As a Co-operative Council, Oldham is committed to helping you get more involved and make a difference in your local community. Helping residents meet and work together in a productive way is fundamental to happy and confident communities.
Community groups come in all shapes and sizes and can operate for a wide variety of purposes including, setting up a group to produce a community newspaper, a mother and toddler group, sports for children, creative writing or the creation of a community business.
Very often a community group can be operating for a number of years very informally without a constitution. However, there may be a point at which the group needs to formalise itself.
Formalising a group can show others your group is serious in its ambitions, helps with fundraising and provides a structure that helps to plan for the future.
Step 1: Start with an idea
Community groups often start as the vision of an individual person or a small group of people who identify a need and have an idea of how that need might be addressed. For example: 'Our young people would benefit from a youth club' or 'There are elderly people who need support in our community'.
Answering a few questions at this stage will help to further shape the idea and better define what you might be able to do. Try these questions to start with:
- What do we want to do?
- Where do we want to do it?
- Who do we want to do it with?
- Is anyone already doing what we want to do?
- Could we work in partnership with another organisation?
- Do we have the time, energy and commitment to do the work ourselves?
Step 2: Check out whether anyone is already doing this
Once you have put some consideration into how your group might work, you need to research and find out if there are any existing groups that do similar kinds of work in your given area. If there are already groups doing the same work, you could get involved with their work.
Step 3: Select a legal structure to suit your group
All formalised community groups need to adopt a legal structure, and there are a number of structures to choose from depending on the plans you have for your group. Below are four examples along with a sentence which explains what each one is.
The types of structure which your organisation may want to consider are:
- Unincorporated association – Quick and cheap to set up and are ideal for small groups with a small membership, short term goals and low incomes.
- Charitable Trust – Trusts are generally set up to manage money or property for a clearly defined purpose. Trusts are essentially non – democratic organisations as there is generally no membership structure.
- Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) – The CIO is a new legal form which can provide some of the benefits of being a company but without some of the burdens. There are two different types of CIO available: Foundation CIOs (This model is ideal if the CIO is to be run by a small group of individuals (the charity trustees) who will be responsible for making the key decisions) and Association CIOs (has a wider membership than the Foundation CIO, including members who are not trustees).
- Charitable Company – A Charitable Company is Limited Company with charitable aims. It is a membership organisation (a list of members is part of the Company Register) and accountable to the community.
The first of these can be very quick and cheap to set up. If you are registering with the Charity Commission the registration process takes 6 – 8 weeks, and establishing a Charitable Company can be much more time-consuming and expensive.
- Community and voluntary groups: Finding a legal structure to suit your group - Resource center website
Hire or run a Council facility
Advice and support
Action together provides help, information and guidance to voluntary, community and faith groups across the borough of Oldham. From help starting up a new group, assisting in project planning and development, policies, business planning and funding, Action together can support you in every step of your group’s life.