The Charity Commission has recently published its long-awaited CC14 guidance on investing charity assets. This new guidance describes the legal and regulatory framework behind charity investments and the potential risks that trustees must consider, as well as providing good practice guidance and a structured framework for trustees and any others responsible for investing a charity's assets.
This Guidance is a complete re-write of the previous CC14 guidance from 2003 and also replaces the Charity Commission Guidance on Social Investment from the same year. While the previous guidance from the Commission on this subject focussed on conventional investment management, leaving so-called "Social Investment" to a separate guidance note, this new Guidance combines the guidance into a single note containing sections on "Financial Investment" (i.e. the conventional investment principal of investing to produce the best financial return within an acceptable level of risk), "Programme Related Investment" (defined as the use of a charity's assets to directly further the charity's aims while potentially also generating a financial return), and "Mixed Motive Investments" (investments to both further a charity's aims and generate a financial return). The complete guidance can be found online here.
