Few perks of trusteeship feel as natural as a seat at your own charity’s opening night. You give your time for nothing, you care about the work, and there’s an empty seat in row F. Yet a free ticket is a benefit, and charity law treats trustee benefits with more care than many boards expect. This post covers charities in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own regulators and rules, which differ in places.
The starting point: no benefit without authority
Trustees can’t receive a benefit from their charity unless something authorises it. The Charity Commission’s guidance on paying trustees says that “paying” a trustee covers more than money. It includes “free access to services that people normally have to pay for”. A ticket to a performance, a screening or a dinner that the public would buy fits that description.
Authority usually comes from the charity’s governing document, an order of the Commission or an order of the court. Many governing documents allow trustees’ expenses but say nothing about tickets. The Commission is clear that the rules apply “even if the arrangement benefits the charity”. If they aren’t followed, the trustee who received the benefit, or all the trustees, may have to repay the charity. The guidance doesn’t deal with tickets specifically, so boards have to apply the general principle to their own events.
Working, watching or enjoying?
Much depends on why the trustee is there. A trustee who greets guests, hosts a table of funders or speaks from the stage is working for the charity. A ticket that puts them in the room to do that job is closer to a cost of the role than a reward for it.
Watching the charity in action can be legitimate too. Trustees can’t oversee work they never see. The Charities SORP itself counts “visiting charity facilities or activities to understand or monitor what is taking place” among the costs trustees incur in carrying out their duties. The test is whether that purpose is real. A trustee who sees the main-stage production once a season and reports back to the board is doing the job. A trustee who attends every press night with friends is enjoying a perk.
Where the purpose is the role, the board should record that in writing before the event, not after. That record is what separates a duty from a benefit if anyone asks later.
When seats are scarce or expensive
A free seat at a half-empty matinee costs the charity little. A free seat at a sold-out show costs it the price of a ticket a paying customer would have bought. The rules are the same in both cases, but the value of the benefit is not, and nor is the case for allowing it. With a full house, it’s much harder for the board to show that giving the seat away was in the charity’s interests.
That applies with more force to a fundraising gala when tickets may sell for thousands of pounds. Those seats exist to raise money, so giving one away gives away income. If a trustee is there to host donors, sell tables or make the ask, that is work and can be recorded as such. If not, a trustee who wants to attend should buy a ticket like any other supporter. That is also the clearest signal the board can send to the donors in the room.
Plus-ones
A second ticket rarely serves a governance purpose. A trustee hosting at a gala might reasonably bring a partner who hosts alongside them. In most cases, though, the guest is there for pleasure, and the benefit belongs to the trustee who chose them. If the guest is a close family member, the SORP treats that person as a related party in their own right, so a free ticket for them has to be disclosed too. The tax rules also treat benefits provided to an office-holder’s family or household in the same way as benefits to the office-holder.
Do they go in the accounts?
Charities that prepare accrual accounts follow the Charities SORP, and the current edition applies to reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2026. The SORP treats any transaction between a charity and a trustee, or a trustee’s close family, as material whatever its size, unless it falls within a short list of exceptions. One exception covers services a trustee receives on the same terms as the charity’s other beneficiaries. That won’t usually describe a seat the public would have paid for. A ticket given as a benefit therefore belongs in the related party note, with the trustee’s name, what they received and its value.
Attending as part of the role sits on the other side of the line. The SORP says that meeting a trustee’s properly incurred expenses doesn’t count as any kind of personal benefit. Those expenses include visiting the charity’s activities to understand or monitor them, and the SORP even lists entertainment among the kinds of expense to disclose. The board should record why the trustee attended, and agree with its auditor or independent examiner how, if at all, the ticket should appear.
Charities that prepare receipts and payments accounts should include similar details. The Commission lists who was paid, why, what they received and the authority for it.
And the trustee’s tax return?
This section is general information, not tax advice, and each trustee’s position depends on their own circumstances.
A trustee holds an office, and the employment income rules apply to offices as they do to jobs. A benefit provided because of that office, including one provided to the trustee’s family or household, falls within the rules on taxable benefits. HMRC’s manual takes a practical view of unpaid office-holders in voluntary organisations: they won’t have taxable earnings unless they are being paid for their services. That passage deals with payments, though, rather than benefits in kind.
There is also an exemption for trivial benefits. It covers a non-cash benefit that costs no more than £50 and isn’t given in recognition of particular services. An occasional complimentary seat at a modest ticket price may fall within it; a £2,000 gala seat may not. If a ticket is a taxable benefit, the trustee may need to account for it, and the charity may have reporting obligations of its own. That is another reason for the charity to know exactly what it is giving, and to whom.
A simple policy, and a record
Deciding in advance prevents most of these problems. A short tickets and hospitality policy agreed by the board can set out:
- when trustees attend as part of their role, and how often
- whether guests are included
- when a trustee pays
Check the policy against the governing document. If it allows anything that counts as a benefit, the charity needs the authority to give it.
Then keep a record. Log each trustee ticket, the reason for it and its value, either in the register of interests or in a simple hospitality log. That gives the finance team what it needs for the accounts, and gives the board an answer if the question is ever asked in public. No trustee should approve their own attendance, just as the Commission says no trustee should approve their own expenses claim.
If you’d like help drafting a tickets and hospitality policy, or checking what your governing document allows, we’d be glad to help. Do get in touch.
Sources: Charity Commission: paying a trustee or connected person (other types of trustee payments) · Charity Commission: trustee expenses · Charities SORP · HMRC EIM71100 · Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, s323A
