What are we allowed to do?

Charities can make grants to other charities as a way of furthering their charitable purposes (also known as their objects). Guidance from the Charity Commission states that “Your charity can fund another charity as a way of meeting its charitable purposes. You must be sure that this is in your charity’s best interests. This includes checking that any money you give is used as you expected it to be.” You must “Check your governing document to make sure that it doesn’t prevent you giving money to another charity, and record your decision to fund another charity in the minutes of your meeting.”

If your Executive has adopted the model constitution as set out in POR, your Scouting charity’s purposes/objects are deemed to be the same as TSA’s i.e. “to promote the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potential as individuals, as responsible citizens and as members of their local, national and international communities”. You can therefore make any grants which would further this purpose, which would include making grants to other Scouting charities. The POR constitutions for Districts and Counties do not prohibit granting funds to another Group, District, or other Scout charity.

In this case, the proceeds of the activity should go wholly to the work of the Group, District or County or, in the case of joint activities with other organisations, part of the proceeds allotted to the Group, District or County is wholly, according to POR rule 5.7,10.

Now while all of that sounds pretty straight forward, in reality the District Executive as Trustees of the District will need to have a serious, thought out and robust discussion on the implications of providing local grants, and we encourage all of your trustees to read through this guidance and use it as the basis for a more in depth discussion. Once you have agreed in principle to provide grants, the next stage is to understand where your funds have come from so you know what money you can use as grants.