Charities are required by law to inform us of changes to their registered details including changes to the charity’s contact. Details of the contact, including an address, are displayed on our website for the public and us to get in touch with the charity.

There are two types of charity contact:

• An individual contact. This is a named person. It may be one of the trustees, such as the secretary, or it could be someone who acts for the charity but is not a trustee. This person will be the point of contact for the Commission and for members of the public and so should have a good working knowledge of the charity. The address does not need to be the home address of the individual, but we only record one contact address per person. If an individual acts as contact for a number of charities the same address should be used for them all.
• An organisation contact. This may be used if a charity does not want to have a named individual as its point of contact. It could, for example, be a firm of solicitors acting on the charity’s behalf or the charity itself at its own address. The address used should be one at which post is received easily and checked regularly.

It is very important that you keep your charity's contact details up to date. They should be amended as soon as a change occurs since an incorrect contact address may adversely affect a charity. If documents are late because reminders are not delivered it might affect funding as sponsors see that the charity has not met its submission deadlines. If we lose touch completely with the charity, it could eventually be removed as we have no evidence that it is still operating.

Where possible the outgoing contact should let us have details of their replacement. You should also consider whether the email addresses need updating as a result of the change of contact (see our guidance on Changing your email details).

You can change your charity’s contact and email details online at any time by using our View/ Amend Charity Details facility. You will need the charity’s password to do this. The password should be passed on when the charity contact is changing.

  to update your charity’s contact details now.

If you do not have the password or cannot access our online service,  you can contact us to request an amendment to the charity’s contact and email details.

For security reasons, any change of contact details will be subject to a validation procedure. Any changes made to the contact details will normally be reflected on the charity’s web Register entry overnight.