legal requirements for a charity’s business documents to contain certain content. Failure to include that content can amount to a criminal offence.

Guidance Notes - Volunteer Charity Fundraising Groups

Guidance Notes - Public Charitable Collections: Charity Officers Acting As Fundraisers

Guidance Notes - Complaint Procedures
These guidance notes include information about complaints procedures and the Charity Commission’s recommendations about adopting such a formal procedure. The guidance notes are accompanied by two new forms of complaint procedures for large or small charities to adopt; Complaint Procedure (large) and Complaint Procedure (small).

There are also two new forms in this folder which have to be completed by those individuals who are appointed as the first trustees of a charity; the Trustee Declaration of Eligibility Form CSD 1382 and the Trustee Confirmation of Eligibility and Responsibility Registration Form CC5c.

Professional Fundraiser Agreements

Many charities retain independent professional fundraising businesses either to solicit donations for them or to recruit prospective donors to them, or to run other types of fundraising programmes for them. Such arrangements are required by charity law to be set out in written agreements and those agreements must include certain content. The Professional Fundraiser Agreement (Individual Donors) covers fundraising programmes consisting of recruitment of individuals who make donations to the charity, and the Professional Fundraiser Agreement (Organisations) covers the recruitment of organisations as donors to the charity. These template agreements comply with all relevant charity law requirements (including the requirement for the fundraiser to make certain statements in the course of its fundraising activities) and they set out comprehensive terms on which charities might engage such fundraising businesses.