The Charities Act 2011 defines a charitable purpose, explicitly, as one that falls within 13 descriptions of purposes and is for the public benefit.

How to write your charity’s purposes

Your charity’s purposes should make it clear:

• what outcomes your charity is set up to achieve
• how it will achieve these outcomes
• who will benefit from these outcomes
• where the benefits extend to

Your charity’s purposes and its objects should be the same. The objects should accurately express all of your charity’s purposes.

You usually write your charity’s purpose in the objects clause of its governing document/constitution (the legal document that creates the charity and says how it should be run).

When writing your charity’s purposes, you need to:

• understand that the words you use matter – you can’t say that your charity is set up to do anything that isn’t charitable
• state clearly what your charity’s purpose is – if it’s not clear, the commission can’t be certain that it’s charitable
• be precise – use plain, simple language and avoid vague or ambiguous wording
• explain any terms that may not be generally understood or have more than one meaning
• include all your charity’s purposes, if it has more than one

Terms to avoid

• don’t say “to promote the advancement of” – it’s repetitive and doesn’t add to the meaning of the purpose
• don’t put what your charity will achieve after how it will do it (for example, “making grants as a means to relieve poverty”) – it won’t stop your purpose being charitable but it’s clearer what your charity’s purpose is if you put the ‘what’ before the ‘how’
• don’t use vague or ambiguous wording, such as “to promote good causes”. Not all good causes are charitable causes
• don’t confuse activities with purposes by saying “to further such charitable activities” – it’s your organisation’s purposes that must be charitable. Its activities are what it does to carry out its purposes
• don’t say “to advance [something] in whatever ways that are charitable” or “such of the following purposes as are charitable in law” – this won’t make something charitable that isn’t
• avoid describing your purposes as ‘worthy’, ‘deserving’, ‘benevolent’, ‘philanthropic’, ‘public’, ‘patriotic’, ‘utilitarian’, etc – these sorts of terms can also include things that aren’t charitable
• don’t use the word ‘welfare’ unless it has a specific charitable context like ‘social welfare’ or ‘animal welfare’ – “advancing the welfare of x” on its own isn’t charitable
• don’t use ‘social cohesion’ or ‘community cohesion’ as a charitable purpose – these can be a benefit of carrying out a charitable purpose but the terms are not precise enough to express a charitable purpose itself

Examples of Charitable Objects can be found here

More about Charitable Purposes can be found here

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