Charity Resources
This is not a complete list. It’s just a few highlights. If you have suggestions for good additions to the list please let us know. Of course none of this is advice tailored to you, your charity and your circumstances, for that you’ll need to take professional advice.
We’ll start with our blogs. There are some useful bits in there in general about accounting and Xero and specifically for charities we’ve got:
- Is Xero right for my charity?
- How to design a good chart of account
- Xero Tracking categories
- Charity Advertising
- The collection of guidance
- Guidance to help you complete your charity’s annual return, accounting and reporting requirements, and tax and Gift Aid advice.
- List of Charity Commission ‘CC’ guidance publications
- Some specific CC guides below
- CC8 How to manage your charity’s financial activity and use internal financial controls to reduce the risk of loss.
- CC11 Find out if a charity can pay trustees and what expenses trustees are entitled to.
- CC12 Advice for charities that are facing financial difficulties and how charities can reduce the risk of insolvency.
- CC14 Investing charity money: guidance for trustees
- CC19 Find out what charity reserves are and how to develop and report on a charity’s reserves policy.
The ICAEW has a collection of useful charity resources including free webinars as well as articles and trustee training.
There are all sorts of topics covered including full cost recovery (a very thought provoking webinar), reserves, financial controls, risk, charity banking and more.
ICAEW volunteers
If you need to recruit trustees with financial skills then ICAEW volunteers is a good place to advertise. It’s a site specifically for chartered accountants who want to volunteer and it’s free for you to advertise.
MHA Trustee Hub
MHA have a collection of guides, templates and checklists that are free to use. Have a look and see if you find anything useful.
Charity Excellence – all sorts of goodies here. Use Charity Excellence’s free Funding Finder and Bid Writer to help your charity access new grants efficiently.
Charity Connect to network with others like you
Charity banking guide – we particularly like section 3 which shows you at a glance the features various banks offer. This doesn’t show you if a bank integrates with Xero so make sure you check for that yourself.
Now for some more technical resources for charity finance geeks:
- The Charity SORP – Some fun bedtime reading.
- The Charity Tax Group – a treasure trove of goodness
- Charity Finance group – lots of good (paid for) courses and useful bits in the knowledge hub
There’s all sorts of blogs and guides and resources out there. This is absolutely not a complete list, this is just a collection of a few that we have valued over the years. If you have a great resource up your sleeve let us know and we can add it to the list.