News & Events

The Compliance Calendar is a useful addition to the board materials for a meeting to ensure that relevant actions are addressed by the Board. It can also assist with preparing the agenda for an upcoming meeting. This Sample Compliance Calendar should be amended/tailored to reflect the specific compliance requirements of your own charity or non-profit.

Carmichael wishes to acknowledge the support of Colm Hanley, LK Shields Solicitors in the development of this resource.

The objective of an annual activity report is to provide information about an organisation’s activities, its financial performance and financial position that will be useful to a wide range of stakeholders in assessing the board/committee’s stewardship and management of the organisation’s resources and funds, and to assist the reader of the report to make decisions in relation to the organisation. To help organisations meet compliance requirements and standards of good governance in annual reporting, Carmichael has prepared templates for organisations of various sizes. The templates can be found on the Good Governance Awards website.

 

In the Good Governance Awards, each of the annual reports go through a very rigorous assessment but underpinning the many assessments and checklists are some key elements that are essential in the eyes of the assessors and judges. In the spirit of improving standards, we have compiled a summary of the top ten judges’ recommendations arising from their assessment of this year’s shortlisted annual reports. We have also included the top ten comments from our assessors in relation to annual reports that were not shortlisted.

This guidance document has been developed by Carmichael to help charities that are implementing the Charities Governance Code by matching the standards in the Code against resources that are available to help with implementation.

Making A Merger Happen – The core components and key steps in a merger process

This article is a follow on article to the article that discussed the need to do a rigorous evaluation of the merger prospect before engaging in a formal process. In this article, we discuss the core elements and steps to be taken when you are engaged in a formal merger process.

The management of management and the development and adherence to good governance principles is a collective responsibility of the Board, the CEO and the Management team.

Before you do a Merger Process have a read at this article to make you are ready for it. It is of vital importance that before you formally engage in merger discussions, that the board and management go through the following evaluation checklist.

A short article highlighting the seven signs that show your Board is in need of a spring clean.

Kevin Smyth and Derek O’Reilly in conversation about what makes a good Chair in the nonprofit sector. This short video explores the attributes of a good Chair including: achieving consensus; managing time; accepting feedback; reviewing the manager and driving board evaluation.

In developing this free handbook, Carmichael sought to reflect the principles and standards of the Charities Governance Code but it can be used by any non-profit organisation. This handbook is a template and it should be amended/tailored to reflect your own charity or other non-profit.