Today's leading charities juggle many demands: board and executive scrutiny, pressures of regulation, staff and member engagement, fast changing rules and stakeholder expectations, the day-to-day challenge of providing services, and the need to diversify revenue streams and explore commercial partnerships. Many of our charity clients also work internationally, with donors, operations and beneficiaries across multiple jurisdictions, with complex and differing standards, risks and opportunities.
Our team is designed to support innovative and impactful charities and projects with a seamless end to end service, helping you navigate charity law, regulation and best practice. We give pragmatic and expert advice based on our extensive regulatory experience, including on:
Charity set up, governance and regulatory
- Legal and governance structures and design,
- Governance reviews and best practice recommendations
- Fundraising agreements, grant making, sponsorship, events and commercial participator contracts
- Endowments, impact funds and social finance
- Working internationally, including employment arrangements, financial sanctions and regulatory reporting
- Campaigns and advocacy
- Brand monitoring and protection in the UK and globally
- Human rights and environmental impact advice, including training
Charity mergers, collaborations and partnerships
- Collaboration within and beyond the charity sector
- Commercialisation projects to develop new funding streams, including impact investment, spin-outs and new ventures
- Developing digital products and services for beneficiaries, and digital transformation including data protection and technology contracting
- Mergers and re-structuring
International strategic, technical and operational assistance
- National and international legislative reviews
- Capacity and capability building in national and international contexts, including advising governments on effective NPO or charity regulatory and risk systems, legislative reviews and implementation, sector risk assessments
- Training and capability programmes for government and civil society actors
- Advice on compliance with or dialogue on FATF R.8 and IO.10 standards
Incident management, investigations and complaints
- Internal charity disagreements and complaints, including staff, members, trustees and external stakeholders
- Internal investigations and reviews
- Crisis management including serious incident reporting
- Navigating high risk activities e.g. safeguarding, terrorist financing risks, or operating in areas of conflict
- Effective risk identification, mitigation and management
- Commission Investigations and regulatory Inquiries, including specialist advice around
- Charity proceedings, litigation and dispute resolution
Trustees and executives
We provide trusted, pragmatic and strategic advice to individual trustees and executives, and to boards and leadership teams, on:
- Legal duties, best practice governance and regulatory compliance, including governance reviews
- Board approval of contracts, policies and frameworks
- Trustee remuneration and benefits
- Trustee and executive training and development
- Crisis management
- Disputes and mediation, including court and regulatory orders authorising trustees to become involved in litigation
- Individual and organisational reputation and risk management