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

England and Wales: researched. Scotland: researched — the SORP checklist applies identically, though the public benefit confirmation below is framed for England, Wales and Northern Ireland; Scotland applies its own charity test. Northern Ireland: researched.

The Tier 1 checklist, in full

Short enough to publish whole, so here it is. Every item below is expected of a Tier 1 charity’s narrative sections.

Objectives and activities

• State the purposes as they appear in your governing document — the wording, not a paraphrase.
• Summarise your main activities against those purposes.
• Explain how the main activities are for public benefit, and confirm that the trustees have had regard to the Commission’s public benefit guidance.
• Explain the scale and nature of volunteer activity and input.

Achievements

• Summarise the main achievements, addressing how the work changed beneficiaries’ circumstances and what wider benefit to society it produced.

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 financial review has its own requirements and its own step. This page covers the narrative.

Volunteers are not optional colour

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

Every accruals charity should now explain the scale and nature of volunteer activity and input. It was relocated from another module of the SORP, which is why a charity working from an older checklist will not have it.

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

Purposes: quote, do not summarise

Write the objects as they appear in the governing document. Every charity that has drifted did so gradually, and it usually starts with a report that describes what the charity does rather than what it exists to do. Putting the two next to each other on one page is a useful discipline in itself.

Public benefit is a confirmation, not an essay

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, and the second is a single sentence that charities routinely omit.

Scotland works differently — the confirmation as framed applies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Scotland applies its own charity test.

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 rather than dressing an activity up as impact — a regulator reads a great many of these and the difference is obvious.

Whether an explicit impact explanation is compulsory at Tier 1, rather than merely a strong achievements summary, is genuinely contested: the SORP’s own Summary of Changes calls impact reporting “now a ‘must’ for all charities”, while the operative Module 1 text places the impact paragraph under the Tier 2 heading. This page is not going to pick a side. If reporting on impact would take an hour, writing something is the safer course either way.

What will not do instead

CCNI’s monitoring found charities submitting AGM minutes, or a chair’s report, in place of a trustees’ annual report. They cover similar ground, they already exist, and it is an understandable substitution.

It does not discharge the duty. The trustees’ annual report is a specific document with specified content, and something else that reads a bit like it is not a partial answer — it is no answer.

Common mistake: omitting volunteers because they cost nothing

The report feels like a financial document. The SORP now expects every accruals charity to explain the scale and nature of volunteer activity and input. It was relocated from another module and 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 applies from periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026. The volunteer explanation is not optional colour — it sits on the Tier 1 list, and for this charity it is the most substantial thing it has to say about how the work actually happens.