16 August 2018
Sectors:
Charity and Not for profit
Services:
Supporting our Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprise Sector
The annual return is the Charity Commissions primary channel of gathering data from registered charities. Unlike the annual report, charity annual returns provide easy to review information for the Commission to quickly analyse and compare.
Following consultations with the charity sector last year, the Charity Commission have announced some new changes to annual returns, which are available from the end of this month (live as of 20 August 2018).
Firstly, charities will no longer required to include changes to details and trustees in their annual return. Instead, they will update details online as they occur through the year.
Changes also include a number of new question which charities can start preparing for now. It’s worth noting that not all new questions will be mandatory this year. Charities will be given time to put the correct systems in place to acquire the information, resulting in less time and effort in the future.
Salaries and benefits
As a result of public concern relating to high levels of pay, charities will now be required to provide more information about pay to members of staff in 2018 returns.
This will require charities to provide a breakdown of total remuneration receive by staff, including salary, bonuses, and other benefits in kind for those earning £60,000 or more.
Overseas expenditure and income from outside the UK
Because of the risks associated with money transferring money outside of the UK, Charities will be asked about how they transfer and monitor funds sent overseas.
For some charities this will require a significant change in processes and record keeping, and so these questions will be optional this year but mandatory from 2019.
What to do now…
As a start, charities need to review the current systems they have in place to collect data for the above. While not all questions will need to be answered this year it is worth being aware of the questions that form the annual return so that data be collated throughout the year.
Click here to view a list of all questions that form the annual return. If you'd like to find out more about our work supporting and advising not-for-profit organisation in the North East click here.
