The ever-growing charity sector continues to play an increasingly central role in our society. Individuals, businesses, third sector and public bodies are establishing new charities, aiming at taking advantage of opportunities to provide public services, address social need where existing provision is lacking, or to restructure or formalise existing operations.
At the same time, the pressures of an increasingly complex legal and regulatory framework governing charities, combined with public funding shortages for the third sector, make the landscape in which new charities operate ever more challenging.
You need to get the best start when it comes to setting up a charity. You need expert legal advice which considers the wider context you will operate in following charity registration, which is able to pre-empt issues you might face further down the line and which puts you on the right path to running a successful organisation.
Our charity lawyers have lots of experience when it comes to setting up new charities, across the whole spectrum of sub-sectors and in a range of legal forms. We can guide you through the start-up process from helping you analyse whether a charity is right for you, to completing the registrations with the Charity Commission of England and Wales and, where appropriate, other UK charity regulators.
Our aim is to help you set up a fully-functioning charity, with a constitution-tailored for your proposed activities and governance arrangements, which is flexible enough to allow these to develop over time. You will wish to avoid taking further legal advice in your charity's early years and we aim to identify any potential legal and governance issues you might face and cater for these at the outset. We also have a number of templates and off-the-shelf advice notes to help get you started, as well as being able to offer additional support services, such as our bespoke company secretarial service for charities.
Please see our guidance note on legal structures for new charities and on setting up a new charity.
A charity start-up is a collaborative process and we will always work with you to identify areas of the process you could do yourself in order to keep legal costs to a minimum. Due to the large number of charities we have successfully registered, we also understand the Charity Commission's approach to registrations, which helps us to ensure the process goes as smoothly (and cost-effectively) as possible for you.
Our charity lawyers have a broad variety of legal expertise and offer a full legal service to the charity sector.
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