Legal Information

Go Help is a registered UK charity with charity number 1129226. We are also incorporated as a company limited by guarantee (registration number 06373076). Please note that our name is not "Go Help Ltd". We are exempt from requiring "Ltd" in our name as we are not a company in the normal profit making sense (we're a charity): we do not (and cannot legally) have any shareholders or distribute any profits to members. Any major charity is incorporated in this way at Companies House (you can search for 'Oxfam' for example). This is sadly a confusing system, but read on and this may be clearer.

Governing Documents

You can download a copy of our Memorandum and Articles of association (attached in Microsoft Word Format), as filed with Companies House.

Our governing documents are based on the model documents available from the Charity Commission website. This ensures that we are charitable and also removes the requirement for "Ltd" in our name.

Go Help is controlled by a board of trustees. The trustees can not be paid for their time or receive any other benefits from their position. They make sure that the assets of the charity are safe and only used for genuine charitable purposes.

Why no 'Ltd'?

A private company limited by guarantee may be exempt from the requirement to terminate its name with the word 'limited' if it satisfies the conditions in S30 Companies Act 1985. First, the company's objects must be 'the promotion of commerce, art, science, education, religion, charity or any profession and anything incidental or conducive to any of those objects'. Second, the company's constitution must contain provisions requiring that any profits be used solely to promote those objects, prohibiting the payment of dividends and providing that if the company is wound up its assets are not to be returned to its members but rather are to be transferred to another organisation with similar objects. Go Help complies with all of these requirements and so is recorded on the register of Companies at Companies House as: "Company Type: PRI/LBG/NSC/S.30 (Private, limited by guarantee, no share capital, section 30 of the Companies Act)".