Registered Charity Status - Why
The Highlands & Islands Climate Hub formed in September 2021. Initially the funding award to host a climate action hub came to Thurso Community Development Trust (Thurso CDT) and for that first six months as a pilot we sat under the Trust. We recognised quickly though that wouldn’t work in the long term as we wanted like everything that had come before under Thurso CDT to be truly community led with a membership who shaped the organisation with a real say in what we do and the work carried out to support communities throughout Highland and the Northern Isles.
Therefore it was decided that a new organsation was needed that was seperate and distinct from Thurso CDT to continue past the pilot phase the work of the Highlands & Islands Climate Hub. Given timescales a Community Interest Company (CiC) was the quickest and most efficient way of achieving this. We’ve now operated as a CiC since April 2022 but had always felt strategically that a move to a charitable organisation was a better fit for us once established with a membership, for several reasons.
Opportunity to widen our Board and have a Board representative of our Members throughout Highland, Orkney and Shetland.
Greater transparency over our operations and the work we do.
Ability to access goods and services as a non-profit (CiC status does not entitle us to this), the more we can reduce our internal operational costs the more we can pass funds onto communities in Highland and the Northern Isles.
Charity status would provide us with greater opportunity to leverage in additional funding to support our communities and members.
As we start to now hunker down for winter and begin planning for 2024-25 with a sense that the Hub has become somewhat established with a now strong membership of nearly 200 community organisations, individuals and supporters the current Directors of the CiC feel that now is the right time to make that shift towards Charitable Status and converting from a community interest company to registered charity. But to do this we want to know what you, our members think first so we have published a Members & Supporters survey today and would be grateful for as many of you taking it as possible.
To give a little more detail on why we feel the time is right and hear from myself personally as the Hub Manager as to why we should now pursue yet more paperwork (if you know, you know) to become a registered charity I’m going to explain a little more and give you an insight into why strategically we and I feel that this is an important step to take.
Firstly, we did what we had to do at the time, a CiC to provide a legal entity for the Hub was the best option in terms of time to set up so that we could fulfill our grant conditions. But coming from the charity sector, knowing how much work all of our members do in maintaining their charitable status and for those reasons of transparency it has never quite sat right being a CiC. Practical, but not in the ethos of being representative of our members.
Secondly, our membership is currently confusing and we know it is. Am I a CiC member? Am I an organisation member? We know this too but it is the way we needed to play it out under the CiC.
We also have not been proactive in recruiting in additional board members to shape our future, rather we have operated very much as membership led with our members from all of the discussions we have with you shaping our work with the small Board of Directors under the CiC simply providing financial, policy and HR oversight. The strategic direction has come from members, and while we do not want to loose that we also feel that having a wider board now that is representative of our geography and the many elements of climate action would improve our offering to you. We always foresaw a change from CiC hence felt that becoming proactive in recruiting a board would follow when we made that change rather than wrapping people up in the paperwork to change the legal entity when we know how at capacity all of you potential Board Members may be.
And lastly from the conversations I have had with all of you over the past two years we know, we absolutely know that the two most significant struggles that you all have are funding and capacity. I know that coming from an organisation that is doing just what all of you are now doing. Over the past year I’ve had various discussions with outside funders and have been looked at models of green finance along with avenues for us to create an earned income that comes back into the Hub to increase the size of community funding pot we have available. We know that for many of you as community organisations the £500 grants are great at filling a gap or letting you try something new but we also know for others we’ve got much more significant funding gaps, particularly the gaps which bring you capacity in the form of staffing. Becoming a registered charity is the first point in strategically further exploring what can be done to bring in that additional finance.
Please take our survey, tell us what you think. If you feel that you could commit some time to becoming a Board Member I would love to hear from you. Our timescales if we go ahead is to convert prior to the new financial year in April 2024. As ever, interested in any viewpoints or anything you would like to share with us.
