What do we write about our objectives, activities and achievements?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: the SORP checklist applies identically, but the public benefit confirmation below is framed for England, Wales and Northern Ireland — Scotland applies its own charity test instead; see below. Northern Ireland: the same position as England and Wales — the public benefit confirmation applies in full.

The Tier 1 narrative checklist

The Tier 1 list for the narrative sections is short enough to publish whole. The SORP requires every item below of a Tier 1 charity’s narrative sections, except the achievements questions, which it says the trustees should consider. The SORP applies across the UK. The list is the same in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, except for the public benefit confirmation, which Scotland handles differently.

This page assumes you have already established your SORP tier and your report’s contents. If you are Tier 2 or 3, this Tier 1 list is the floor, not the whole.

Objectives and activities

• Summarise the purposes as they are set out in your governing document.
• Summarise your main activities against those purposes.
• Explain how the main activities are for public benefit. Confirm that the trustees have had regard to the Charity Commission’s public benefit guidance.
• Explain the scale and nature of volunteer activity and input.

Achievements

• Summarise the main achievements. Consider how the work changed beneficiaries’ circumstances and whether it provided wider benefits to society.

Plans

• Give a summary of the charity’s plans for the future.

Governance and reference details

• The nature of the governing document, the legal form and the constitution.
• How trustees are recruited and appointed, including any external appointing body.
• Name, registration and company numbers, principal address, and the names of every trustee who served during the year.

The reference details are one place the SORP allows a name to be withheld. A chief executive’s or other senior staff member’s name may be left out where that could place them in personal danger. The SORP no longer asks for an explanation.

The financial review has its own requirements, covered where you draft your financial review and reserves reconciliation. This page covers the narrative.

Volunteer activity and input

The SORP now requires every accruals charity to explain the scale and nature of volunteer activity and input. The item moved here from another module of the SORP. That is why a charity working from an older checklist will not have it.

The SORP says a charity in Tier 2 or Tier 3 should also give the number of volunteers. It may give the contribution in hours or full-time equivalents, where that is practicable.

The volunteer item catches people out. A report feels like a financial document, and volunteers cost nothing, so they get left out.

For a charity run entirely by volunteers, this is not a box to tick at the end. It is the most substantial thing the charity has to say about how the work happens.

Objectives and activities: start from the purposes

The SORP requires a summary of the purposes as they are set out in the governing document. Quoting the objects is the simplest way to stay faithful to them.

Every charity that has drifted did so gradually. Drift usually starts with a report that describes what the charity does rather than what it exists to do. Putting the two side by side on one page is a useful discipline in itself.

The public benefit statement

Explain how the activities are for the public benefit, and confirm that the trustees have had regard to the Commission’s guidance. Both halves belong in the report. The second is a single sentence that charities routinely leave out.

Scotland works differently. The confirmation as worded here applies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland applies its own charity test.

What public benefit means in each regime is set out in what is public benefit. How a charity evidences it is covered where you show public benefit.

Achievements: what changed, not what happened

The achievements item asks how the work changed beneficiaries’ circumstances and what wider benefit followed. That is a different question from what you did.

“We ran forty sessions” is an activity. “Thirty-one of the thirty-eight people who completed the programme were in work six months later” is an outcome. If you only have the first kind of sentence, say so plainly. Do not dress an activity up as impact. A regulator reads a great many of these, and the difference is obvious.

The distinction is set out where you separate outputs from outcomes from impact. The outcome figures come from the data you collect, store and analyse.

At every tier, the SORP requires a summary of the main achievements. An explanation of impact becomes a requirement from Tier 2, where the impact paragraph sits. For Tier 1, the SORP says the trustees should consider the difference the work made to beneficiaries and to society.

So a Tier 1 charity does not have to write a separate impact section. If writing about the difference made would take an hour, write it: it is what the SORP asks Tier 1 trustees to consider.

Documents that do not replace the report

AGM minutes or a chair’s report do not replace a trustees’ annual report. Whether you must hold an AGM at all is a separate question, covered in hold your AGM or members’ meeting. CCNI’s monitoring found charities submitting AGM minutes, or a chair’s report, in place of a trustees’ annual report. They cover similar ground and they already exist, so the substitution is understandable.

But the substitution does not discharge the duty. The trustees’ annual report is a specific document with specified content. Another document that is similar is not close enough. It is no answer.

With the narrative drafted, the next step is to draft your financial review and reserves reconciliation.

Common mistake: omitting volunteers because they cost nothing

The report feels like a financial document. The SORP now requires every accruals charity to explain the scale and nature of volunteer activity and input. The item moved from another module, and it is easy to miss entirely.

Common mistake: submitting AGM minutes or a chair’s report instead of a trustees’ annual report

CCNI’s monitoring found charities doing exactly this. It is not a trustees’ annual report and does not discharge the duty.

Worked example

A Tier 1 charity run entirely by volunteers writes its first report under the SORP. That SORP applies from periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026. The volunteer explanation is not optional colour: it sits on the Tier 1 list. For this charity, it is the most substantial thing it has to say about how the work happens.