Stone King delivered free charity training to 1,500 individuals in 2021

Over 1,500 attendees from charities across the UK joined free training webinars hosted by national law firm Stone King during 2021. The training programme is one way in which the firm, which is a national leader in charity law, is supporting the sector.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, the firm moved all its training sessions to online webinars and made them free of charge so that charity trustees, or anyone operating in the charity sector, could register to join, with attendees often exceeding 100. Throughout 2021, Stone King hosted 18 training sessions including its core trustee training ‘The Essential Trustee and Governance in Practice’, as well as a series of topical sessions on pertinent themes.

Alongside this training resource, in 2021 the firm also hosted and co-hosted dozens of free webinars on specific topics affecting charities, including employment issues, charity mergers and charity legacies, among other topics.

Sarah Clune, Stone King’s Professional Support Lawyer, who is part of a team that devises the firm’s charity training programme, says:

“Particularly at this time, when charities are grappling with governance challenges and the financial impact of the pandemic, it’s important to support the sector. By running these sessions for free, charities have easy access to professional training and an opportunity to ask questions.”

“Before the pandemic we used to deliver charity training on a regional basis but could only ever fit around 30 in a room. Now that we’ve moved online, we can provide the same focused training for as many as would like to join.  We do, however, recognise the benefits of both online and in person events and look forward to being able to hold more in person events when it is sensible to do so to complement our online training offer.”

The firm’s 2022 Charity Training Programme has been launched. It includes monthly trustee training sessions that give attendees an understanding of how the Charity Commission operates and cover a range of topics that trustees need to be aware of, such as key duties and liabilities of trustees, financial governance and resilience, regulation, serious incident reporting and meetings and decision-making in a virtual space. Alongside these, the firm will again run a range of topical sessions on specific issues. Stone King is also excited to be launching an Advanced Trustee Training Programme for smaller groups following consultation with key stakeholders about the key issues they are facing to enable greater in-depth discussion and training on these issues. There will be a charge for these sessions.

To read more about Stone King’s charity training programme for 2022, click here.

For more on the Advanced Trust Training, please click here.