What is a charity?*
In Scotland an organisation can only call itself a charity if it is entered in the Scottish Charity Register, published and maintained by OSCR. All charities in Scotland must meet the “charity test”. This is set out in law and means that among other things, charities must:
- Have only charitable purposes
- Provide public benefit
- Use their funds and property only for charitable purposes
- Allow fair access to the benefit they provide
- Not be , or exist to advance, a political party
*Taken from OSCR website
Abertay Students’ Association (the Association) is a Scottish charity as we are a student organisation. We meet the requirements of the charity test, and are entered on the Scottish Charity Register.
We have a Trustee Board made up of 2 Sabbatical Officers, 4 Student Trustees and 3 External Trustees. Sabbatical Officer is the elected representative of the student body, Student Trustees are drawn from the Student Representative Council (2) and elected from the student body (2). The External Trustees are recruited from the general public, approved by the Board and ratified by SRC.
Charity trustees have a number of legal duties. These include:
- Acting in the interests of the Students’ Association.
- Ensuring that the Students’ Association acts in a way that is consistent with the Constitution and its Charitable Objects.
- Acting with reasonable care and diligence.
- Ensuring that the Students’ Association complies with appropriate legislation.
For more information of the specifics of being a Trustee for the Association please email hello@abertay.ac.uk
In a typical year the Trustee Board will meet 4 times and host the Annual General Meeting. At the Board meetings Trustees discuss ad decide the strategic and operational direction of the Association. Strategic direction focusses on long term activities in order to achieve our goals and objectives. Operational direction is devolved to the Association’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
The Association is required by Charity Law to have a constitution. A constitution is a set of principles and rules by which the Association is organised and is usually contained in one document.
Alongside the constitution we have Schedules which provide more operational scope to the constitution, with different schedules focussing on different aspects of the Association.
