Members will be pleased to know that on November 23rd 2022 I received the following email from the Charity Commission: The Charity Commission is pleased to advise that your application to convert the Charitable Company to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) has been successful.
I have explained the reasons for this change and its consequences in previous issues and will not try the patience of readers further on this but very briefly the existing Newman Association continues with the same charity number and so bank accounts do not need to be changed, nor does there need to be a new gift aid application. This is because we were already a company as well as a charity and we still have incorporated status. But we are now regulated solely by the Charity Commission. The company registration number (00434364) should no longer be used.
Now is the time to thank all who have given support in what has been frankly the most trying CIO conversion that I have been involved with. Thanks to all those members who voted in the successive AGM's, thanks to all those who sent in observations and especial thanks to Brian Hamill, Winifred Flanagan, Anthony Baker, Sophie Rudge and Barry Riley who, in their positions as officers of the Association, gave unflagging support. Moreover very real gratitude goes to Ian Jessiman who actually started this process off by his meticulous revision of the 1947 constitution and made two journeys from London to Worcester to discuss this with me. Our collaboration was for me a real delight.
A process beginning in the 1980s
To come to the very end: this result has been for me the culmination of a process which began in the mid 1980's when Rosemary Nixon, then Newman President, asked me to investigate possible charitable status for the Newman. This was achieved in 1991 with the support of the then President, the late Ken Brooks, and you can read my account of how this was achieved in the Newman publication A Use of Gifts. Now we are still a charity but we have taken advantage of the CIO procedure (not available then) and also have a modernised constitution. We now have the structures and so let us to use them to promote the Newman.
Floreat Newman!
John Duddington