Session overview

This session will provide an overview of structures available for charities with specific reference to Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs). It will cover the structures available for Charities (all options), reporting obligations, an overview of CIOs, and conversion options given the recent legislation and charity commission announcement.

Speaker

Don Bawtree

Don is a business assurance partner and Head of BDO's national charities team. He started his professional life with PWC in London and then Nairobi, working with local business and on aid assignments, where he was also seconded to the African Confederation of Cooperative Savings and Credit Associations.

Since then he has concentrated on charities, and charitable housing providers, for over thirty years. During that time he has acted for many of the largest and best known charities in the UK, covering healthcare, international, animal welfare, arts and Christian organisations.

He conducts advisory and governance projects and has acted as a charity receiver several times, leading to some experience in international terrorism. He is on the FRC committee responsible for issuing UK official guidance on charity audits, is author of Civil Society's Charity Accounts compliance guide (12th edition), co-authors Bloomsbury's Charity Administration (6th edition),and has a monthly column in Third Sector magazine.

He also acts as an expert witness on charity accountability. He is a visiting lecturer at CASS business school, is retained to lecture for the ICAEW, ACCA, and the Charity Finance Group (CFG). With CFG he created the first charity finance induction course, which has now trained over 2,000 people working in the charity sector. He is currently a chair of an audit committee and member of another.