Legal 500 commentary

Druces’ charities practice has been recognised in the Legal 500: ‘Druces has a strong team of partners dealing with charities. Whether a large or small charity you will get a caring and personal service’.

The ‘diplomatic and persuasive’ Richard Monkcom ‘is the technician who knows charity law inside out and is often used as a reference point for difficult legal or technical matters’.

The ‘excellent’ Helen Freely is ‘efficient, easy to approach and work with, and highly skilled’.

Head of Corporate Restructuring, Caroline Cropley, regularly advises charities on various corporate issues.

Recent work

• We act for one of the UK’s largest animal welfare charities across a range of property, governance and commercial issues.
• We have developed a particular expertise of advising charities on publishing agreements, especially important where a charity relies on that material as a primary source of funding. That advice has extended to advising on international co-operation and affiliation agreements with other European charities.
• We advised on the formation of a new charity for overseas clients who anticipate significant funding for the charity in the future, especially from the USA. This in itself created tax issues that we advised the charity on.
• We have advised a large number of individuals on the tax implications of their charitable giving (usually involving very significant sums) in the context of their personal affairs.
• We advised a religious order in relation to the amendment of its constitution.