Your founder has run the charity unpaid for three years. The work has outgrown what anyone can reasonably volunteer; the board agrees she should be paid as coordinator, and everyone is comfortable with the decision because it is obviously right.…
One of your trustees is a builder. The roof needs doing; he quotes below what anyone else would charge, and the board says yes because it obviously saves the charity money. Nobody minutes much. There is no contract, because he…
There is a trustee on your board who drives forty minutes each way to every meeting and has never claimed a penny. She has not been told she can. Nobody has been unkind about it; the subject has never come…
Something needed answering on a Tuesday. The next board meeting was six weeks away, the funder wanted a response by Friday, and the chair dealt with it. Nobody objected. Nobody minuted it either. That happens in small charities constantly, and…
Small charities rarely delegate too little. They delegate constantly and write almost none of it down. The chief executive has been approving spend up to around eight thousand pounds for three years because that is roughly what feels right. No…
Legal responsibility starts the day someone is appointed, not the day they feel ready. A new trustee who has read nothing, seen no accounts and met none of the staff is still jointly responsible for every decision the board takes…
An empty trustee seat costs you nothing until it takes the board below quorum. At that point, you cannot make a valid decision, and everything waiting on one stops. That deadline is usually closer than the vacancy makes it look,…
Income decides it, mostly. Below £40,000, you usually need no external scrutiny at all. Above that, you need either an independent examination or a full audit, and most small charities can choose the examination, which is lighter and cheaper. At…
A budget is a plan for what the charity intends to do next year and what that will cost. It is not a report, a forecast, or a tidied-up version of last year. That distinction matters because it decides how…