Charity Commission attempts to help trustees understand their financial responsibilities

The Charity Commission has updated its financial guidance, which aims to ensure that trustees understand their financial responsibilities when running a charity.

The new guidelines – Charity finances: trustee essentials (CC25) – are part of the Commission’s campaign to ensure trustees are able to properly protect their charity’s assets and resources.

Paula Sussex, Chief Executive at the Charity Commission said: “Robust financial management is vital to ensure that charities are able to meet the needs of their beneficiaries and also to increase public trust and confidence in the charitable sector.

“We’ve seen in our casework that weak financial governance can be extremely destabilising for charities, affect their ability to operate, and leave them vulnerable to fraud and abuse. It is vital that trustees are familiar with the charity’s governing document, understand the finances, ensure control and procedures are in place and work, and ask the right – and sometimes difficult – questions.

“We are making a concerted and deliberate effort to support trustees where we identify weaknesses and providing readable and easily understandable guidance is vital to this. We also recognise that trustees often don’t have the time or resources to read multiple lengthy documents on good practice.

“Charity finances: trustee essentials will act as the ‘go-to’ financial publication that trustees and charity staff can refer to, to address any knowledge gaps or get assurances on whether they are doing the right thing.”

Moore Thompson has extensive experience of helping charity trustees understand their legal and financial duties. For advice and support please contact us.