Additional duties for charity trustees include:
1. Updating your charity's details. Trustees must make sure that we hold the latest information about their charity on the Scottish Charity Register. Charities must seek our consent before taking certain actions. More information about when a charity must contact us for consent and when they must tell us after certain changes have been made is available on our Making changes to your charity page.
Note that charities are not required to notify us of changes to charity trustees. This is because the information is contained within the Trustees' Annual Report that each charity sends to us with its Annual Return form. If, however, a change of trustee means a change to the charity's principal contact, then the charity must notify us of the change a soon as possible.
However, if your charity is a SCIO you must keep an up to date register of trustees and members.
2. Reporting to OSCR. Complying with the statutory duty to supply certain information to us:
3. Financial record keeping and reporting. Section 44 of the 2005 Act states that charities must:
- keep proper accounting records
- prepare a statement of account, including a report on its activities, at the end of each financial year
- have the statement of account independently examined or audited
- send a copy of the accounts, along with the annual return, to us.
Accounting records must be kept by the charity for a minimum of 6 years from the end of the financial year in which they were made.
4. Fundraising. Trustees are responsible for taking control of how their charity fundraises.
5. Providing information to the public. Trustees must make sure that their charity meets legal requirements when referring to their charitable status, for example in advertisements, and in their duty to provide information about their charity to the public.