Francesca Quint
Professional background
Francesca Quint is best known as a specialist in charity law, an area in which she has been working for the whole of her career to date. Her interest in charity law dates from the time when she was reading law as an undergraduate at King's College, London.
Professional expertise
Charity law naturally overlaps with distinct areas of law in which Francesca also practises which impinge on the activities of charities. These include education, housing, ecclesiastical law and aspects of public law. It also extends to those areas which affect people who wish to support charities, such as wills, trusts and tax, in which Francesca is often asked to advise regardless of any specific charity involvement.
A good deal of Francesca's work is non-contentious but she often finds herself advising charities in trouble, whether financial, constitutional or regulatory, or acting for one side or another in disputes within, between or involving charities.
Publications and speaking engagements
Francesca is a member (and previous executive committee member) of the Charity Law Association, for whom she drafted its model governing documents for charities. Her other publications include Volume 6(2) Charities and Charitable Giving of the Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents and Sweet & Maxwell's looseleaf 'Charities: the Law and Practice' with Douglas Cracknell and others and various articles and case notes for the 'Charity Law & Practice Review' and other journals.
Francesca regularly delivers lectures, seminars and in-house courses on charity law and management for Central Law Training, and sometimes for the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners ('STEP') and the Chancery Bar Association.
Memberships
Francesca has been an adviser to the National Association of Almshouses since 1989 and a trustee of the Association of Charitable Foundations, the Bishopsgate Foundation, Charity Forum, St Peter's Home & Sisterhood (Woking), Dulwich College and Elizabeth Finn Care, whose Homes subsidiary she also chaired.
Practice Area
Panel
- Contributing Author
Qualified Year
- 1970
Membership
- Charity Law Association
Qualifications
- Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), Law
- Barrister (1970)
Education
- King's College London, University of London 1966-1969
7 Contributions by Francesca Quint
PRACTICE NOTES
Charitable public appeals: trust creation, failure and surplus, donor identification and cy-près schemes—law and Charity Commission guidance (England and Wales)
Charitable appeals
Appeals for charity are commonplace, yet it is often overlooked that when members of the public contribute to an appeal for a purpose that is charitable in law, a trust for that purpose arises automatically by operation of law. This remains true even where the written terms are remarkably brief, eg ‘Save the Rembrandt for the Nation!’ or ‘Little Snoring Village Hall Roof Appeal’, or where there is no written notice at all but only an oral statement such as ‘A retiring collection will be made for Cancer Research’. The act of giving for a charitable purpose places those who receive the funds under a fiduciary obligation to apply them to that purpose, and to no other. Put another way, the recipients hold the money as charitable trustees. The nature of the purposes and appeals, the intended audience, and the amount sought (and in fact raised) vary widely. Initiatives may range from a modest local endeavour to a national campaign, and the totals collected may extend from a few pounds to a few million pounds...
Private Client
PRACTICE NOTES
Charitable public collections in England and Wales: regulatory framework, licensing, exemptions and enforcement for street and house-to-house fundraising
Although wide-ranging reforms were proposed in the Charities Act 1993 and, later, the Charities Act 2006, neither set of provisions has been commenced, nor are they expected to be in the near term. As a result, rules on public charitable collections—meaning raising funds from the public for charitable or similar aims—remain rooted in statutes from 1916 and 1939. The Charities Act 2022, implemented in phases from Spring 2023, leaves the regime for charitable public collections untouched.
current legislative framework
Section 5 (as amended) of the Police, Factories, etc (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1916 (PFE(MP)A 1916), together with the Street Collections (Metropolitan Police District) Regulations 1979 (SI 1979/1230) and any regulations made under that provision, governs collections carried out in the street (which includes a shop doorway or shopping precinct). This framework overrides street trading rules, even where funds are raised by selling goods, provided there is an indication that all or part of the proceeds will be applied for charitable purposes...
Private Client
PRACTICE NOTES
Charity trustees in England and Wales: functions, delegation and property-holding structures (including companies, CIOs, committees, nominees, trust corporations and the Official Custodian)
There are numerous trusteeship positions that can emerge from the way a charitable trust is structured and run, ranging from a traditional all‑purpose trustee to a more confined or specialist capacity, such as a bare trustee or a nominee.
