Charity partnerships: birds of a feather

• Charities working with non-charities: the Charity Commission’s new guidance.

Working with non-charitable organisations or ‘non-charities’ can offer charities great benefits—for example, fundraising and profile-raising, to name just a couple of the more obvious benefits. But charities have to deal with the fact that this strategy also carries a number of risks, including reputation and loss of income. For example, if the non-charity is reflected poorly in the media for whatever reason, that could result in reputational issues for the charity.

Following last year’s consultation on the draft guidance, the Charity Commission has published its long-anticipated new guidance on ‘Charities with a connection to a non-charity’. The guidance sets out the Commission’s expectations for managing relationships where charities are connected to non-charities. A key motive behind the guidance is to address concerns that some links between charities and non-charities have damaged public trust and confidence in charity generally.

While the focus