We’re delighted to announce that LASSN has successfully converted to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (Association style), or CIO for short

Our Members voted for this change at our AGM in January 24 and (after a few hiccups with the paperwork that required another vote at an EGM in August 24) the Charity Commission have finally approved our application.

What does this mean for LASSN? 

On a day-to-day level, very little changes. Our Mission and purpose remain exactly the same. We retain our charitable status and we even keep the same Charity Number. Our banking details remain the same, and all the Gift Aid declarations made by our donors and supporters still apply.

The main differences are

  • we are no longer registered with Companies House, which means we are now regulated exclusively by the Charity Commission. This means we only have to file one set of accounts, and update one lot of records when things change (eg when Trustees resign).
  • our Constitution is completely up-to-date, and our governance procedures are clearer and less open to interpretation. Consequently, our original 15 page Constitution has now become a 25 page document.

If you’d like to read more about the implications of this change, here’s a paper we presented to Trustees as they were deciding if they should recommend the change to Members.

Get involved 

LASSN needs Trustees from a wide range of backgrounds, to make sure we have the right balance of decision makers.

We particularly want to recruit

  • Trustees from ethnically diverse communities. Although most of the folks we work alongside are from racialised communities, most of our Trustees are not. We want more Trustees to be drawn from the diverse communities we serve, or to have direct experience of migration to the UK.
  • Younger Trustees. The average age of Trustees is currently 57, and we’d love to get some younger folks involved in how we run things.

If you’d like to find out more about what being a Trustee at LASSN involves, and the support and training we can provide, please look at our Trustee Information pack, or contact our Director, Jon Beech [email protected] for an informal chat.