Charity Finance Director's Group

(a charitable company limited by guarantee)

Annual Report and Financial Statements

Registered Charity No. 1054914
Company Number 3182826

Policy and Campaigning

Our policy and public affairs activity was held back during the year as we were without a Policy Officer for 10 months. Consequently much of the workload that was laid out in last year’s annual report was unable to be developed. However, policy work continued during the year and our Public Affairs Committee completed the development of a strategic plan for our policy work for the period 2005 to 2008. A new policy officer, Ernese Skinner joined us at the end of January 2006 and will be taking forward this strategy.

Specific key policy areas we consulted our members on during the year included:

• Gift Aid and Admissions Charges, which raised much concern amongst our members and the wider voluntary community. CFDG’s campaign on this issue resulted in an Early Day Motion put forward by Bob Russell MP and a meeting with John Healey, Economic Secretary to discuss alternative ways forward;
• The Department for Trade and Industry/Treasury consultation on the modernisation of accounting directives/IAS Infrastructure, which led to us providing input to the Institute of Chartered Accounts in England and Wales on guidelines for the sector;
• European Union Code of Conduct for Non-profit Organisations to Promote Transparency and Accountability Best Practices;
• Accounting Standards Board Exposure Draft: Statement of Principles for Financial Reporting – Proposed Interpretation for Public Benefit Entities;
• Pensions Protection Fund Levy upon which we worked jointly with the Charities Consortium to highlight the key issues for charities;
• Full cost recovery, where we collaborated with Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) to carry out a survey that highlighted key issues for Charities and was widely covered in the sector press.

In addition, CFDG has supported the Charity Tax Reform Group’s campaign on irrecoverable VAT and provided an immediate briefing on the Budget 2006 that highlighted key issues impacting our members.

During the year the issue of appropriate accounting software for small to medium-sized charities came up several times and as a result of this interest we decided to set up a special interest group to investigate the problem. The group has generated a lot of interest from members, IT companies and the charity media. It is in the process of investigating the extent of the problem for members with a turnover of less than £2m and is also talking with the main software suppliers in the market to see if they can make their products more charity-specific. During the next year we will complete our benchmarking study of the current situation and will seek funding for a more substantial project to look at the feasibility of making a high-end software package available to smaller charities.

CFDG was sad to see that there has been such little progress on the Charities Bill and hopes that the Charities Bill will make its way through parliament this session and will be following its progress keenly.

We are grateful to our members and subscribers for the invaluable support that they have given to the Public Affairs Committee, Policy Development Working Group and Technical Accounting Group during the year.

Page 7- Annual Report and Financial Statements 2006