Rachel is an experienced and committed adviser to a diverse range of charities, supporting with all aspects of charity law, regulation and governance.
Rachel helps trustees to comply with their legal duties on a wide range of charity projects, transactions and operations, including structural and constitutional change. She provides pragmatic and commercially focused advice on trading activities and relationships with subsidiary companies; financial and social investment; and funding and fundraising related matters.
Clients come to Rachel for her expertise in resolving difficult and technical issues raised by endowments and restricted assets, trust structures, investment and funding arrangements and historic constitutions. She enjoys helping clients navigate the complexities of their legal structures and the charity law regime, providing practical support with decision-making and with structuring operations to take advantage of opportunities and make the best use of charitable assets.
Having acted on a number of charity start-up projects, Rachel is also well placed to help you with the creation of new charitable and not-for-profit companies and trusts or with the incorporation of your existing charity.
Rachel has a particular interest in advising charities in the higher education sector on charity law and governance issues, including structuring non-charitable activities and the commercialisation of research; investment and endowments; philanthropic funding; students' unions; and strategic projects involving connected charities and companies. She advises on compliance with Office for Students regulatory obligations and has supported with a number of significant projects to modernise university governing documents. Rachel understands the perspective of in-house teams, having undertaken a secondment to a university client.
Rachel provides training to charity boards and in-house legal, governance and fundraising teams on a range of charity law, governance and regulatory matters.
Rachel is based in our Bristol office but can support you nationally.
Very pleased with Rachel Tonkin - the complete package!
What others say
Rachel is recognised for her expertise by Legal 500 as a 'Next Generation' partner.
What you might like to know
Rachel is a member of the Charity Law Association.
She provided legal support to the Law Commission with its reviews of Social Investment by Charities and Technical Issues in Charity Law.
Rachel has experience as a charity trustee and is currently a school governor.
Other teams Rachel works with
Rachel works collaboratively with our corporate and commercial teams on strategic projects involving charities, where charity law considerations often impact on the structure and/or commercial terms. She regularly works alongside our specialist charity property lawyers on transactions involving charity land and experts in our Regulatory Compliance team on a range of matters affecting charity operations.