Functions of trustees of charitable trusts
At its most straightforward, there is one collective of individual trustees and, for a charitable (rather than a private) trust, their number is unrestricted even where the trust assets include land. In that arrangement, the trustees take responsibility for:
holding legal title to the trust property
making all decisions on banking, property management, insurance and investments
recruiting staff and entering into contracts
receiving and applying income, and, where authorised to spend it, capital, to meet administrative costs and advance the charity’s purposes
preparing the annual return and accounts
otherwise meeting charity law obligations placed on charity trustees
acting as the charity’s representative to the outside world
A trustee for all purposes constitutes a ‘charity trustee’ as defined by section 177 of the Charities Act 2011 (CA 2011)...
Private Client
PRACTICE NOTES
Charity trustees' statutory, fiduciary and third-party duties, liabilities and protections, including conflicts, wrongful trading and insurance (England and Wales)
Charity trustees’ responsibilities—and the resulting potential liabilities—fall into three groups: statutory duties, fiduciary obligations owed to the charity, and common law duties owed to third parties. The Charities Act 2022, which revises the Charities Act 2011 (CA 2011) following the Law Commission Report on various technical matters in charity law, has not yet come fully into force. The main unresolved point relates to ex gratia payments by charities, eg to a deserving yet disappointed beneficiary under a Will that, owing to a technicality, leaves a benefit to a charity. Any enquiry in this area calls for checking the most current legislative position.
Statutory duties
The CA 2011 sets out a range of specific duties for charity trustees...
Private Client
PRACTICE NOTES
Charity trustees’ powers in England and Wales: sources, company/CIO/unincorporated structures, and principal statutory powers on investments, land, remuneration, indemnity insurance, governing document amendments, permanent endowment and delegation
Charity trustees exercise authority sourced from several places: the express terms of the charity’s governing document, the Charities Act 2011 (CA 2011) and other legislation, and from common law and statutory principles arising from the charity’s nature as a legal person and as an entity in its own right.
All such powers must be used only to advance the charity’s objects and to preserve its assets; where trustees apply a power for some other end, or act in a way that is not in the charity’s best interests, the decision may, if intentional, be a ‘fraud on a power’, or otherwise a negligent (or inadvertent) breach of trust for which the trustees could be held personally liable.
Powers and the charity format
The character of the charity itself may determine, in part, the range of powers open to the trustees, and therefore be relevant to what they can properly do...
Private Client
PRACTICE NOTES
Governance of charitable companies in England and Wales: directors as charity trustees, members’ fiduciary duties, corporate trustees of unincorporated charities, and permanent endowment arrangements
Charity trustees
Section 177 of the Charities Act 2011 (CA 2011, s 177) treats ‘charity trustees’—the individuals who direct and oversee a charity’s management and administration—as the charity’s decision-makers, and this notion is deliberately adaptable in scope and application. It is designed to fit any charitable legal form and to suit every model of governance that a charity may adopt. Where the charity is a company—ie a company limited by guarantee (or, on rare occasions, by shares) with exclusively charitable purposes—the company’s directors are regarded as the ‘charity trustees’ for the purposes of charity law. However, the term points to the governing body, rather than the wider senior management team, generally speaking. In some circumstances, for example where there is a two‑tier governance arrangement, individuals performing different functions within the organisation can nevertheless fall within the category of charity trustees. This potential classification was noted, without any determination being reached, in Re Carapiet, Manoogian v Sonsino...
Private Client
PRACTICE NOTES
Third‑party charitable fundraising: legal requirements for professional fundraisers, commercial participators and trustees, agreements, disclosures and sanctions (England and Wales)
Fundraising
Raising funds can be viewed as a discipline, a body of specialist know‑how, and a profession in its own right. Many charities maintain in‑house fundraising teams and also bring in external advisers—‘professional fundraisers’—to generate income for them. Charities may likewise enter arrangements with ‘commercial participators’: typically businesses that promise a financial benefit to the charity while selling their own goods or services, incorporating the charitable element into their promotion. The Charities Act 1992 (CA 1992), as amended by the Charities Act 2006 (CA 2006) and supporting regulations, sets out detailed duties for professional fundraisers and commercial participators, alongside specific constraints on their agreements with charities, designed to protect the charity rather than the other party. For completeness, CA 2006 has for most purposes been replaced by the consolidating Charities Act 2011 (CA 2011), as amended by the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 and the Charities Act 2022 (CA 2022). Accordingly, a charity may seek an injunction to restrain unauthorised fundraising and/or to prevent the repetition of an inaccurate or non‑compliant statement that charitable contributions...
Private Client
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