Registering, Incorporating & Closing Down Charities

While charitable status secures valuable tax reliefs and opens doors to funding that are critical to maximising impact, it also demonstrates a commitment to high standards of governance, transparency and accountability — an essential step in maintaining public trust and confidence.

Starting off on the right foot is crucial. Our expert team has registered hundreds of charities — including think tanks, publishers, professional standards bodies, sports clubs, grant-making organisations, youth centres and health and social care charities — without ever being unsuccessful in a registration application. 

We can seamlessly guide new trustees through the entire process — anticipating the legal, regulatory and practical obstacles that can arise. This can take an expert touch to satisfy the regulator — which is keen to heavily scrutinise applications for registration — that the charity’s initial governance structure is fit for purpose and the charity isn't an immediate or longer-term regulatory risk.

We advise on the most appropriate legal structure to adopt, provide tailored charitable purposes and advise on how to develop governance that best reflects your short-term operational intentions while allowing for flexibility as the organisation grows and adapts.

For organisations where charitable status is either inappropriate or legally impossible, we can advise on alternative legal structures such as community interest companies, community benefit societies, co-operatives, unincorporated clubs and associations, as well as other not-for-profit or social enterprise models where community and social objectives are achieved alongside business goals.

In the vast majority of cases, we can offer a fixed fee for new charity registrations.

Unfortunately, thousands of charities are wound up each year. While a proportion of these may have achieved exactly what they set out to do, in many cases charities fall victim to the economic and societal challenges they seek to address — forcing trustees to consider closure.

The decision to wind up a charity doesn’t necessarily mean that services have to stop. Mergers or other forms of transfer can secure the ongoing provision of critical services to beneficiaries and the continued employment of staff. Yet even in cases where solutions can be found, a winding up or dissolution will often follow.

We advise on the options available to charities, not-for-profits and social enterprises when financial and operational challenges arise, including on potential insolvencies as well as wrongful and fraudulent trading. We often work alongside an organisation’s other professional advisers to provide key legal support and advice on proposed arrangements with creditors, administrators and liquidators.

The key for charity trustees is to take advice at the earliest possible stage. If you have concerns as to your charity’s short- or medium-term future, our specialist lawyers are on-hand to assist.