This week is national “Trustee Week” (3rd to 7th November) celebrating everything that you do as a Managing Trustees and the important contributions you make to the life of the Church.

Members of Local Church Councils, Circuit Meetings, District Synods and other Managing Trustee bodies are all charity trustees. As part of Trustee Week, Trusteesweek.org pulls together resources and events that are available to help trustees fulfil their crucial role. You can access the resources here. These resources are also helpful generally as part of your continuing duties as charity trustees.

Charity Commission 5 Minute Guides

The Legal and Constitutional Practice Team (LCP Team) have asked us to highlight the helpful 5 Minute Guides published by the Commission. The Charity Commission guides listed below are accessible from this link and include a video summarising the key points with an accompanying more detailed “5 Minute Guide” available to read online.

The Guides aimed at charities in England and Wales are:

• Delivering purpose – guidance highlighting the importance of focusing on your own charity’s purposes and governing document.
• Making decisions as a charity – the guidance explains the guiding principles to follow to help you make the best decisions you can for your charity.
• Managing Finances – guidance on managing and protecting charity money including avoiding risks.
• Managing conflicts of interest – the guide sets out four key steps to manage conflicts. Please also refer to the Methodist Church’s paper on managing conflicts of interest available from the Methodist Church website here and Standing Order 019A (see page 294).
• Reporting information – helpful summary of information trustees need to send to the Charity Commission and how to get help. (Please note that even if your charity is not registered with the Charity Commission – because its gross annual income is less than £100k and it falls under the current exception from registration – you will need to report to the Charity Commission in some circumstances e.g. a serious incident.)
• Safeguarding for charities and trustees – helpful guidance on what you need to do to ensure your charity fulfills the responsibility placed on it not to cause harm to those who come into contact with the charity. As a Methodist charity trustee please also refer to the specific information and guidance available from the Connexional Safeguarding Team.

Guidance for trustees in Scotland is available from OSCR: Guidance and good practice for charity trustees.

Additional guidance for charity trustees

Trustee Week is a great opportunity to refresh your understanding of what it means to be a charity trustee. We previously highlighted the training being offered by one of the panel firms HCR as part of trustee Week: Panel Solicitors Event. If your Managing Trustee body would like to request training from one of the panel solicitor firms face to face or online, please contact TMCP and we can help arrange this for you.

There is a lot of guidance on what it means to be a charity trustee and resources to help you fulfil your responsibilities on the Methodist Church website here and the Charity Commission itself: Charity Commission Guidance.

Key guidance on charity trustee duties includes:

• The Five Golden Rules of Being a Charity Trustee – produced by the LCP Team
• Charity trustee welcome pack - produced by the Charity Commission.
• The essential trustee: what you need to know, what you need to do (CC3) - produced by the Charity Commission.

If you have any queries in relation to the guidance in this document please contact the Legal and Constitutional Practice Team (LCP) on lcp@methodistchurch.org.uk.

If you have any queries in relation to the guidance in this document please contact TMCP Legal for further assistance.