Tim Rutherford

Practice Areas

Tim has a national reputation for advising charities and is a partner in the Charity & Social Enterprise Team at Stone King.

He specialises in advising on charity law, governance and related issues and is also experienced in advising charities and organisations in relation to insolvency and risk management issues.

He excels in advising charities related to faith organisations (in particular Roman Catholic religious orders and Dioceses and Anglican religious orders) and Almshouses, as well as acting for many other types of charity across the sector. He has a particular expertise in incorporations and restructures, having been responsible for the first incorporation of a Roman Catholic religious order charity as a CIO and has since established more than 80 similar CIOs in the past few years. He also worked with the Almshouse Association to rewrite its guidance ‘the Standards of Almshouse Management’.

Professional Memberships

Tim is a member of the Charity Law Association.

Personal

Tim is an active runner and has completed several half marathons to raise funds for local charities in Bath.

He is a trustee of the Miss Beryl Billings (known as Margot Boyd) Charitable Trust and a trustee of Restore Hope.

Expert in these Jurisdictions

England and Wales

Work Highlights

Tim's work highlights include:

• Assisting several international Religious Congregations to restructure their operations in England to fit in with the changing nature of the way they work internationally and the reduction in the number of members based in England.

• Advising a charity with a significant permanent endowment fund on the potential to apply the total return regulations to part of the endowment, whilst retaining the rest of the endowment in traditional form.

• Advising a large Religious Congregation on restructuring to provide a modern structure to enable the continuation of their way of religious life (in new and different forms) whilst also establishing a new charity to take forward their mission work, separate from the religious way of life.

• Advising several charitable organisations that are exempt charities on the process to change their structure from a registered society to a company limited by guarantee to enable them to demonstrate they are a registered charity for the purposes of raising funds from third party grant funders who will only grant fund registered charities.

• Carrying out a strategic review of a household name charity to assist the Trustees to identify any gaps between their stated strategy/mission and how they operate in practice, and then assisting the Trustees to make appropriate changes in light of the review.

Education

Awards