Grant making trusts

Factsheet three

The Charity Commission files

In addition to the information stored on their database, the Commission raises a file on each charity within three weeks of registration. These files contain details on trustees' names and addresses, the settler's name and address, a copy of the trust deed, and the annual report(s) and accounts if available.

It is only by consulting the file that this information can be obtained since the Commission cannot give this information over the telephone, in writing, or as a printout.

The procedure

a) Phone the Commission, informing them of the files you want to research. The Commission prefers to identify trust files by Charity Reference Number (as given in The Directory of Grant Making Trusts or identified by you in one of your database searches). The staffs prefers to receive your list in ascending numerical order, and you should send a letter or fax confirming the details you have given over the phone. Files normally take at least a week to arrive in Registry, so you should send your confirmation around ten days before you intend to visit.

b) Follow up your letter with a telephone call two or three days before you intend to visit to confirm that the files you ordered have arrived. It is rare for all the files you order to be available, since other people may be using them or they may be in the process of being updated by Commission staff. It helps to know the names of the people you are talking to.

c) If you are intending to look at some original files allow around half an hour per file. Some files will contain no information of any value (for example, the trust deed will be so elderly that both settler and original trustees may well be deceased), but the details in others could easily occupy you for hours.

Reading the Charity Commission file

The permanent file which records the history of a trust is a most useful resource and will certainly contain all or some of the following documents and/or information:

All correspondence leading to registration

These will confirm most of the information which is contained on the Charity Commission database.

The trust deed

This is the governing instrument, which describes what the trust may and may not do. These are usually very similar, although occasionally there may be some specific restrictions or requirements, which determine the giving policy of a trust. The trust deed will also identify the settler - this is the person who provided the original funds to create the trust. If s/he is still alive, s/he may well have a significant influence on grant making policy, though may not necessarily be a trustee. This document also identifies the original trustees - these are the people who are formally responsible for deciding the grants. Often trustees are a mixture of those related or well known to the settler, and others are professional or authoritative people.

The assets of the trust

The mix of assets will reveal a considerable amount of information on the nature of a trust. Assets can be made up of property or land yielding rents, interest-yielding investments or an equity portfolio earning dividends. Quite often trusts have a high reliance on the shares of the settler's company. Sometimes assets can be non-income earning until they are sold - such as paintings, for example - so the future income-earning capacity of the trust could be transformed.

Administrator or director

Look for family connections with the settler and trustees; quite often administrators are also trustees. Try to identify the difference between the professional administrator, who is sometimes little more than a post box, and an active decision maker.

The recipients of grants

In particular, look for the following:

Grants to charities in a similar field
The size of these grants and of those to similar charities
The recurring nature of grants
The spread of grants from the largest to the smallest
Future commitments (recurring grants)
Whether grants for some charities have increased or decreased
The relative nature of the support for your organisation compared to grants to other charities.
With this information you should be able to assess whether this trust is a genuinely good prospect or not. You should also be able to determine whether you are fully exploiting your support from this trust, relative to other good causes. A distinct giving pattern for the trust may be revealed.

Income and grant giving trends

Is there an obvious difference between the level of income and the level of grants? If so, why? It may be because the trust has decided to reduce its assets systematically by making more grants than income alone would allow. And the opposite may be happening where the trust is consistently under spending its income, with money being carried forward and reinvested. A couple of reasons for this are that the trust wants to increase its asset base significantly before making substantial levels of grants; or that a future project is being considered and provided for. Forward commitments can substantially affect how much is actually available to be given in future years.

Why do research?

Files are always worth researching, even those from the major trusts whose details are widely published. You can learn more about the character and interests of a trust from looking at its file than by consulting any of the entries in any of the directories. And of course, with a little-known trust, which does not appear in any of the main directories, researching the file is the only way to obtain any reliable information at all on its current grant-giving policies.

Sunrise Publishers
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E-MAIL: marc@sunrisepublications.com
Website: www.sunrisepublications.com

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