Charities & Communities - J & H Mitchell Solicitors & Estate Agents

Legal

If you are considering setting-up a charity, we provide honest advice about whether charitable status is appropriate and will help you decide on the most appropriate legal structure to adopt, guiding you through the application process with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR).

For existing charities we can help specifically with:

Reviewing and making changes to your governing document
Changing the structure of an existing charity, such as to a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO), or Company Limited by Guarantee, and all aspects of charity reorganisation
Advice on non-charitable trading and setting up a separate trading company
The reorganisation of restricted funds
The amalgamation of one of more charities
Dissolution of a charity
The development of board policies, such in relation to conflicts of interest, grant making and other board matters.

Governance

For new and existing charities we deal with a whole range of governance matters, from providing guidance on the running and development of a charity to conducting a full governance review.
For example, our advice can include help with trustee selection and induction, conducting effective meetings, risk assessment and management, developing and reviewing board policies, introducing grant giving policies and procedures (where relevant) and managing conflicts of interest.

Training

It is more important than ever that charity trustees and managers ensure that they understand their legal responsibilities and are aware of and follow best practice.

Sarah Brown provides training regularly throughout Scotland to charity trustees, charity managers and other professionals, on a variety of topics, but mainly relating to the governance, day-to-day running of charities and relevant aspects of Charity Law and practice.

Whether it is to help new or existing charity trustees understand their legal duties or to provide specific training in relation to the relationship between the chair and chief executive, we will always work with charities to understand their training needs so as to ensure that our sessions are relevant, specific to charity, and deliver the maximum benefit.

Here is some attendee feedback from Sarah’s charity trustee training sessions:

“The ‘Governance’ issues raised by Sarah were ideal for our new Trustees and did remind me of some tasks which have been overlooked”

“Excellent, Sarah’s presentation was superb, the best I have heard for years on any topic”

“Very informative and useful. Excellent delivery, right level of detail”

“Very helpful. It prompts questions which I will now clarify”

We look forward to have an opportunity to help you

If you have an enquiry or would like to join our mailing list to receive updates, including our Annual Charity Newsletter and advance notice of upcoming training seminars, please complete our Contact Form by clicking here.