What a session looks like
A session is a guided conversation that turns your charity’s profile into an agreed plan, the guidance behind it, and documents your board can act on. Here is how it unfolds, and what you leave with.
The session
The five stages
Stuart guides the conversation throughout, and nothing proceeds until you have confirmed it reflects your charity.
Your charity’s profile
The session begins with a structured intake: your legal structure, income band, activities, the people you work with, and your current governance arrangements. Compliance obligations are not the same for every charity, and everything that follows is calibrated to yours.
Your legal baseline
The engine presents the documents and registrations the law actually requires of a charity with your profile. Each one carries its legal basis, stated plainly. This list is shorter than most trustees expect. If you believe an item does not apply to you, you can query it, and the question and answer are recorded.
Worth discussing
Beyond the baseline, the engine raises items worth a conversation for a charity like yours, with the reason each one has been raised. Nothing is pre-selected and there is no pressure to take everything. You add what makes sense, defer what does not, and can note why.
Your agreed document map
The decisions become a visual document map: what you already have in place, what you have agreed to build, and when. This map frames the rest of the session and becomes part of your charity’s record.
The guided session and your evidence trail
The compliance conversation works through the agreed map across six governance areas. You can ask the engine almost anything as you go, and guidance is generated live, grounded in a curated knowledge base. Everything discussed, asked, agreed, deferred and drafted is captured in the session record your board keeps.
Six governance areas
The conversation covers six areas. You can work through all of them in a single session or focus on the areas most relevant to your charity.
Governance and trustee duties
OSCR obligations, trustee responsibilities under the 2005 Act, board structure, conflicts of interest, meeting requirements.
People and safeguarding
PVG scheme, safer recruitment, safeguarding policies, employment obligations, volunteer management.
Finance and accounting
SORP compliance, reserves policy, Gift Aid, audit and independent examination thresholds, financial controls.
Data protection and GDPR
UK GDPR obligations, lawful basis for processing, privacy notices, data retention, subject access requests.
Operations, health and safety
Risk assessment obligations, food safety where relevant, lone working, incident reporting, public liability considerations.
Funding, contracts and legal obligations
Grant conditions, funder due diligence requirements, contractual obligations, trading subsidiaries, insurance.
Outputs
What you leave with
Everything is packaged into documents your board can act on, generated during the session itself: the questions you asked and the answers you were given, the guidance, and the policies you agreed to build. There is no waiting for a report to be written.
Your agreed document map
A visual record of what your charity has in place and what you have chosen to build, spread across realistic timescales. A practical planning tool for your board, and clear evidence of considered governance for funders.
Governance review
A plain-English narrative covering all areas discussed, anchored to the map you agreed, with specific observations about your charity’s position and clear priorities for what to build first. Proportionate to your size and activities.
Compliance Guidance pack
A plain-English reference gathering the guidance given across every area discussed, organised by topic and with the relevant diagrams included. A keepable resource your trustees, senior staff and volunteers can return to, not a one-off conversation.
Adopt-ready policy documents
For the items you agreed to build, the engine drafts policies tailored to your charity, exported as editable Word documents your board owns. These are starting points to review, adapt and adopt, not templates to file away.
Full session record
A branded PDF of the full session: the questions asked, the guidance given, and the documents drafted. Suitable for presenting to your board, retaining for audit, or sharing with funders who ask about your compliance arrangements.
Practicalities
What to expect on the day
No preparation is required beyond a working knowledge of your charity: what you do, who you work with, how you are governed, and a broad sense of your income. You do not need to have read any regulatory guidance in advance. That is what the session is for.
Stuart will make brief contact ahead of the session to confirm the format and answer any questions. Sessions are conducted online via Teams or a similar platform and typically take between 60 and 90 minutes. If your charity is based in the central belt of Scotland, an in-person session is also possible and worth raising when we make contact. Sessions work best with a trustee, staff member or volunteer who has day-to-day knowledge of the charity’s activities, but there is no requirement for a full board to be present.
And it does not end there. The engine remembers your charity, so when the next question comes you are coming back to an adviser that already knows you.
Ready to find out if it is right for your charity?
Early access sessions are free, and pilot charities will join the ongoing membership on founding terms. Register your interest and Stuart will be in touch to confirm whether the CCE is a good fit and arrange a session.