Our not for profit team advises a wide range of clients within the charity and wider not for profit sectors, including grant making trusts and foundations, service providers and universities and other educational institutions. 

Our expertise and experience

The lawyers within the team specialise in advising on a wide range of legal and regulatory issues, including:

• Governance
• Tax
• Reorganisations and restructurings
• Trading
• Fundraising
• Trustees' powers and duties
• Joint ventures
• Investment
• Endowment

We are recognised by both Chambers and Legal 500 as leaders in this field.  We are members of the Charity Law Association and are also on the Charity Commission's panel of "approved intermediary" law firms, after a tender process which assessed the quality of our advice and our value for money. 

Members of the team co-author "Charity Governance", a guide to law and regulation for charity trustees and senior executives and their advisers published by Jordans.

The charities team also includes a number of lawyers who specialise in advising on other legal and regulatory areas.   These include:

• Property
• Employment
• Technology and procurement
• Intellectual property
• Pensions
• Dispute resolution
• Banking
• Data protection
• Health and safety

Our aim

Our aim is to build longstanding relationships with our clients based upon:

• Being available and responsive
• Giving unequivocal and practical advice aimed at achieving our client's objectives.
• Providing value for money
• Providing added value services such as updates, seminars and in-house training.
• Being an active, committed and can-do partner rather than a dispenser of legal opinions.

Examples of our recent experience include:

• Advising a number of individual philanthropists on donations to charity in excess of £100m, including all relevant tax aspects
• Advising Shaw Trust on joint venture social investments aimed at assisting disabled people in Romania and Poland to find employment.
• Advising the European Development Fund in relation to the establishment of endowment funds (using STABEX funds in excess of €10) supporting agricultural research in Tanzania and Uganda.

Con Alexander
t +44 (0)117 917 3062
con.alexander@osborneclarke.com

Mark Woodward
t +44 (0)117 917 3368
mark.woodward@osborneclarke.com