The Regulator for Charities in England and Wales
In 2002 the Government’s Strategy Unit published its report, Private Action, Public Benefit. One of its recommendations was that as part of their Annual Report and Accounts charities with an income of above £1million should complete an annual Standard Information Return which highlights key qualitative and quantitative information about a charity, focusing on how it sets objectives and measures its outcomes in order to demonstrate its impact.
Whilst the Charity Commission is taking this recommendation forward, and will be incorporating the SIR into the Annual Return from 2005/06 onwards, the SIR’s main purpose is to strengthen the information available to the general public about charities and to ensure that the public are well informed about your work.
The SIR is intended to compliment information supplied in the Trustees’ Annual Report, which should provide a comprehensive review of the activities of the charity for each accounting year. The SIR is designed to enable charities to provide an easily accessible summary of their aims, activities and achievements that can signpost readers to the more detailed information contained in the Trustees’ Annual Report.
The SIR applies to all charities with a Gross Income exceeding £1million in the financial (reporting) year. On this return, information is sought on all of your charity’s activities whether undertaken directly by your charity or through any subsidiaries that your charity controls.
Aim: You should explain concisely what your charity plans to achieve, or the difference it seeks to make. The statement should provide an understanding of the purpose of your charity’s activities and, at a very high level, of the basic direction of your charity’s work.
Beneficiaries: You should explain or list the groups of people or communities whom your work is supporting. This will include anyone who benefits from the charity’s services or facilities, whether provided by the charity on a voluntary basis or as a contractual service, perhaps on behalf of a body like a local authority.
Objectives: The aim of this question is to enable your charity to set out its objectives for the year under consideration, and for the next year. These objectives should provide an understanding of how the aim of your charity is to be met and the practical steps your charity will take to accomplish its aim. Where possible they should be expressed in a way which allows the reader to assess whether achievement of the charity’s overall aim is being achieved.
Charitable activities: You should provide brief details of those charitable activities that make the most significant contribution to the objectives you have listed. Information provided here might include details of the services provided by your charity, or the significant projects or programmes which your charity is undertaking. The details provided should be sufficient to provide a reasonable understanding of the work undertaken by your charity.
If your charity prepares consolidated accounts please ensure that you include details and cost of any charitable activities undertaken through a subsidiary.
Explanatory Comments: You may wish to provide comment on or explain the charitable activities and costs that you have provided, for example if an activity is low in cost but high in impact.
Results, outcomes and impact: In providing services or in undertaking programme or project work charities will often monitor or assess performance by the use of targets, indicators, milestones, or benchmarks, which are either quantitative or qualitative, or a mixture of both. You should include the main measures or indicators used by the charity to monitor or assess performance for your key activities (as defined by your charity) and provide details of the achievement against those measures or indicators. Where applicable, you may wish to explain the reasons why a target was not achieved.
The outcomes and impact of your charity's activities are often of a longer- term nature and can only be assessed over a longer time-frame than a single reporting year. You should explain briefly the techniques that your charity uses to assess the changes and broader, longer- term effects of its activities. You should provide sufficient information to give an understanding of the outcomes or impact achieved, or the progress being made toward them. Where applicable you may find it helpful to signpost the reader to sources of further information.
Your charity’s performance assessment of its activities and of the outcomes or impact of its work may feed into the planning processes of your charity, influencing the direction of future activities undertaken or even of objectives. You should explain how the assessment of the results of your charity’s work is used in future planning.
In answering Question 4, if your charity prepares consolidated accounts please include any results, outcomes or impact achieved through activities undertaken through subsidiaries.
Governance provides the mechanism by which a charity is directed and controlled. Good governance is crucial to ensuring that a charity operates effectively. The question is intended to enable you to explain concisely how your charity seeks to ensure that appropriate governance arrangements are in place and any procedures adopted in reviewing such arrangements.
