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Our charity lawyers recognise that, more than ever right now, charities need to boost money coming in and keep a close eye on the amounts going out.
A partnership with a charity law firm should help you do more for less, give you cost certainty, and upskill and enable your own teams to do more of what you currently use external advisers for.
During 2022,UK charity shops created social value of £75.3billion – far exceeding the amount raised by selling goods on the shelves.
We are proud to have supported the CRA’s ground-breaking report on Social Return on Investment of Charity Shops to fill the gap in understanding the true impact of charity shops, and more widely the impact of charities and social action.
Our new podcast series explores social value in its many forms – how it’s created, why it’s important and the sheer power of giving back to our communities and our planet.
Our specialist charities team can help advise on the following:
Our team of expert chairity lawyers have significant experience of working at both national and international level, dealing with the Charity Commission and the other regulators within the sector and advising trustees on how best to work with the various bodies, to satisfy their requirements and minimise the potential for reputational damage.
We advise corporate charities on a full range of company law, governance and operational matters, including: policies, procedures and committee structures; trustees’ duties, terms of appointment and delegation powers; the relationship between the board and the executive team; governance audits and reviews; charity mergers, reorganisation and restructuring; and applications to the regulators for schemes and other consents.
Our specialist charity lawyers are nationally renowned and respected. We pride ourselves on giving straight-talking advice with a mantra of ‘maximising property’ (increasing return or minimising costs).
We have specialists who can offer expert chairty leagl advice to help manage portfolios, complex property transactions and structural reorganisations, advise on the full range of disputes and issues arising in relation to short and long residential leases, commercial landlord and tenant, third party rights and rural land. Our approach is centred around three pillars: Operational and strategic property; Retail & Investment; and Legacy Property.
Our employment and immigration team provide the full spectrum of strategic and operational legal advice to our clients in the charity and the not-for-profit sector, offering a single team who can support you with regular employment advice as well as full support on more complex employment matters including projects such as business transformation, pay and grading, board level issues, employment provisions in commercial contracts, employment aspects of transactions including all aspects of TUPE, as well as Tribunal support (including advocacy).
Our ‘refreshingly human’ employment contracts and handbooks are tailored to fit with the language used by your business in a way that is user friendly and easy to understand
Our commercial offerings for charities include drafting licensing arrangements to maximise revenue generating opportunities whilst protecting your brand and reputation and agreeing new contractual documentation with a tech solutions provider to deliver a more efficient and secure database tool for marketing and fundraising initiatives. We also provide additional overflow support for day-to-day matters and work alongside in-house legal teams on more strategic, complex projects that underpin organisational goals and objectives.
Alongside the strategic support we also advise our charity clients through a bespoke outsourced inhouse legal service. Our GC services solution allows our charity clients to outsource low value, low risk matters to us for a fixed monthly cost. We pick up your business as usual and ad-hoc queries so that your in-house team can focus on the higher value, more strategic projects which support the overall growth. In essence, our role is to advise on all legal queries which a reasonably competent in-house counsel would. We operate this model with a number of our charity clients, including Save the Children, Dogs Trust and Cancer Research UK.
We have a dedicated Legacies team which supports our national charity clients on all aspects of legacy income. We act for each of the top 10 legacy earning charities in the UK and have an impressive roster of large national charity clients – with key clients including the National Trust, RSPB, Age UK, RSPCA and The Salvation Army.
We support with the management of their legacy income, including resolving issues and disputes surrounding property and contentious probate, administering estates where the charity is the appointed executor or has decided to take up the role of personal representative and we advise on the related governance issues.
Foot Anstey is deeply rooted in the charity sector. We have charities at the heart of our strategic approach and our expert charity law firm is widely regarded as a leader in its field. We care passionately about our charity clients, and it shows in our work and how we like to build and develop our relationships with them.
Our approach in everything we do is to focus on income optimisation. For you this means a service which will:
What we do is contribute to your success. But how we do this also sets us apart. Innovative, accessible, and enjoyable to work with, you’ll find we will align with your culture and approach.
Our charity lawyers advise Save the Children on a range of legal matters including Commercial contract support for their legal team, Legacy management support, and as additional resource for operational/BAU matters.
Our charity solicitors have acted for charity the RSC for over 10 years and provide positive solutions which align with their culture and values.
Our charity lawyers manage a significant portion of their £24million annual legacy income, with a caseload of up to 300 cases where gifts are left to the charity.
Managing Associate | Senior Associate – Chartered Trade Mark Attorney
Intellectual Property | Charities
Senior Associate
Commercial, Tech & Data | Regulated Financial Services | General Counsel Services
As a corporate partner of the ILM, we deliver training and development to legacy professionals as well as share insights and support the ILM with driving best practice. Our L&D team collaborated with the ILM to design and deliver a sector leading development programme called Leadership Accelerator. Our involvement and association has also allowed the Foot Anstey team to build strong relationships with other organisations (including Berrys (chartered surveyors) and Cluttons/Savills (property agents)).
Several of our charity lawyers are members of the CLA, which plays a leading role in improving knowledge and awareness of charity law matters. The organisation is committed to sharing knowledge and expertise for the benefit of the sector as a whole. It meets regularly to exchange ideas and information and responds regularly to consultations from Government and the regulators. Members of our charity law team contributed to the recent consultation on the Charity Commission’s draft social media guidance for charities, which has since been published.
Please complete this form so we can help assist you. A member of our team will get back to you shortly.
