The Charity Governance Code 2025 - What you need to know
The Code sets out universal principles of governance for charities to consider and helps to shape a common view of what good looks like.
Compliance with the Code is not a regulatory requirement. It is the Charity Commission, and statute, that tells charities about what they must do. The Code draws upon, but is fundamentally different to, the Charity Commission’s guidance. It is a practical tool for trustees to encourage discussion about standards, behaviours and processes that are helpful in cultivating good governance.
Meeting the Code’s principles and outcomes would provide strong assurance to external stakeholders that a charity is well governed.
Introducing the 2025 Code
Good governance principles
The Charity Governance Code sets out eight key universal principles. Each of these describes what you’d expect to see in your charity (with 41 outcomes in total) to show your governance is working well.
All charities, regardless of size or complexity, are expected to follow the principles and try to achieve the outcomes set out for each principle.
How you might achieve the principles and outcomes
This section helps you understand how to achieve the principles.
Behaviours
For each principle there is a list of behaviours that support its achievement.
We focus on behaviours because so much of good governance is relational – people have to work together to discuss, debate, interpret, imagine and decide. These behaviours will not be exhaustive and will apply across more than one principle. We consider them as prompts for all charities to consider, regardless of their size or type.
Policies, processes and practices
Policies, processes and practices are most helpful when they are tailored to the charity.
We offer examples that support good governance for each principle. The processes will not be applicable to all charities, especially smaller ones with few or no staff. They may however help smaller charities think about gaps they need to fill now, or in the future as they grow or become more ambitious.
Evidence of good governance
It is important for trustees to be able to check governance is working as intended, and for external stakeholders to understand governance in the charity. The suggested evidence is not intended to be a checklist, but a set of prompts that should sit alongside attention to behaviours and the conduct of relationships.
Using the Code
How a charity uses the Code may change over time particularly where the charity is growing and changing. We recommend charities that decide to follow the Code use an ‘apply or explain’ approach.
This means charities seek to meet the principles and outcomes of the Code and can either apply some of the proposed practices or explain what they do instead.
This may also be relevant for charities whose distinctive governance features mean a different approach may be needed in some limited circumstances (e.g. certain membership organisations, faith-based charities, or charities with a corporate trustee).
Charities that adopt the Code are encouraged to publish a brief statement in their annual report explaining their use of the Code. This does not need to be a long list of policies or procedures – a short statement is fine.
Some charities work in areas like housing and sport that have their own sector-specific governance codes. These Codes may take precedence over this one. Charities are encouraged to state in their annual reports which governance Code they follow.
How the Code is created
The code is created by a voluntary steering group. There are periodic revisions based on feedback and consultation with users, professionals and non-users.