Charity Commission receives first summary information return online
Howard Lake | 12 October 2005 | News
The Charity Commission yesterday received its first summary information return (SIR) online, and claimed it heralded a new era in public information on charities. The SIR is designed to help the public to better understand the work of charities with an annual income of over £1 million.
Annual returns, which include the SIR, can now be completed by charities online. They can then be accessed by the public by visiting the Commission’s register of charities online.
The first charity to submit its SIR online was Individual Care Services, an organisation providing support to people with learning difficulties and other disabilities.
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Malcolm Harris, Company Secretary at Individual Care Services, said: “The SIR has concentrated our minds on our achievements and it’s another major step down the road of telling the public what we do.
“The process for submitting online was incredibly quick and, for the most part, easy and instant. We are a largish charity but we only have small office back-up and online submission makes life a lot easier for us. If you decide to send off your annual return today, you can. That’s the beauty of it.”
Charity Commission Chief Executive Andrew Hind said: “We are delighted to have received the first summary information return online. We are committed to making life as easy as possible for charities filing their returns with us. We are modernising our systems so that electronic communications with the Charity Commission will become the norm for all charities that want it.
The summary information return forms part of our response to the 2002 Strategy Unit recommendations, which called for improvements in the quality of information available to the general public about charities.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.