Charitable purposes are the most important part of your governing document or constitution. Sometimes they are called your ‘objectives’.
A charity must have one or more of the purposes which have been defined in law. These include things like:
This, we promise you, is the trickiest part of the journey to registration. You need to understand the rules and get the language right. This probably means that you will have to spend some time writing, re-drafting, and writing again.
This step you will help you to set out in writing what you want to do as a charity. Your purposes explain:
Before you start, think about the following:
What is your charity set up to achieve? Make sure that the WHAT is an allowed charitable purpose. You can find the full list of the 13 allowed charitable purposes.
A registered charity must benefit a significant section of the public (or animals). This is called ‘public benefit’. Of course, you can specify which section of the public, like ‘those in poverty’; or ‘children with rare diseases’ (or children with a specific rare disease), or the homeless. And you can specify which animals – elephants or tigers or dogs or cats or a rare breed. The point is, your charity must be open to anyone or any animal that fits the description of your charitable purpose. It must be public and not private.
If your purposes don’t say where you plan to operate, the assumption might be made that it will include the whole world. That might raise questions about your capacity to manage or deliver services on a worldwide basis. It makes better sense to think about the geography in which you will operate: a town, a county, a region, a country. If it is only a local area, it might be helpful to use wording like ‘…anywhere in the district of (enter name of your local authority area) and especially (enter name of locality). This gives you the opportunity to expand at some later stage.
This is about what your charity will DO to tackle the problem of WHAT it was set up to achieve. Try to be as clear as you can without being too restrictive. See the QUICK TIP below.
Don’t narrow your options at this stage. For example, if you say your charity is to support children age 5-10 to develop their social skills through football, this will be all your charity can ever do. But if you say your charity supports children to develop their social skills through sport, you give your charity some room for change and growth.
We suggest that you look at examples before writing your own charitable purposes.
For the public benefit, the relief and assistance of people in need (what) in any part of the world (where) who are the victims of war or natural disaster or catastrophe (who) by supplying them with medical aid (how).
The Charity Commission provides examples of charitable objects (purposes) on its website. If one of those describes the aims of your own charity, you can copy it. Your charity registration will take less time if you can use one of those example objects (purposes) without any alteration.
You must write your charitable purpose/s correctly or your application will be rejected. We strongly advise you to use the standard wording suggested by the Charity Commission. That is:
You can also follow the Charity Commission’s guidance on how to write charitable purposes.
You can use more, if you wish, but make sure they are consistent with each other. For example, if your purpose is to promote social exclusion; you can’t add a clause that says you are going to promote the well-being of stray dogs.
If those Charity Commission options don’t fit with what you want to do, you might find it useful to look at the objects (purposes) of charities that are already registered. You can find charities doing similar things on the Charity Commission website using their advanced search tool.
You can use this to narrow down your search by area, activities, classifications, or the year the charity was registered, for example. Then, when you have a list of charities to look at:
Choosing a name for your charity is the fun part, but don’t rush into it. Firstly, there are some rules.
Secondly, you don’t want to make a decision you later regret. You may want to avoid names that are difficult to pronounce or a name that is patronising to your beneficiaries.
Read the Charity Commission’s guidance on how to choose a charity name. Make sure to take your time!
Some charity names tell people immediately what they are all about e.g. St Andrew’s Youth Club; Tiny Tots Playgroup, Cancer Research UK. The advantage of these is that you don’t have to keep explaining what you do.
Other charity names leave you guessing e.g. Scope; Mencap; Centrepoint; Place2Be. These charities often add a very short statement, after their name, to explain themselves e.g. ‘We’re Scope, the disability equality charity’. Of course, some of the largest charities are so well known that everybody knows what they do, even if their name alone doesn’t immediately tell you e.g. Oxfam and The Prince’s Trust but we’ve all got to start somewhere…
