Ringing Forums

I think a smart approach to this would be to fin a person who is either
a) familiar with, or
b) is willing to spend time and effort to become familiar with
the legal framework within which charities are legally bound to operate.
There are many "ready made opinions" about this but unfortunately many of them are not in accordance with the Charities Act 2011.
E.g. - there is a question being raised in your text above about "named trustees". This is what the Charities Act 2011 has to say about "who are the trustees in a charity":
"About charity trustees
Trustees have overall control of a charity and are responsible for making sure it’s doing what it was set up to do. They may be known by other titles, such as:

- directors
- board members
- governors
- committee members

Whatever they are called, trustees are the people who lead the charity and decide how it is run. Being a trustee means making decisions that will impact on people’s lives. Depending on what the charity does, you will be making a difference to your local community or to society as a whole."

I know that there is a belief that as long as we have named a few trustees, those are the only ones that can be landed with any form of liability. Reading the definition above, maybe not......

Also - depending on what type charity you are, your organization may not even be able to legally own anything. And I have seen questions around whether certain types of charities can enter into contracts (e.g. buy insurance) with legal effect.

Just a few examples - the entire framework can be quite a quagmire to wade through. Whatever choice you make - you really should be able to explain to the membership in a clear and coherent manner what the "charity" stamp on your group really means and how it should operate.

Stephanie, we're currently in the process of registering the Winchester School of Bell Ringing as a CIO as we wish to employ a part-time administrator like the Mancroft Ringing Discovery Centre and teaching centre at St Clements Cambridge do.

However in terms of your Association I wonder whether it is really necessary to convert to a CIO. There are not the same risks of owning/leasing property or employing staff. I think it also depends on what you see the roles of the Trustees to be, and what the roles of the Association Officers are, and how they should interact.

The former Central Council Bell Restoration Funds Committee used to encourage Guilds and Associations to register their whole society as a charity. They also carried out a triennial survey of BRF's, the last of which was 1994-6. The Charity Commission encourages trustees to spend their funds on delivering their charitable purposes, not accumulate large reserves, and in the 1996 survey of BRF's there was about 5.3 years worth of reserves held in BRF's

Income and expenditure figures for each registered charity are now published on the Charity Commission website, and since 2009 I have been working with Simon Linford and others on the Ringing Foundation and CRAG to maintain a spreadsheet with these figures, and to research what is happening. The two thirds of societies where just the BRF is a registered charity are easier to analyse and in the latest three year period there was an average annual income of £290,439, and an average spend of just £200,614. This trend has been going on for so long that there are now 20.2 years of reserves locked up in those BRF's without any more money coming in. Much of that surplus is invested in short term deposit accounts with poor investment returns.

As so many ringers are pensioners, or saving for retirement, I am surprised that so many BRF trustees do not invest their reserves elsewhere for better returns, or spend them on their charitable purposes, or take proper external investment advice, as the Charity Commission requires them to do (Perhaps a role here for the CCCBR to help). The ageing ringing population is also giving rise to five and six figure bequests, adding to the accumulation of reserves, whilst the amount spent is relatively static and going down in real terms. The Keltek Trust spends its bequests as soon as practical and the Association of Ringing Teachers has a policy to hold only 1 - 2 years worth of expenditure in reserve.

Charity trustees are also required to keep the objects of their charity under review, and at a time when we have a surplus of bells and shortage of ringers, they ought to be spending more resources on recruitment and training initiatives. A typical £5,000 grant for a restoration/augmentation project at one tower could benefit many more towers instead.

Therefore I think it important that you need to be clear on what the most important issues affecting your association going forward are, what the risks are, where resources are best deployed and what the respective roles of the trustees and officers need to be. You also ought to talk to the other societies where the whole Guild/Association is a registered charity to see how they operate. I see for example that the Essex Association has 15 Trustees and the Gloucester and Bristol has 20 Trustees. Their annual returns are published on the Charity Commission website, with the following reference numbers:

Carlisle Diocesan Guild 512111
Chester Diocesan Guild 1148441
Essex Association 292250
Gloucester and Bristol Diocesan Association 281431
Lichfield & Walsall Archdeaconry Society 1095998
Peterborough Diocesan Guild 258271-1
Suffolk Guild 266869
Truro Diocesan Guild 268122
Sussex County Association 268588
Bedfordshire - Association 263781
Durham and Newcastle Diocesan Association 507497
East Derbyshire & West Nottinghamshire Association 513642
East Grinstead and District Guild 280023

Thanks both. We are already aware of the various points you have made, and myself and the Treasurer (particularly the latter!) are already very familiar with the revant Charity Commission guidance and rules. Our entire Association is a charity (and has been for decades), not just the BRF, which I agree is probably slightly unusual. I suspect more associations/guilds with the same arrangement might have the same issues and concerns if their trustees actually realised what their potential liability is, but from what I've gathered, it sounds like some officers aren't aware that they are trustees.