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charities and social enterprise

Charities & Social Enterprise

Leading regional charity firm with a national reputation. We’re committed to providing charities and social enterprises with the highest quality legal advice.
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Charities & Social Enterprise

Charities operate in a highly complex and regulated environment and also face similar challenges and pressures to businesses in the private sector. That’s why it’s important to have a trusted legal advisor who understands the sector inside out.

We’re one of the region’s leading legal services providers for charities and social enterprises and are one of the only charity teams in the North East to be ranked in Tier 1 by Legal 500 UK.

We provide a full legal service to over 400 active charity clients nationwide, including the Great North Air Ambulance Service, The Premier League Charitable Fund, Rape Crisis England & Wales and the Children’s Heart Unit Fund (CHUF).

Our expertise encompasses the entire spectrum of legal issues affecting charities and social enterprises.

See our charities and social enterprise legal specialisms
  • Registration of new charities, community amateur sports clubs (CASCs) and community interest companies (CICs)
  • Charity Commission consents, schemes, orders and permissions
  • Conflicts of interest, trustee benefit and connected parties
  • Public benefit assessments
  • Serious incident reporting
  • Establishing, releasing and spending permanent endowment
  • Trustee investment powers and the total return approach to investment
  • Social investments
  • Safeguarding
  • Incorporation
  • Mergers, joint ventures and collaborative working
  • Group structures
  • Trading and trading subsidiaries
  • Constitutional and governance reviews
  • Governance
  • Trustees’ duties and decision making
  • Trustee and charity executive training
  • Delegation
  • Grants and contracts
  • Commercial partnerships and sponsorship
  • Campaigning
  • Fundraising
  • Gift Aid and charitable giving
  • Legacies
  • Volunteers
  • Charity finance
  • Charity property and mortgaging
  • Winding up a charity
  • Social finance
See our other areas of legal support for charities and social enterprises
  • Agriculture and rural property
  • Charity financing 
  • Commercial contracts
  • Data protection and information law
  • Debt recovery
  • Digital and technology
  • Dispute resolution
  • Employment
  • Intellectual Property
  • Real estate
  • Real estate dispute resolution
  • Restructuring and insolvency

The team has a wealth of expertise in many areas of the law. This is very reassuring for clients to know that there will be a member of the team who can deal with the client’s legal issue swiftly and expertly. At my organisation this has been hugely helpful, rather than having to try different legal firms to get the level of expertise required.

Legal 500 UK, client quote
Sam Pritchard sitting on a chair, wearing a patterned dress, looking at the camera

5 top tips to be a charity trustee

Samantha Pritchard, partner in our charities team, has a wealth of experience working with charities. In this video, she gives her top 5 tips on what you need to get started as a trustee.

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How can Muckle support your Charity?

How can Muckle support your Charity?

Dominic Parker explains how Muckle have played a key role in supporting North Music Trust (Sage Gateshead) both with legal and business advice. Deborah Lewis-Bynoe explains how Muckle's responsive, sound advice have helped the Great North Air Ambulance succeed. John Devine explains how our Charities team has vast expertise across the entire spectrum of legal issues affecting charities and the third sector, enabling us to handle legal issues of just about any kind.

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Our specialist team can help you succeed
We're based in Newcastle upon Tyne, but our people live across the North East and Cumbria, helping clients nationwide. Get in touch today and see how we make a difference.
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Let's get started - get in touch today and we'll put you on the right track.