Charities are failing basic compliance tests and need to become better acquainted with their reporting obligations, according to a report from the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland.
The report, Annual reporting to the commission – first lessons learned, found that 15 per cent of charities failed their basic compliance checks on their annual return for a number of reasons. These included the year end of the financial accounts submitted not matching the year end stipulated on the annual return.
Other reasons were that charities were failing to either provide their income and expenditure in the annual return, and that the information submitted was not matching that on the actual accounts.
Frances McCandless, chief executive at the Commission, said: “This report highlights the problems charities are having when filing their returns. Annual reporting by registered charities is new but it is now a requirement.
“A successfully filed set of accounts goes a long way in keeping a charity fully compliant and the public confident that charities are open, transparent and fulfilling their purpose.
“In 2017/18, around 3,500 charities will be obliged to complete a return. Trustees of those charities, all of which were registered by the Commission between 2013 and 2016, need to get acquainted with this report now to ensure that they pass compliance checks when their accounts are filed.”
The report was produced using data from the 324 Annual Monitoring Returns that had been received by the Commission at the time of publication.
From these 324 charities, the commission learned that 28 had made payments to trustees during the financial year, including one charity which made a payment to nine trustees and another two to over five trustees. In total 60 trustees were paid a fee or salary by the charity, totalling £759,508.
The full report can be seen here.
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