A a trustee of a grant making charity who do you choose to support? The most important thing before you make any decisions is to read your constitution carefully to make sure you clearly understand your objectives as a charity. I lay great emphasis on this as a recent example illustrates.

A local grant making charity were asked to support a particular charity but turned them down because the charity were situated outside the geographical area that the grant making charity were allowed to support. Straight forward you would think? Not at all because, both the charity who applied had not given sufficient information and those that were considering the grant had not done their research either.

It turned out that the charity concerned although their offices were not geographically situated in the relevant area, they worked in several different areas including the geographical area concerned and the trustees had not looked closely at the application, despite the fact they wanted to give their support. They were perfectly able to make a grant of restricted funds, stipulating where the monies could be used, because their constitution did NOTstipulate that the charity's offices had to be situated in the relevant area but only that the charity had to "operate" in the relevant area.

Currently, more and more charities are widening their objectives to allow them more latitude but a little bit of research on both sides could have still allowed the grant to be made.

Two lessons therefore:

1. Understand your own constitution and how you can maximise the use of your funds.
2. Make sure as an applicant you understand who you are applying to and demonstrate exactly how you meet their criteria.