Who protects the protector?

The government’s newly issued Civil Society Strategy has been described by NCVO as “an encouraging start but government could do more”.

One area where more work is certainly needed is in section 7 “Funding and Financing the Social Mission” where it says, “The government is working with the Charity Commission and UK Community Foundations to release at least £20 million over the next two years from inactive charitable trusts to grassroots community organisations.”

Charitable money shouldn’t be left doing nothing (it’s a common complaint of ours), and if there are inactive charitable trusts they should be reactivated or closed to make sure the money does reach the intended beneficiaries.

As we know, every charity has a defined area of activity that it exists to serve set out in their Objects clause, even inactive trusts. The job of the Charity Commission is to ensure those Trusts’ delivery of their purposes is properly fulfilled and to protect their assets from being expropriated to a new purpose (in this case, the grassroots community organisations). Trusts that are currently inactive should apply their money to their original purposes, and if not, to ones that are similar. If a benefactor had left their wealth to treat a particular medical condition, medicine should continue to be the beneficiary.

We trust that the Charity Commission will continue to protect the chosen beneficiaries, and not allow their interests to be subverted for political gain. Who will support the Commission in that role? As the famous Juvenal quote reminds us Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The answer is that only the law can protect the protectors, so we all need to be vigilant in how the law is used, even in this small example.