WCF Organisational Changes

On 28th January 2017 at an EGM of the Western Chan Fellowship the members present voted unanimously to transfer the assets and activities of Western Chan Fellowship (registered charity no. 1068637) to ‘Western Chan Fellowship Charitable Incorporated Organisation’ (registered charity no. 1166162).

‘Western Chan Fellowship CIO’ as it will be known (‘WCF CIO’ in this message’), will operate in very much the same way as ‘Western Chan Fellowship’ (‘WCF’) has done for the last 20 years. Members of WCF will be offered a free transfer to membership of WCF CIO. Bookings made with WCF prior to the transfer will be moved over to WCF CIO. This transfer is planned to take place in the next few months and we shall announce when that has occurred. Once all activity of WCF has ceased then WCF will be closed down, with WCF CIO continuing in its place.

This is largely a technical change only and our members and participants in our events will see very little difference. The reason for the change is to update the legal structure of the WCF to make use of a new charity structure (‘Charitable Incorporated Organisation’) introduced by the Charity Commission a few years ago. This protects the trustees (committee members) of the WCF because the new legal structure limits liability of trustees in the same way as the directors of a Limited Company have limited liability. This is important because otherwise talented people may be reticent about supporting the development of the WCF by offering to act as trustees.

The articles (constitution) of WCF CIO mirror very closely the constitution of WCF but there are some differences. There are some changes to meet the requirements of the new structure, and some because there were a few parts of the WCF constitution which needed updating or clarification, but overall our intention in this development has been very much ‘business as usual’.

WCF members were notified beforehand of the proposal, by both email and post, and given access to the articles of WCF CIO and more detail on the transfer. These are still available to review if members login to the WCF website, and the WCF CIO articles will be published on the WCF public website (which will by then be the WCF CIO website) once the transfer has taken effect.