As a trustee, you must run your charity in a way that complies with your charity’s governing document and the law.

This includes making sure your charity achieves its purposes.

Every trustee is responsible for this. Even if certain tasks are done by individual trustees, employees or volunteers, all trustees are responsible.

Every charity has a governing document. It contains:

• your charity’s aims or purposes (often referred to as its ‘objects’)
• rules for how it must operate

Focus on your charity’s purposes

You must deliver only your charity’s purposes. Your charity’s funds can only be spent on supporting the delivery of these purposes.

Read the governing document. Make sure you understand:

• what your charity is set up to achieve (its purposes)
• who your charity is there to benefit (its beneficiaries)
• what your charity can or cannot do to carry out its purposes (its powers)

Checking that your charity is furthering its purposes is something you will do all the time as a trustee.

Drifting into activities that your charity is not set up to do

This can happen if you do not focus on your charity’s purposes. For example, where the charity:

• wants to deliver a new service, but trustees have not checked that this new work fits the charity’s purposes
• has applied for a grant, which must be spent on activities that do not match the charity’s purposes

Using charity funds or resources on other purposes is very serious. Trustees may have to repay the charity from their own money.

Keep your charity’s purposes under review to ensure that they properly reflect what the charity does.

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