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About this form

Please complete this Expression of intent form to notify the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland that your organisation recognises the need to be called forward for registration as a charity. All organisations with charitable purposes are required to register. 

This form is NOT your registration application, it simply notifies the Commission that you recognise that you need to be called forward to apply to register as a charity in Northern Ireland.
 
You do not need to complete this form if your organisation is already listed on the Commission’s combined list.
 
All questions are mandatory and must be completed.

If you need any help or wish to ask us a question about this form, please email casework@charitycommissionni.org.uk or call us on 028 3832 0220.

Privacy notice

When we receive an Expression of intent form, we will log the details onto a spreadsheet. This log includes the name of the contact person, their relationship to the organisation, their contact details (telephone, address, email) and if there are any communications or accessibility requirements the Commission needs to be aware of. This is logged so the person may be contacted by the Commission when the organisation is called forward to apply for charity registration.

We process personal data in order to carry out our statutory functions as the independent regulator of charities for Northern Ireland.  We also compile and publish statistics showing information like the number of Expression of intent forms received, but not in a form which identifies anyone. All personal data collected is securely and confidentially held by the Commission, in line with its retention policy. It will be retained in a secure environment and access to it will be restricted according to the ‘need to know’ principle, or where the individual in question has provided their explicit consent for disclosure.

When you respond to a Commission survey or online form, for example completing an Expression of intent form via SurveyMonkey, SurveyMonkey may process information about this activity. As stated in SurveyMonkey’s privacy policy, this processing is limited to the nature of the survey/online form you have completed, the device used to complete the survey, your IP address, cookie data and location. SurveyMonkey processes this information for the purposes outlined in their privacy policy, including:

• to monitor the use of their services in terms of quality of service and functionality
• to improve the quality of their services and develop new ones
• to improve security by protecting against cyber attack

The information you provide through the survey/online form remains within the control of the Commission, is completely anonymous and cannot be tracked back to individual respondents by the Commission using the activity data gathered by SurveyMonkey.

The Commission’s lawful basis for processing personal data

As the charity regulator, the Commission has a function set out in section 8(2) of the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 to encourage and facilitate the better administration of charities. This function covers the provision of the processes required for charities to meet their legal duties, including the requirement to ensure the Commission has the organisation's contact information so they may be called forward to apply for charity registration. 

The Commission’s lawful basis for processing personal data in relation to expressions of intent is in accordance with section 6(1) of the GDPR in tha

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Q.1 Please enter your organisation's full name (as stated in its governing document) in the box below.

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Q.2 Please enter the name of a contact person for your organisation in the box below. This will be the person the Commission will contact regarding the organisation's application for registration. It is up to your organisation to decide who this person will be. It may be a trustee, an employee or your professional or legal adviser.

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Q.3 The Commission has found that when we call an organisation forward the details of the contact person has changed. Please enter the name and preferred contact method for a second contact. It may be a trustee, an employee or your professional or legal adviser. We will ONLY use these details if the first contact cannot be reached.

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Q.4 Please describe your main contact person's relationship to the organisation, for example if your contact person is an employee then please specify their role within the organisation.

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Q.5 Please provide an address for your organisation. If the organisation does not have a specific address, please enter the address of the contact person for the organisation.

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Q.6 Please provide a landline telephone number for your organisation. If the organisation does not have a telephone number, please enter the landline telephone number of the contact person for the organisation.

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Q.7 Please provide two email addresses for your organisation.

The first email address must be the email of the contact person for your organisation as we will send important information via email regarding your application for registration.

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The second email address should be a generic email for your organisation. For example info@organisation.com. Should you need to change or amend either of these email addresses after submission please email the Commission at registration@charitycommissionni.org.uk.

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Q.8 Please provide your organisation's website address.

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Q.9 If you have any special requirements, for example any accessibility needs, please let us know in the text box below.

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Q.10 What was your organisation’s income in its last full financial year? If you are a new organisation, please provide an estimate of your annual income:

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Q.11 Please provide details of any special circumstances which may require your organisation to be prioritised for registration over others.  

In order to prioritise one organisation’s call forward over another, we must be informed how failure to be registered as a charity is causing an organisation to be disadvantaged over and above any other organisation waiting on our list.  

Organisations awaiting call forward to apply for registration are not prevented from pursuing their purposes, fundraising, applying for rates relief with Land & Property Services or applying to HMRC for charity tax relief, if this is appropriate. Most funders and banks are aware of the position regarding the time it will take to populate the register of charities and should take this into account when making funding decisions or opening accounts. However, if, for example, you have applied to a funding body and they have insisted on charity registration, you may ask the Commission if you can be called forward under special circumstances, explaining this as the reason together with written evidence

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Q.12 If you think your organisation might be a 167 institution please explain in the box below.

Under section 167 of the Charities Act some organisations are not charities under the law of Northern Ireland, and have their main base outside of Northern Ireland, but operate for charitable purposes in or from Northern Ireland. These organisations, known as section 167 institutions, would be registered as a charity in another jurisdiction, such as Ireland, England and Wales or Scotland. These organisations are currently not being called forward by the Commission to apply for registration until all organisations which are charities under the law of Northern Ireland have been called forward.

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Declaration

The Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 sets out the requirements to be a charity as an institution, that is an organisation, which:
  • has exclusively charitable purposes, which meet the public benefit requirement
  • is governed by the law of Northern Ireland and
  • is an independent body, the hallmarks of which include having control and direction over its governance and resources.
Special conditions relate to an organisation that is governed by the law of another jurisdiction but operate for charitable purposes in or from Northern Ireland. There is more information about what constitutes a charity in our Registering as a charity in Northern Ireland guidance.

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