Charity administration and accounting

Our client of nearly twenty years is a charity registered with the Charity Commission of England and Wales.

The charity has net assets of approximately £4m including a discretionary managed investment portfolio of approximately £3m. The objects of the client are general charitable purposes and grants falling into three separate categories, ‘Arts’, ‘Medical’ and ‘Other’, following the broad interests of the settlor. The board of trustees meets twice a year to agree the 100 to 150 grants that are made to registered charities each year. There are four trustees, one of whom has an accounting background and has for many years acted as trustee of several charities.

The challenge

The trustees needed a charity administration and accountancy expert to assist not only with the day-to-day administrative activities of the charity, but also with annual accounting and Charity Commission compliance.

How did Blick Rothenberg help?

From an administration point of view, we are the first point of contact for a charity seeking a grant from our client, fielding telephone calls and applications by post and email.

Ahead of trustees’ meetings we prepare a meeting folder for each trustee containing an up-to-date review of the investment portfolio incorporating brokers’ comments and recommendations, the most recent set of accounts, the annual return for review and/or approval, details of prospective donations and a schedule showing donations made on an annual basis since inception of the charity. We then present all information to the trustees at the meeting.

The trustees agree the grants to be made at each trustees’ meeting, after which we raise grant cheques and arrange for them to be signed by the trustees before posting them to the respective charities with a personalised letter.

From a compliance perspective, we prepare charity annual accounts and the annual return and submit these to the Charity Commission, liaising with the independent examiner of the charity’s annual accounts.

The outcome

Our client benefits from an administratively professional and efficiently run charity, safe in the knowledge that our team of experts will manage all accounting and Charity Commission compliance in a timely fashion.