Charities exist to serve their beneficiaries, or service users, and potential future beneficiaries and to provide services that satisfy their needs as completely as possible. Well-run charities try continuously to improve their services in ways that have a direct, positive impact on the lives of users, exploring a variety of ideas and methods to achieve this. Beneficiaries and service users are key stakeholders. You should briefly explain how your charity seeks the views of its beneficiaries or users maintains a satisfactory dialogue with these groups and how their views are channelled into the decision-making processes of your charity. This question applies to all charities whether or not you deliver services; for example a grant giving charity would need to explain the ways in which they consider needs of their grant applicants and grant holders.
Voluntary income includes gifts, donations, membership subscription that are primarily donation in nature, legacies and grants of a general or core funding nature (but not grants relating to the provision of a particular charitable service). It also includes gifts in kind, donated facilities or services where these are included in the statutory accounts of the charity.
Fundraising events includes events such as jumble sales, firework displays and concerts.
Activities undertaken to generate funds includes non-charitable trading activities and fees for any services provided to non-beneficiaries. It should also include income generated through shops selling either bought- in or donated goods and any sponsorship income that cannot be considered as pure donations.
Investment income includes dividends, interest and rents received from investment property.
Income earned from charitable activities includes the sale of goods and services provided as part of a charitable activity. It includes income received under contract or through grant funding to perform a particular charitable activity.
Public sector funding includes fees earned from contracted services, project and core funding grants and grants from National Lottery distributors. The public sector includes central and local government and its agencies in the UK and the European Union.
Gross Income is the total recorded income of your charity from all sources including income received for restricted purposes. It does not include capital (endowments), gifts received in the year, or any capital gains derived from investments or any revaluation of fixed assets in the year. The details provided on this form should be consistent with the statutory accounts of your charity and will equate to the total incoming resources of your charity.
Fundraising activities
Fundraising activities should include all activities focused on generating voluntary income (see definition) and for the purposes of this return include income generated from fundraising events (see definition).
When identifying your charity's main fundraising activities, you should detail those activities which are considered of greatest strategic importance to your charity. In most cases this will be the activities that generate most income for your charity.
The total income generated from fundraising activities should reconcile to the total of voluntary income and fundraising event income figures provided in question 7a under 1 Voluntary income and 2 Fundraising events.
In answering Question 8a to 8c of the analysis please include any fundraising activities that may be undertaken through subsidiaries.
The Charity Commission is currently working on a Consultation Draft of the revised Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP). It is intended that this Consultation Draft will be published on the Charity Commission’s website at the end of June, prior to its introduction in 2005. The headings in questions 7 and 8 have been designed to be consistent with both SORP 2000 and the draft revised SORP proposals which both analyse income by function or activity. For this reason Question 7b on public sector funding has been separated out from 7a.
Activities: anything done using resources belonging to the charity or under its control, and include all of its work and services.
Beneficiaries: persons, people or bodies who may benefit under charitable trusts.
Charity trustees: the people who, under the charity’s governing document are responsible for the overall control of the charity and ensuring that it is properly managed. In the charity’s governing document they may be called trustees.
Indicators: well defined, easily measurable information, which shows how well the charity is performing.
Impact: the broad, longer-term effects of the charity’s work.
Inputs: the resources and activities which are used in the charity to create the services offered, for example, staff and volunteers’ time, use of equipment etc.
Milestones: key events in progress towards meeting aims and objectives.
Objectives: the practical steps the charity will take to accomplish its aims.
Outcomes: the changes, benefits, learning or other effects that happen as a result of the charity’s services or activities.
Outputs: the activities, services and products provided to users. They show the volume of work undertaken, representing the direct products of the charity arising from its activities.
Plan: a written description of the steps the charity will take to achieve certain things.
Qualitative information: information that is primarily descriptive and interpretative.
Quantitative information: information that is primarily numerical.
Services: the goods, information and activities the charity provides for its users.
Service Users: anyone who uses or benefits from a charity’s services or facilities, whether provided on a voluntary basis or as a contractual service.
Stakeholders: any person, group, or organisation that has an interest in, or expectation of the charity.
Strategy: a planned way of achieving long term aims.
Values: a set of principles which a charity seeks to apply both in settings its mission and aims and in its day-to-day operations.
Vision: means the ideal towards which the charity is working.