can you run your own charity and work for it at the same time?

[phoebebouffet]

That's it really,I would want to pay myself a salary.
Thanks

Yes.

Do you mean you want to be a trustee (ie on the governing body) as well as being an employee of the charity?

It's quite a complicated subject, but in general trustees of charities are not paid for being trustees. In some circumstances, trustees may be paid either (1) for just being a trustee or (2) for being a trustee (for free) and working for the charity (for example, as marketing director). But these are special circumstances - can give you more information on the general rules governing this if you want.

The whole thing is regulated by the charity regulator, the Charity Commission, whose advice on payments to trustees is here.

Your options are:

Get some other people to be trustees of your charity, and be a paid employee.

Presuming your charity is a brand new one, set up your charity's governing document so that it allows trustees to be paid employees as well.

Set up the charity so that you are a (unpaid) trustee, but not an employee.

Get the Charity Commission's permission to have you as a paid employee as well as a trustee. They would need a very good reason.

Hope this all helps and do post again if you need anything else! (I used to work for the Charity Commission and have also worked for government on the changes to charity law in 2006).

Wow thanks for such comprehensive advice. It's not a new charity so I will check out the existing governing document. The problem we have is the current trustees are all pensioners and have all had enough which is going to leave me unemployed if we dont find anyone to run and manage us. I'd would be happy to do thi myself although Im not sure I fully understand the implications and what's involved. Would this be a god enough reason for the charity commision?

No problem!

How big is the charity? What kind of charity is it?

There would need to be an explict clause in the governing document allowing payments to trustees, which is fairly unlikely, but worth checking.

The fact that your existing trustees are old and want to stop won't be reason enough for the Charity Commission to allow you to be paid (the Charity Commission only needs to give permission if there is no permission in the governing document). To be honest, it doesn't sound like a great reason to become a trustee etiher - loads more work, potential conflict of interest, generallly exhausting for you! And you couldn't be the sole trustee so you'd need to find at least a few more people.

Your local CVS might be able to help you find new trustee, or there are various routes by which you can advertise trustee vacancies, such as www.do-it.org. Depending on the kind of charity there might be other avenues I (or the CVS) could think of too.

We are part of a national charity called Life Education Centres we have mobile vans and we do health and drug education in primary schools, moving from school to school each week. In our trust there are 5 employees (all educators) and about 10 trustees and a few other volunteers, nationally there are many other trusts. So I'm only thinking of managing our trust our even just myself really dont think I want to be responsible for anyone else. Financially we're ok just about breaking even.

That's brilliant if you are part of a larger organisation as maybe your head office, or one of the other branches near by might be able to help you with recruiting more trustees?

Thanks yes they are in talks, and head office are prepared to loan some money for to recruit a paid 'manager' not sure if that's the agreed job title yet. I'll get in touch with my local CVS.

sorry forgot to say paid manager job would only be for a year, then we may be in the same position again in a years time.

Although it is possible in certain circumstances as Wigeon posted, I think the practical difficulties arising from it are considerable: conflict of interest obviously, but also accessing grant funding can be compromised. There are some grant giving bodies which will not consider providing funding to a charity that makes payment to any of its Trustees.

Good point about grant funding, venusandmars - didn't know that.

Phoebe - so are you a volunteer at the moment, thinking of applying for the paid manager job and also being a trustee? Or from what you are saying about just managing yourself, do you mean that you would just be the paid manager (and not a trustee)? That would certainly be a more straightforward option. Also, if you have 10 trustees at the moment, you couldn't just replace all of them with you - the charity would almost certainly need more than 1 trustee (again, check the governing document).

Anyway, I really would contact your head office about going about finding new trustees - I should think they have come across the problem before!