An online toolkit was launched on Nov. 10, 2009 to help United Kingdom trustees protect their charities from harm and abuse. Produced by the UK Charity Commission, the first chapter from the Compliance Toolkit: Protecting charities from harm provides information about relevant terrorism laws, identifies risks from terrorism or other financial crimes and encourages best practices of self monitoring for charities.  The remaining sections will be released in 2010 and 2011.

The creation of the toolkit fulfills one of the commitments from the Commission’s July 2008 Counter-terrorism Strategy that recommended developing:

a ‘toolkit’, in partnership with the sector, to assist charity trustees and their advisors in undertaking risk assessment to better identify and minimize the risk of terrorist abuse and to disrupt those that seek to exploit charities for terrorist purposes. This will build upon already embedded good practice within the sector and learn from those charities that already have significant experience of managing these risks in their activities. (emphasis added)

The first chapter, “Charities and Terrorism,” outlines how charities and their work are affected by “key aspects of the UK’s counter-terrorism legislation” and helps charities work to manage “their own risk measures and procedures.”

Chapter 1: Charities and Terrorism – Summary

Chapter 2: Safeguarding Charity Funds – modules are:

  • Storing and moving funds – the formal banking system; other money transfer systems (Money service bureaux, Hawala); cash; new technologies (e-money, SMS money transfers);

  • The ‘Know Your…’ principles – trustees’ responsibilities for due diligence with donors, partners, beneficiaries; monitoring, verification and reporting on end-use of funds;

  • Raising funds; and

  • Fraud and financial crime (including money laundering)

Chapter 3: Safeguarding Charities – People, Property, Reputation – modules may include:

  • Risk – refresher guidance on assessing and managing risk;

  • Reputational risk – association with terrorism;
  • Disputes;
  • Vulnerable beneficiaries – especially safeguarding children;
  • Owning property overseas; and
  • Your Content Goes Here
  • Risk assessment tools and methodologies – examples of sector good practice in different high-risk contexts (country and regional)

Andrew Hind, Chief Executive of the Charity Commission, said, “Charities make a vital contribution to society and building community cohesion. We fully recognize the importance of enabling charities to undertake valuable and essential humanitarian and other work in the UK and overseas. This guidance is designed to help them do just that whilst managing the risk of harm or abuse.”

More information about the compliance toolkit will be provided by the Charity and Security Network as it becomes publicly available.