All 2018 charity annual return questions now available to view

Melanie May | 13 August 2018 | News

Charities can now see all of the questions that will appear in this year’s charity annual return, ahead of the online service becoming available at the end of the month.
The online 2018 charity annual return service will become available at the end of August, with the Charity Commission this year introducing a tailored return with a number of new questions. These questions have been developed as result of last year’s consultation with the sector. To give charities time to gather the extra information, some of the new questions will be optional for this year, before becoming compulsory for the 2019 return onwards.
New questions include asking charities to provide more information about salaries. The 2018 annual return will ask for a breakdown of salaries across income bands, and the amount of total employee benefits for the highest paid member of staff. However, the Commission will not publish details of benefits given to the paid members of staff on the public register.
It will also ask more questions about overseas expenditure, to establish how charities transfer and monitor funds sent overseas. These questions will be mandatory for the annual return 2019 onwards.
In addition, the return will ask for details on sources from outside of the UK, introducing questions about the breakdown of sources of income from each country a charity receives funds from.
To give charities a chance to make changes to their financial systems to collect and sort the newly requested information more easily, the Commission has made those parts of the question set relating to other private institutions outside the UK (other than charities, Non-Governmental Organisations and Non-Profit Organisations) and individual donors outside the UK optional for the 2018 annual return. These questions will be mandatory from 2019 onwards.
All questions can now be viewed on the .Gov site.

About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.