Charity Trustees can't cope?

While Trustees do not necessarily have to be technical accounting experts, an initial finding shows that 78 per cent of charities do not provide any specific training on financial issues whatsoever in their induction procedures.

Also of note is that, even if trustees are versed in the finer points of charity finance, the information they receive in management reports is not thorough, with just half of these reports, for example, including a cash flow analysis.

Commenting on the findings, Sudhir Singh, Chairman of Baker Tilly's Charity and Education Group, said:

Overall, governance in the charity sector has improved since this research was first carried out in 2000, but there remains plenty of scope for improvement. For example, 26 per cent of charities say they have not reviewed their governance in the past three years.

Charity Finance editor, Ian Allsop said: "The risk management agenda has rightly focused trustees' attention on having appropriate internal controls even though in 24 per cent of charities the systems are undocumented. Encouragingly the number with a fraud policy has risen from 27 to 48 per cent since 2007. But worryingly, a third of charities that deal with children and vulnerable adults have not carried out CRB checks on all their trustees."

The public benefit test is expected to cause some difficulty for 13 per cent of charities. This indicates some English charities fear that their charitable status maybe under threat.

The Baker Tilly Voluntary Sector Governance Survey 2008 is published by Charity Finance and governance magazines. It includes responses from over 550 charities and was conducted in September 2008. Charity Finance and governance are the UK's best selling business magazines for voluntary sector professionals and trustees respectively.

For more information, see: www.charityfinance.co.uk