CIO

A CIO is one of the structures the Charity Commission's guidance (CC22a) sets out for charities choosing whether to incorporate. Where a charity adopts a corporate structure such as a CIO, the law treats the charity as a person in its own right, and generally its trustees are not personally liable for what it does. A foundation CIO — the model without a wider voting membership beyond the trustees — is created by adopting the Commission's model constitution and then registering with the Commission for it to legally come into existence.

The CIO form was designed to spare charities the dual regulatory burden that applies to charitable companies, which must register with both the Charity Commission (if eligible) and Companies House and provide detailed annual financial information to both. A CIO, by contrast, registers and reports solely to the Charity Commission — keeping a register of its trustees and sending its accounts and annual return to the Commission each year, regardless of its income.