Several of our team are non-executive board members of various charities and our founding partner is also a founding member of Connect Ethiopia. Through this practical experience, our lawyers have gained knowledge which enables us to provide advice from a viewpoint which understands the governance, resource, regulatory and operational challenges faced by the sector – this is of far greater value than mere legal advice.

Led by our corporate advisory and governance practice our charity and not-for-profit group includes lawyers from across all our service areas including: corporate advisory and governance; tax; employment and pensions; data privacy and technologies; real estate; dispute resolution; and public and administrative law.

How we can help

We provide support and advice to organisations in the charity, not-for-profit, NGO and voluntary sectors including the following:

• • • Establishment of charities and legal structuring
    • Sector specific corporate governance and trustees requirements
    • Company law compliance and corporate secretarial
    • Insolvency and restructuring
    • Statutory and regulatory obligations – Charities Act 1961 (as amended), The Street House and Collections Act 1962, Charities Act 2009
    • Charities Regulatory Authority
    • Tax and trusts
    • Public and EU funding
    • Mergers in the voluntary sector
    • Data protection matters
    • Property transactions
    • Grant and funding agreements
    • Employment and pensions law
    • Public procurement

Work in the field

We have seconded team members to our charity clients. Members of our team have provided training in commercial law to lawyers from historically disadvantaged backgrounds in South Africa, as part of an annual programme run by Irish Rule of Law International and supported by Irish Aid and in Ethiopia through Connect Ethiopia.

We are sensitive to the importance of ethos within our client organisations and work with our clients to achieve their commercial objectives in accordance with their ethos. We encourage boards and executive teams to ‘self help’ – by way of example we have advised clients on how to prepare for and respond to due diligence queries rather than to simply outsource that function at considerable expense. We also provide free seminars and workshops to assist our clients to upskill in key areas of law.