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Structure
Introduction
This page describes our legal setup and structure. The information on this page has no legal status, but our aim is that it should be comprehensive, clear and helpful.
Please let us know if you have questions about our structure which are not answered here.
Details
Constitution
CCM is a company limited by guarantee. This means that it is a limited company, regulated by Companies House; but we have members instead of shareholders. Each year at the AGM, the members vote to elect the directors of the company. The directors are the voting members of the board; they are joined by two ex-officio non-voting members: the company secretary and the general manager.
Our legal name is 'Crisis Centre Limited': this is the name of the limited company, and what you will have to look up to find us in the records at Companies House. 'Crisis Centre Ministries' is the trading name used by Crisis Centre Limited.
CCM is also a registered charity, regulated by the Charity Commission of England and Wales. The trustees of the charity are the directors of the company.
Our constitution - the document which defines who we are and what we can do - is available on our 'Documents' page. It is technically two documents: the Articles of Association and the Memorandum of Association. We are currently working to update them.
Formal Structure
The board are responsible for governance. This consists of three main areas: legality, strategy and impact.
- Legality. The board are responsible for ensuring that we operate legally. This includes aspects such as ensuring that the charity's resources are only expended in the furtherance of the charitable aims.
- Strategy. The board determine the organisational strategy and high level policy, and for reviewing the strategy and policies.
- Impact. The board are responsible for ensuring that our resources are used as effectively as possible in achieving our aims, and for monitoring our activities to ensure that we actually deliver what we promise.
The job of the general manager is to manage the resources of the organisation: these are mainly the people (both staff and volunteers) and the assets (buildings, equipment and finances). The general manager is responsible for implementing the strategy in line with the policies; this is mainly done through the work of the staff and volunteers. The staff, in turn, manage the people and assets they are responsible for, also with the purpose of implementing the strategy in line with the policies.
The job of the board is to govern, not to make management decisions. The job of the general manager and other senior staff is to manage, not to decide strategy. The distinction between these two roles is not always clear; and it is the job of the chair of the board, in consultation with the general manager, to achieve clarity on this point.
Other Structure
The board establishes working groups as required. These groups undertake specific tasks which cannot effectively be performed by the whole board.
The working group which meets most frequently is the Personnel Group. This deals with matters which may be confidential, and ensures that as few people as possible need to be told confidential information. One specific area of their work is to deal with disciplinary and grievance procedures. These need to remain confidential for several reasons: in part because this is simple good practice; and in part because staff have the right to appeal against disciplinary and grievance decisions, and the appeal needs to be heard by people who were not involved in the original decision.